"The Breakers", a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

In United States history, Gilded Age refers to the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, running from the late 1860s to 1896.

The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The term refers to the gilding of a cheaper metal with a thin layer of gold, with a hint of the "golden age" of a nation's glory. Many critics at the time complained that the era was marked by ostentatious display, crass manners, political corruption, and shoddy ethics.^[1]

Historians point out that it was a time of enormous industrial, urban and agricultural growth, that attracted millions of eager workers from Europe. Railroads were the major industry, but the factory system and mining were important as well, and labor unions began to be important. The growth was interrupted by major nationwide depressions known as the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893. Much of the growth, however, only applied to the former Union states. The former confederacy was still economically devastated from the Civil War and their economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production. Black Americans in the south experienced the worst setbacks, as they were stripped of political power and voting rights. The political landscape was unique in that despite rampant corruption turnout was high and elections between the evenly matched parties were close. The dominant issues were rights for Black Americans, tariff policy and monetary policy. Reformers worked for civil service reform, prohibition and woman suffrage, while philanthropists built colleges and hospitals, and the many religious denominations exerted a major sway in everyday life.

Industrial and technological advances[link]

The Gilded Age was a period of widespread economic growth as the United States jumped to the lead in industrialization ahead of Britain. The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas, especially heavy industry like factories, railroads, and coal mining. In 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad opened up the far west mining and ranching regions. Travel from New York to San Francisco now took six days instead of six months .^[2] Railroad track mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, and then doubled again by 1920. The new track linked formerly isolated areas with larger markets and allowed for the rise of commercial farming, ranching and mining, creating a truly national marketplace. American steel production rose to surpass the combined total of Britain, Germany, and France.^[3] London and Paris poured investment money into the railroads through the American financial market centered in Wall Street. By 1900, the process of economic concentration had extended into most branches of industry—a few large corporations, called "trusts", dominated in steel, oil, sugar, meat and farm machinery. Through "vertical consolidation" these trusts were able to control each aspect of the production of a specific good, ensuring that the profits made on the finished product were maximized and by controlling access to the raw materials, prevented opponents from entering the marketplace. This would lead to a sole producer of a certain manufactured good and meant no competition in the marketplace to lower prices.^[4]

Increased mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age's search for cheaper ways to create more product. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that worker efficiency in steel could be improved through the use of machines to make fewer motions in less time. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines and the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. This mechanization made some factories an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops grew rapidly, and they comprised highly skilled workers and engineers. Both the number of unskilled and skilled workers increased, as their wage rates grew.^[5] Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise. Railroads invented modern management, with clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems.^[6] They systematized the roles of middle managers, and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men at age 18–21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were invented for skilled blue collar jobs and for white collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities.^[7]

The United States became a world leader in applied technology. From 1860 to 1890, 500,000 patents were issued for new inventions—over ten times the number issued in the previous seventy years. George Westinghouse invented air brakes for trains (making them both safer and faster). Theodore Vail established the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and built a great communications network.^[8] Nikola Tesla invented a remarkable number of electrical devices, as well as the integrated power plant capable of lighting multiple buildings simultaneously; Thomas Edison, in addition to inventing hundreds of electrical devices, co-founded General Electric corporation. Oil became an important resource, beginning with the Pennsylvania oil fields. The U.S. dominated the industry into the 1950s. Kerosene replaced whale oil and candles for lighting. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company to consolidate the oil industry—which mostly produced kerosene before the automobile created a demand for gasoline in the 20th century.^[9]

Economic growth[link]

During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly.^[10] For example, between 1865 and 1898, the output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800% and miles of railway track by 567%.^[11] Thick national networks for transportation and communication were created. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain.^[12] The businessmen of the Second Industrial Revolution created industrial towns and cities in the Northeast with new factories, and hired an ethnically diverse industrial working class, many of them new immigrants from Europe. The super-rich industrialists and financiers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew W. Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Henry H. Rogers, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt of the Vanderbilt family, and the prominent Astor family would sometimes be labeled "robber barons" in reference to the perceived underhanded manner in which they attained their vast wealth.^[13] Many of these captains of industry, in addition to building the still fledgeling American economy, participated in immense acts of philanthropy (referred to by Andrew Carnegie as the "Gospel of Wealth") and used private money to endow thousands of colleges, hospitals, museums, academies, schools, opera houses, public libraries, symphony orchestras, and charities.^[14] John D. Rockefeller, for example, donated over $500 million to various charities, slightly over half his entire net worth.

