Quote of the Day (Henry Clay, on Rather Being ‘Right Than Be President’)

“I did not send for you to ask what might be the effect of the proposed movement on my prospects, but whether it was right; I had rather be right than be President.”—U.S. Senator (and perennial Presidential also-ran) Henry Clay, on the potential impact of a speech on slavery to be delivered Feb. 7, 1839, quoted in a speech by Sen. William C. Preston (to whom the remark was addressed), reported in Niles Register, Mar. 23, 1839

I had heard of this quote from Henry Clay (1777-1852)—as thousands of American schoolchildren have since it was first uttered—but always thought it came from a speech. But the words in question were uttered before the address, as Clay tested its argument and reception on Sen. Preston.

Much to his dismay, Clay not only never got to be President, but had to watch while other men of distinctly less skill reached the White House. He could only content himself with the thought that on three separate occasions—in 1820, 1833 and 1850—he had brokered compromises that enabled the Union he loved to remain intact for another 40 years, without immediately sundering over the issue of slavery. 

All of that occasioned costs: to the American conscience, which for the first half of the 19^th century resolutely avoided confronting and ending a system that degraded an entire class of human beings; to Clay’s own hopes for higher office (the February 1839 led Northern abolitionists to wash their hands of him); and, ultimately, to his place in history, as he lacked the ultimate, Presidential power to affect events. 

Clay deserves to be better remembered today, as he was throughout the 19^th century.  His impact is especially important in understanding two Republicans who very much wanted to become President: Abraham Lincoln and Newt Gingrich.

Let’s discuss first the inferior of these two. Upon becoming Speaker of the House in 1995, Gingrich had Clay as his model for a leader every bit as powerful as the President. 

But Gingrich’s “Contract With America,” announced with fanfare as a series of reform measures, lost traction the longer Gingrich was in power, and never possessed the overarching vision of Clay’s “American System” of economic development that would have tied the country together. Voters punished Gingrich’s push to impeach Bill Clinton by reducing the GOP’s edge in the House, and he lost power after when he was discovered to have committed the same offense \that he took exception to in Clinton’s case.

When all is said and done, Gingrich’s legacy will be the reverse of Clay’s: not preserving shards of unity and civility, but heightening the disorder and fury in American politics, according to an article by McKay Coppins in the November 2018 issue of The Atlantic:

“[F]ew figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.”

As for Lincoln, the influence of Clay was far more benign. An admirer of “The Great Compromiser” from his youth, Lincoln instinctively sought gradual change before being pushed toward more transformative measures. Much of his agenda in the White House—notably, legislation bringing about the transcontinental railroad—might be understood as an attempt to enact elements of Clay’s “American System.”

Above all, in his attitude toward slavery and the Union, Lincoln resembled his hero. Though a slaveholder during his lifetime, Clay manumitted his slaves in his will. Fearing that slaves could never be accepted into American society, he sought to colonize them back in Africa—a stance that Lincoln advocated, only to regretfully abandon it in office when he saw no possibility of it ever being legislated. Above all, his guiding principle was the preservation of the Union.