Henry Clay
...aker in 1809. Soon, Henry Clay filled another vacancy when Buckner Thruston resigned. He served from January 4, 1810 through March 3, 1811. Henry Clay was then elected as a Republican to the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses where he served from March 4, 1811 through January 19, 1814. Henry Clay was appointed one of the commissioners to help negotiate the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain in 1814. Clay served on Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses. Later he was elected to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses. President John Quincy Adams appointed Clay to the Secretary of State in 1825. This was where he served when John Adams was president ("Biographical Directory of the United States Congress”). At Forty-seven, Henry Clay had tremendous experience in the workings of Congress. Aside from the dealings with the Great Britain peace treaty, Clay put in place a set of policies he called the “American System”. This consisted of protective tariffs to promote manufacturing and federal expenditures for domestic improvement such as roads and canals in the western United States (Cohen, pg. 377). Clay received widespread support in his home state and throughout the West for promotion of the American System. Henry Clay returned to the Senate in 1831 where he became the leader of the National Republican party, which was later referred to as the “Whig Party”. In 1832, Henry Clay lost his bid for presidency, but he played an important role in the Bank Crisis and Tariff of 1833 (Henry Clay). Even though there were differences about the best or fairest way to improve commercial development, Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Republicans and Henry Clay’s National Republicans favored the same outcome. Both parties wanted growth a...