This emerging industrial economy quickly expanded to meet the new market demands. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for NNP (GDP minus capital depreciation) and 4.5% for NNP per capita. The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled. Real wages also increased greatly during the 1880s.^[15] Economist Milton Friedman states that for the 1880s, "The highest decadal rate [of growth of real reproducible, tangible wealth per head from 1805 to 1950] for periods of about ten years was apparently reached in the eighties with approximately 3.8 percent."^[16]

Labor unions[link]

Craft-oriented labor unions, such as carpenters, printers, shoemakers and cigar makers, grew steadily in the industrial cities after 1870.^[17] These unions used frequent short strikes as a method to attain control over the labor market, and fight off competing unions. The railroads had their own quite separate unions^[18]. An especially violent strike came during the economic depression of the 1870s, as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, lasted 45 days and resulted in damages to railroad property. The strike collapsed when President Rutherford B. Hayes used federal troops to quell the organized violence. Starting in the mid 1880s a new group, the Knights of Labor grew rapidly. Too rapidly for it spun out of control and failed to handle the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. The Knights avoided violence but their reputation collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago in 1886, when anarchists bombed the policemen dispersing a meeting. At its peak the Knights claimed 700,000 members. By 1890, membership had plummeted to fewer than 100,000, then faded away.^[19]

The most dramatic major strike was the 1894 Pullman Strike which was coordinated effort to shut down the national railroad system. The strike was led by the upstart American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs. The union defied federal court orders and President Cleveland used the U.S. Army to get the trains moving again. The ARU vanished, and the traditional railroad brotherhoods survived, but avoided strikes.^[20] The new American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, found the solution. It was a coalition of unions, each based on strong local chapters; the AFL coordinated their work in cities and prevented jurisdictional battles. Gompers repudiated socialism and abandoned the violent nature of the earlier unions. The AFL worked to control the local labor market, thereby empowering its locals to obtain higher wages and more control over hiring. As a result, the AFL unions spread to most cities, reaching a peak membership in 1919.^[21]

Politics[link]

A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"--"Let Us Prey." Cartoon denouncing the corruption of New York's Boss Tweed and other Tammany Hall figures, drawn in 1871 by Thomas Nast and published in Harper's Weekly.

Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System, was characterized by intense competition between the two parties, with minor parties coming and going, especially on issues of concern to prohibitionists, labor unions and farmers. The Democrats and Republicans fought over control of offices, which were the rewards for party activists, as well as major economic issues. Turnout was very high and often exceeded 80% or even 90% in some states as the parties drilled their loyal members like an army drills its soldiers. Competition was intense and elections were very close. In the southern states, lingering resentment over the civil war was still present and meant that much of the south would vote Democrat. After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, competition in the south took place mainly inside the Democratic Party. Nationwide, turnout fell sharply after 1900.^[22]

The major metropolitan centers underwent rapid population growth and as a result, had many lucrative contracts and jobs to award. To take advantage of the new economic opportunity, both parties built so-called "political machines" to manage elections, reward supporters and payoff potential opponents. Financed by the "spoils system," the winning party distributed most local, state and national government jobs, and many government contracts, to its loyal supporters. Large cities became dominated by political machines, in which constituents supported a candidate in exchange for anticipated patronage. These votes would be repaid with favors back from the government once that candidate was elected; and very often candidates were selected based on their willingness to play along with the spoils system. Perhaps the largest example of a political machine from this time period is Tammany Hall in New York City, led by Boss Tweed.^[23]

Major scandal reached into Congress with the the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal, and disgraced the White House during the Grant Administration. This corruption divided the Republican party into two different factions, The Stalwarts led by Roscoe Conkling and the Half-Breeds led by James G. Blaine. There was a sense that government enabled political machines intervened in the economy and the resulting favoritism, bribery, inefficiency, waste, and corruption was having negative consequences. Accordingly there were widespread calls for reform, such as Civil Service Reform led by the Bourbon Democrats and Republican Mugwumps. In 1884, their support elected Democrat Grover Cleveland to the white house, and in doing so gave the democrats their first national victory since 1856.^[24]

The Bourbon Democrats supported a free market policy, with low tariffs, low taxes, less spending and, in general, a Laissez-Faire (hands-off) government. They argued that tariffs made most goods more expensive for the consumer and subsidized the trusts (monopolies). They also denounced imperialism and overseas expansion.^[25] By contrast Republicans insisted that national prosperity depended on industry that paid high wages, and warned that lowering the tariff would be a disaster because low wage European factories would flood American markets.^[26]

Presidential elections between the two major parties were so closely contested that a slight nudge could tip the election in the advantage of either party, and Congress was marked by political stalemate. With support from Union veterans, businessmen, professionals, craftsmen and larger farmers, the GOP (the Republicans) consistently carried the North in presidential elections.^[27] The Democrats, often led by Irish Catholics had a base among Catholics, poorer farmers, and traditional party members.

Overall, Republican and Democratic political platforms remained remarkably constant during the years before 1900. Republicans generally favored inflationary, protectionist policies while Democrats favored hard-money, free trade and other Laissez-Faire policies.

Ethnocultural politics: pietistic Republicans versus liturgical Democrats[link]

From 1860 to the early 20th century the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion". Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. "Romanism" meant Roman Catholics, especially Irish Americans, who ran the Democratic Party in most cities, and whom the reformers denounced for political corruption and the operating a separate parochial school system. "Rebellion" stood for the Democrats of the Confederacy, who tried to break the Union in 1861, as well as their northern allies, called "Copperheads."^[29]

Demographic trends boosted the Democratis totals, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were Democrats, and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans. The new immigrants who arrived after 1890 seldom voted at this time. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats' efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892).

Religious lines were sharply drawn.^[30] In the North, about 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants (especially Methodists, Scandinavian Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ) who believed the government should be used to reduce social sins, such as drinking. They strongly supported the GOP, as the table shows. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, voted for the Democrats. They saw the Democratic party as their best protection from the moralism of the pietists, and especially the threat of prohibition. Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy and the GOP better represented among businessmen and professionals in the North.^[31]

Cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign language schools were hard-fought political issues because of the deep religious divisions in the electorate. For example in Wisconsin the Republicans tried to close down German-language Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools, and were defeated in 1890 when the Bennett Law was put to the test.^[32]

Prohibition debates and referendums heated up politics in most states over a period of decade, as national prohibition was finally passed in 1919 (and repealed in 1933), serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP.^[33]

Immigration[link]

Prior to the Gilded Age, the time commonly referred to as the old immigration saw the first real boom of new arrivals to the United States. During the Gilded Age, approximately 10 million immigrants came to the United States in what is known as the new immigration, some of them were prosperous farmers looking for fresh lands, and many of them were impoverished peasants looking for the American Dream in mills, mines and factories. Few immigrants went to the poverty-stricken South, though. To accommodate the heavy influx, the federal government in 1892 opened a reception center at Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty.^[34]

These immigrants consisted two groups: the last waves of the "Old Immigration" from Germany, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia. Some moved back and forth across the Atlantic but most were permanent settlers. They moved into well-established communities, both urban and rural. The German American communities spoke German, but the younger generation was bilingual.^[35]

The "New Immigration" were much poorer peasants and rural folk from southern and eastern Europe, including many Italians, Poles and Jews. Some groups, especially the Italians and Greeks, saw themselves as temporary migrants who planned to return to their home villages with a nest egg of cash earned in long hours of unskilled labor. Others, especially the Jews, had been driven out of Eastern Europe and had no intention of returning. (The option of Israel did not yet exist.)^[36]

Historians analyze the causes of immigration in terms of push factors (pushing people out of the homeland) and pull factors (pulling them to America), The push factors included economic dislocation, shortages of land, and antisemitism. Pull factors of the economic opportunity of good inexpensive farmland or jobs in factories, mills and mines.^[37]

The first generation typically lived in ethnic enclaves with a common language, food, religion, and connections through the old village. The sheer numbers caused overcrowding in tenements in the larger cities. In the small mill towns, however, management usually built company housing with cheap rents.^[38]

Chinese immigrants[link]

Asian immigrants--mostly Chinese at this time--were brought in by construction companies for temporary work. The European Americans strongly disliked them for their alien life-styles and threat of low wages. The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad from California to Utah was handled largely by Chinese laborers. In the 1870 census there were 63,000 Chinese men (with a few women) in the entire country; this number grew to 106,000 in the 1880.^[39] Labor unions, led by Samuel Gompers of strongly opposed the presence of Chinese labor. Immigrants from China were not allowed to become citizens until 1950; however, as a result of the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, their children born in the U.S. were full citizens.^[40]

Congress banned further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882; the act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States, but some students and businessmen were allowed in on a temporary basis. The Chinese population declined to only 37,000 in 1940. Although many returned to China (a greater proportion than most other immigrant groups), most of them stayed in the United States. Chinese people were unwelcome in many areas, so they resettled in the "Chinatown" districts of large cities. The exclusion policy lasted until the 1940s.^[41]

Urban life[link]

The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1885

Society itself underwent significant changes in the period following the Civil War, most notably the rapid urbanization of the North.^[42] As a result of increasing demand for unskilled and skilled workers most European immigrants went to mill towns and, especially, industrial cities. New York, Philadelphia and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "form follows function". Chicago became the center of the skyscaper craze, starting with the ten-story Home Insurance Building in 1884–1885 by William Le Baron Jenney.^[43]

Expansion required a better transportation system than horse-drawn street cars. Electric trolleys and street railways were the rage in the 1880s, followed by elevated railways and subways in the largest cities.^[44] Most factory workers, however, lived in nearby tenements and walked to work. As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well. The poorest crowded into low-cost housing such as the Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen neighborhoods in Manhattan. These areas were quickly overridden with notorious criminal gangs such as the Five Points Gang and the Bowery Boys.^[45]

South[link]

The Southern United States ^[46]

Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force by Region, 1890

The South remained heavily rural and was much poorer than the North or West.^[48] There were only a few scattered cities; small courthouse towns serviced the farm population. Local politics revolve around the politicians and lawyers based at the courthouse. Mill towns, narrowly focused on textile production or cigarette manufacture, began opening in the Piedmont region especially in the Carolinas. Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were everywhere, and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were liable to expulsion or lynching.^[49] Cotton became even more important than before as poor whites needed the cash that cotton would bring. But cotton prices were much lower than before the war, so everyone was poor. White southerners showed a reluctance to move north, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms proliferated, and they became smaller and smaller as the population grew. Many of the white farmers, and most of the blacks, were tenant farmers who owned their work animals and tools, and rented their land. Others were day laborers or very poor sharecroppers, who worked under the supervision of the landowner. There was little cash in circulation, since most farmers operated on credit accounts from local merchants, and paid off their debts at cotton harvest time in the fall. Although there were small country churches everywhere, there were only a few dilapidated elementary schools. Apart from private academies there were very few high schools until the 1920s. Conditions were marginally better in newer areas, especially in Texas and central Florida, with the deepest poverty in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Arkansas.^[50]

The vast majority of American blacks lived in the South, and as the promises of emancipation and reconstruction faded, they entered the nadir of race relations.^[51] Every Southern state and city passed Jim Crow laws that were in operation between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure (legal) segregation in all public facilities, such as stores and street cars, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for blacks. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were dramatically inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. Schools for blacks were far fewer and poorly supported by tax payers, although Northern philanthropies and churches kept open dozens of academies and small colleges.^[52]

In the face of years of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks during Reconstruction, the federal government was unable to guarantee constitutional protections to freedmen and women. In the Compromise of 1877 President Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South; "Redeemers" (white Democrats) acted quickly to reverse the groundbreaking advances of Reconstruction. Black political power was eliminated in the 1880s and in the 1890s new laws effectively blocked over 90% of the blacks from voting (with some exceptions in Tennessee; blacks did vote in the border states).^[53]

Women's rights[link]

During the Gilded Age, many new social movements took hold in the United States. Many women abolitionists who were disappointed that the Fifteenth Amendment did not extend voting rights to them remained active in politics, this time focusing on issues important to them. Reviving the temperance movement from the Second Great Awakening, many women joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in an attempt to bring morality back to America. Other women took up the issue of women’s suffrage which had lain dormant since the Seneca Falls Convention. With leaders like Susan B. Anthony the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed in order to secure the right of women to vote.^[54] The development and fast acceptance of the sewing machine during this period made housewives more productive and opened up new careers for women running their own small millinery and dressmaking shops.^[55]

Social thought[link]

Science also played an important part in social thought as the work of Charles Darwin became popular. Following Darwin’s idea of natural selection, English philosopher Herbert Spencer proposed the idea of social Darwinism. This new concept justified the stratification of the wealthy and poor and coined the term “survival of the fittest”. Joining Spencer was Yale University professor William Graham Sumner whose book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1884) argued that assistance to the poor actually weakens their ability to survive in society. Sumner argued for a laissez-faire and free-market economy. Few people agreed with the social Darwinists, because they ridiculed religion and denounced philanthropy. Henry George proposed a “single tax” in his book Progress and Poverty. The tax would be leveled on the rich and poor alike, with the excess money collected used to equalize wealth and level out society. Norwegian American economist Thorstein Veblen argued in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) that the “conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure" of the wealthy had become the basis of social status in America. In Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1887), reformer Edward Bellamy envisioned a future America set in the year 2000 in which a socialist paradise has been established. The works of authors such as George and Bellamy became popular, and soon clubs were created across America to discuss their ideas, although these organizations rarely made any real social change.^[56]

Religion[link]

The Third Great Awakening which began before the Civil War returned and made a significant change in religious attitudes toward social progress. Followers of the new Awakening promoted the idea of the Social Gospel which gave rise to organizations such as the YMCA, the American branch of the Salvation Army, and settlement houses such as Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in Chicago in 1889.^[57]

The Third Great Awakening was a period of religious activism in American history from the late 1850s to the 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong sense of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial theology that the Second Coming of Christ would come after mankind had reformed the entire earth. The Social Gospel Movement gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene movements, and Christian Science.^[58]

The Protestant mainline denominations (especially the Methodist, Episicopal, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches) grew rapidly in numbers, wealth and educational levels, throwing off their frontier beginnings and become centered in towns and cities. Leaders such as Josiah Strong advocated a muscular Christianity with systematic outreach to the unchurched in America and around the globe. Others built colleges and universities to train the next generation. Each denomination supported active missionary societies, and made the role of missionary one of high prestige. The great majority of pietistic mainline Protestants (in the North) supported the Republican Party, and urged it to endorse prohibition and social reforms.^[59][60] See Third Party System

The awakening in numerous cities in 1858 was interrupted by the American Civil War. In the South, on the other hand, the Civil War stimulated revivals and strengthened the Baptists, especially.^[61] After the war, Dwight L. Moody made revivalism the centerpiece of his activities in Chicago by founding the Moody Bible Institute. The hymns of Ira Sankey were especially influential.^[62]

Across the nation drys crusaded in the name of religion for the prohibition of alcohol. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union mobilized Protestant women for social crusades against liquor, pornography and prostitution, and sparked the demand for woman suffrage.^[63]

The Gilded Age plutocracy came under harsh attack from the Social Gospel preachers and with reformers in the Progressive Era who became involved with issues of child labor, compulsory elementary education and the protection of women from exploitation in factories.^[64]

All the major denominations sponsored growing missionary activities inside the United States and around the world.^[65][66]

Colleges associated with churches rapidly expanded in number, size and quality of curriculum. The promotion of "muscular Christianity" became popular among young men on campus and in urban YMCA's, as well as such denominational youth groups such as the Epworth League for Methodists and the Walther League for Lutherans.^[67]

See also[link]

• American Old West
• Goût Rothschild
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• Nadir of American race relations
• Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
• Ventfort Hall (Gilded Age Museum)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Archdeacon, Thomas J. Becoming American: An Ethnic History (1984) on immigration and ethnicity
• Argersinger; Peter H. Structure, Process, and Party: Essays in American Political History. (1992) online version
• Arnesen, Eric, ed. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (3 vol. 2006), essays by scholars
• Buenker, John D. and Joseph Buenker, eds. Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (2005). 1256 pp. in three volumes. ISBN 0-7656-8051-3; 900 essays by 200 scholars
• Calhoun, Charles W. ed. The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America (2nd ed. 2007) 402pp; essays by scholars
• Cherny, Robert W. American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900 (1997) online edition
• Edwards, Rebecca. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (2005); 304pp excerpt and text search
• Faulkner, Harold U.; Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890–1900 (1959), scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history online edition
• Folsom, Burton W., and Forrest McDonald, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (1991), by leading conservative scholars
• Garraty, John A. The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890, 1968 scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history
• Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp 149–180; online version
• Kirkland, Edward C. Industry Comes of Age, Business, Labor, and Public Policy 1860–1897 (1961), standard survey
• Kleppner; Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures U of North Carolina Press, (1979) online version
• Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (1969) online edition
• Morgan, H. Wayne ed. The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal Syracuse University Press 1970. interpretive essays
• Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Modern America, 1865–1878 (1933) ISBN 0-403-01127-2, social history
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Rise of the City: 1877–1898 (1933), social history
• Schlup, Leonard C.; James G. Ryan (2003). Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. M.E. Sharpe. http://books.google.com/books?id=lhRqUo9HzVwC. 
• Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer's Last Frontier: 1860–1897 (1945) survey of economic history online edition
• Smythe, Ted Curtis; The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 (2003). online edition
• Stiles, T. J. (2010). The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Random House. http://books.google.com/books?id=lfKq34PkOg0C. ; Pulitzer prize.
• Upchurch, Thomas Adams (2009). Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. Scarecrow Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=A7jI8lotIi0C.  276pp
• Wagner, David. Ordinary People: In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age (2008); traces people who were at one time in a poor house

• White, Richard. "Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby: A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.", Southern Spaces, 16 April 2009.

External links[link]

• Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, scholarly quarterly
• More general information to the Gilded Age on the Library of Congress
• New Spirits: A Web Site on Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 by Rebecca Edwards, Vassar College
• WWW-VL: History: United States: The Gilded Age, 1876–1900 by Robert Spencer, University of Southern Maine. An extensive collection of materials.
• America's Wealth in the Gilded Age accessed March 29, 2006
• Illinois During the Gilded Age, 1866–1896, Illinois Historical Digitization Projects at Northern Illinois University Libraries accessed March 28, 2008
• Harper's Weekly 150 cartoons on elections 1860–1912; Reconstruction topics; Chinese exclusion; plus American Political Prints from the Library of Congress, 1766–1876
  • Elections 1860–1912 as covered by Harper's Weekly; news, editorials, cartoons (many by Thomas Nast see also [1] [2] [3])
• "Graphic Witness" caricatures in history
• Gilded Age & Progressive Era Cartoons, industry, labor, politics, prohibition from Ohio State University
• Puck cartoons
• Keppler cartoons
• 1892 cartoons

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick
Born	(1849-12-19)December 19, 1849 West Overton, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	December 2, 1919(1919-12-02) (aged 69) New York City, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	Heart attack
Resting place	Homewood Cemetery
Nationality	United States
Education	Otterbein University (did not graduate)
Known for	strikebreaking, art collector, Johnstown Flood
Spouse	Adelaide Childs Frick
Children	Childs Frick, Helen Clay Frick
Parents	John Wilson Frick, Elizabeth Overholt
Relatives	Abraham Overholt
Signature

Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel steel manufacturing concern. He also financed the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company, and owned extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the historic neoclassical Frick Mansion (now a landmark building in Manhattan) and at his death donated his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art museum. Once known by his critics as “the most hated man in America,”^[1] — Portfolio.com named Frick one of the "Worst American CEOs of All Time"^[2][3]— he has long been vilified by the public and historians for his ruthlessness and lack of morality in business.^[3]

Early years[link]

Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S., a grandson of Abraham Overholt, the owner of the prosperous Overholt Whiskey distillery (see Old Overholt). Frick's father, John W. Frick, was unsuccessful in business pursuits. Henry Clay Frick attended Otterbein College for one year, but did not graduate.^[4] In 1871, at 21 years old, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke for use in steel manufacturing, and vowed to be a millionaire by the age of thirty. The company was called Frick Coke Company.^[5]

Thanks to loans from the family of lifelong friend Andrew W. Mellon, by 1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company was renamed H. C. Frick & Company, employed 1,000 workers and controlled 80 percent of the coal output in Pennsylvania.^[5]

H. C. Frick and Andrew Carnegie[link]

Shortly after marrying his wife, Adelaide, in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City while the Fricks were on their honeymoon. This meeting resulted in a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company. Carnegie made multiple attempts to force Frick out of the company they had created by making it appear that the company had nowhere left to go and that it was time for Frick to retire. Despite the contributions Frick had made towards Andrew Carnegie's fortune, Carnegie disregarded him in many executive decisions including finances.^[6]

The Johnstown Flood[link]

At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin Ruff, Frick formed the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club high above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The charter members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club were Benjamin Ruff; T. H. Sweat, Charles J. Clarke, Thomas Clark, Walter F. Fundenberg, Jen Powers Howard Hartley, Henry C. Yeager, J. B. White, Henry Clay Frick, E. A. Meyers, C. C. Hussey, D. R. Ewer, C. A. Carpenter, W. L. Dunn, W. L. McClintock, and A. V. Holmes.

The sixty-odd club members were the leading business tycoons of Western Pennsylvania, and included among their number Frick’s best friend, Andrew Mellon, his attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed, as well as Frick's occasional business partner Andrew Carnegie. The club members made inadequate repairs to what was at that time the world's largest earthen dam, behind which formed a private lake called Lake Conemaugh. Less than 20 miles (32 km) downstream from the dam sat the city of Johnstown, and Carnegie Steel's chief competitor, the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, which at that time boasted the world's largest annual steel production.

Poor maintenance, unusually high snowmelt and heavy spring rains combined to cause the dam to give way on May 31, 1889, resulting in the Johnstown Flood. When word of the dam's failure was telegraphed to Pittsburgh, Frick and other members of the club gathered to form the Pittsburgh Relief Committee for assistance to the flood victims, as well as determining never to speak publicly about the club or the flood. This strategy was a success, and Knox and Reed were able to fend off all lawsuits that would have placed blame upon the club’s members. Although Cambria Iron and Steel's facilities were heavily damaged, they returned to full production within a year and a half.

Homestead strike[link]

Frick and Carnegie's partnership was strained over actions taken in response to the Homestead Steel Strike, an 1892 labor strike at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company, called by the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers Union.^[5] At Homestead, striking workers, some of whom were armed, had locked the company staff out of the factory and surrounded it with pickets. Frick was known for his anti-union policy and as negotiations were still taking place, he ordered the construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property. The workers dubbed the newly fortified mill "Fort Frick." With the mill ringed by striking workers, Pinkerton agents planned to access the plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives^[5] assembled on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles (8 km) below Pittsburgh at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles, placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver with the object of removing the workers by force. Upon their landing, a large mêlée between workers and Pinkerton detectives ensued. Several men were killed, nine workers among them,^[5] and the riot was ultimately quelled only by the intervention of 8,000 armed state militia. Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions against the strikers were condemned as excessive, and he soon became a target of even more union organizers. Because of this strike, some people^[who?] think he is depicted as the "rich man" in Maxo Vanka's murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Church, but the Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka (which works to preserve the artwork) says it depicts Andrew Mellon.^[7]

Assassination attempt[link]

Inspired by Emma Goldman,^[8] the anarchist Alexander Berkman plotted to murder Frick in revenge for the seven steelworkers killed when they were attacked by the Pinkerton detectives hired by Frick to disperse the locked-out workers and allow in strikebreakers. On July 23, 1892,^[5] Berkman, armed with a revolver and a sharpened steel file, entered Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh.

Berkman's attempt to assassinate Frick, as illustrated by W. P. Snyder in 1892, originally published in Harper's Weekly.

Frick, realizing what was happening, attempted to rise from his chair while Berkman pulled a revolver and fired at nearly point-blank range. The bullet hit Frick in the left earlobe, penetrated his neck near the base of the skull, and lodged in his back. The impact knocked Frick down, and Berkman fired again, again striking Frick in the neck and causing him to bleed extensively. Carnegie Steel vice president (later, president) John George Alexander Leishman, who was with Frick, was then able to grab Berkman’s arm and prevented a third shot, saving Frick's life.

Frick was seriously wounded, but rose and (with the assistance of Leishman) tackled his assailant.^[9] All three men crashed to the floor, where Berkman managed to stab Frick four times in the leg with the pointed steel file before finally being subdued by other employees, who had rushed into the office.

Frick was back at work in a week; Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman's actions in planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill, and he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.^[5] He eventually served a total of fourteen years, and under pressure from supporters in the labor movement, including the forming of The Berkman Defense Association,^[5] was pardoned in 1906.

Negative publicity from the attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike.^[10] Approximately 2,500 men lost their jobs, and most of the workers who stayed had their wages halved.^[11]

Private life[link]

The Frick Mansion "Clayton" in Pittsburgh, PA.

Frick married Adelaide Howard Childs of Pittsburgh on December 15, 1881. They had four children: Childs Frick (born March 12, 1883), Martha Howard Frick (born August 9, 1885), Helen Clay Frick (born September 3, 1888) and Henry Clay Frick, Jr. (born July 8, 1892). In 1882, after the formation of the partnership with Andrew Carnegie, Frick and his wife bought Clayton, an estate in Pittsburgh. They moved into the estate in 1883. The Frick children were born in Pittsburgh and were raised at Clayton. Two of them, Henry, Jr. and Martha, died in infancy or childhood.^[12]

In 1904, he built Eagle Rock, a summer estate at Prides Crossing in Beverly, Massachusetts on Boston's fashionable North Shore. The 104-room mansion designed by Little & Browne would be razed in 1969.

Frick was a fervent art collector whose wealth allowed him to accumulate a large collection. By 1905, Henry Clay Frick's business, social, and artistic interests had shifted from Pittsburgh to New York. He took his art collection with him to New York, and served on many corporate boards, which brought him considerable opportunity to continue his lifelong business interests.

For example, as a board member of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, Frick attempted the removal of James Hazen Hyde (the founder's only son and heir) from the United States to France by seeking an appointment for him to become United States Ambassador to France. Frick had engaged a similar stratagem when orchestrating the ouster of the man who had saved his life, John George Alexander Leishman, from the presidency of Carnegie Steel a decade beforehand. In that instance, Leishman had chosen to accept the post as ambassador to Switzerland. Hyde, however, rebuffed Frick's plan. He did, however, move to France, where he served as an ambulance driver during World War I and lived until the outbreak of World War II. (Coincidentally, while in France, Hyde married Leishman's eldest daughter Marthe.)

In 1910, Frick purchased property at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street to construct a mansion, now known as The Frick Collection. Built to a massive size and covering a full city block, Frick told friends he was building it to "make Carnegie's place look like a miner's shack."^[13] In 1914, Frick built the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

To this day, the Frick Collection is home to one of the finest collections of European paintings in the United States. It contains many works of art dating from the pre-Renaissance up to the post-Impressionist eras, but in no logical or chronological order. It includes several very large paintings by J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. In addition to paintings, it also contains an exhibition of carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and period furniture. Frick continued to live at both his New York mansion and at Clayton until his death.

Death[link]

Henry Clay Frick died of a heart attack on December 2, 1919, weeks before his 70th birthday.^[14] He was buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery. That evening, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were attending a farewell banquet in Chicago, their last whirlwind tour before being expelled from the country by federal authorities. At a dinner given in honor of the anarchist movement, a reporter approached Alexander Berkman with news of Frick's death and asked him what he had to say about the man. Referring to his own impending deportation from the U.S., Berkman replied that Frick had been "deported by God. I'm glad he left the country before me."

Legacy[link]

Frick Park gate in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.

Frick left a will in which he bequeathed 150 acres (0.61 km²) of undeveloped land to the City of Pittsburgh for use as a public park, together with a $2 million trust fund to assist with the maintenance of the park. Frick Park opened in 1927. Between 1919 and 1942, money from the trust fund was used to enlarge the park, increasing its size to almost 600 acres (2.4 km²). Following the death of Adelaide Howards Childs Frick in 1931, the Frick Collection was opened to the public as a museum in 1935.

Many years after her father's death, Helen Clay Frick returned to Clayton in 1981, and lived there until her death in 1984. After extensive restoration, this property was also opened to the public in 1990 as the Frick Art & Historical Center.

Frick was elected an honorary member of the Alpha Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity at the New England Conservatory of Music on October 19, 1917.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Falk, Candace; Pateman, Barry; and Moran, Jessica M. Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003.
• "Founded His Fortune in the Panic of 1873." New York Times. December 3, 1919.
• Hamilton, