Henry Clay was born April 12, 1777, in the "Slashes," Virginia. He studied law, and at the age of twenty removed to Kentucky, which is proud to claim the honor of having been his home and in reality his State. His great ability and winning manners made him popular everywhere. He served in the Kentucky Legislature, and, before he was thirty years old, was elected to the United States Senate, of which he was a member from 1806 to 1807. He soon became recognized as the foremost champion of the cause of internal improvements and of the tariff measures, known as the "American System." His speakership of the Kentucky Assembly, his term as United States senator again, 1809-11, and as a member of the House of Representatives in 1811, followed rapidly. Against precedent, being a newcomer, he was chosen Speaker, and served until his resignation in 1814. He was as strenuous an advocate of the war with Great Britain as Calhoun, and it has been stated that he was one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ghent in 1814. The following year he was again elected to the House of Representatives, and acted without a break as Speaker until 1821. He was the most powerful advocate of the recognition of the Spanish-American States in revolt, and but for Clay the Missouri Compromise would not have been prepared and adopted. Absent but a brief time from Congress, he again acted as Speaker in 1823-25. President Adams appointed him his secretary of State, and he retired from office in 1829, but two years later entered the Senate from Kentucky. For the following twenty years he was the leader of the Whig party, opposed Jackson in the bank controversy, and secured the tariff compromise of 1833 and the settlement with France in 1835. He retired from the Senate in 1843, his nomination for the presidency following a year later. Once more he entered the Senate, in 1849, and brought about the great compromise of 1850. He died June 29, 1852. Clay's vain struggle for the presidency is told in the succeeding chapter. It seems strange that while he was indisputably the most popular man in the United States, he was not able to secure the great prize. The American Congress never knew a more brilliant debater, nor did the public ever listen to a more magnetic orator. His various compromise measures in the interest of the Union were beyond the attainment of any other man. His fame rests above that which any office can confer. His friends idolized and his opponents respected him. A strong political enemy once refused an introduction to him on the ground that he could not withstand the magnetism of a personal acquaintance which had won "other good haters" to his side. John C. Breckinridge, his political adversary, in his funeral oration, said: "If I were to write his epitaph, I would inscribe as the highest eulogy on the stone which shall mark his resting-place, 'Here lies a man who was in the public service for fifty years and never attempted to deceive his countrymen.'"