Henry Clay (1777-1852), was a powerful U.S. Senator who also served as a Congressman.  He was elected Speaker of the House six times, and for nearly forty years was a leading American statesman.  Clay was part of the "Great Triumvirate" with Daniel Webster and John Calhoun which dominated Congress during the early to mid 1800's. Known as The Great Compromiser, Clay was able to keep the Union between the North and the South together for many years.  He was a Presidential Candidate several times but never elected.

In 1839, when he was about to give a speech in which he would declare himself against slavery, one of his friends warned him that this would ruin his chances to become President.  To this, Henry Clay gave his famous reply:

"I would rather be right than President." ¹

From a speech to the Kentucky Colonization Society, at Frankfort, 1829, Henry Clay proclaimed:

"Eighteen hundred years have rolled away since the Son of God, our blessed Redeemer, offered Himself on Mount Calvary for the salvation of our species; and more than half of mankind still continue to deny His Divine mission and the truth of His sacred Word ....

"When we shall, as soon as we must, be translated from this into another form of existence, is the hope presumptuous that we shall behold the common Father of the whites and blacks, the great Ruler of the Universe, cast his all-seeing eye upon civilized and regenerated Africa, its cultivated fields, its coasts studded with numerous cities, adorned with towering temples dedicated to the pure religion of his redeeming son?" ²

In a conversation with Congressman John C. Breckinridge, Henry Clay declared:

"The vanity of the world, and its insufficiency to satisfy the soul of man, has been long a settled conviction of my mind.  Man's inability to secure by his own merits the approbation of God, I feel to be true.  I trust in the atonement of the Saviour of mercy, as the ground of my acceptance and of my hope of salvation." ³

Henry Clay had confided with Congressman Venable:

"I am not afraid to die, sir; I have hope, faith, and some confidence;  I have an abiding trust in the merits and mediation of our Saviour." 4

² 1829, in a speech at Frankfort to the Kentucky Colonization Society.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 87.

³ June 30, 1852, in the obituary address given by Congressman John C. Breckinridge in the House and Senate at the occasion of Henry Clay's death.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 87.

4 June 30, 1852, in the obituary address of Henry Clay given by Congressman Venable Delivered in the House and Senate at the occasion of Henry Clay's death.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 87.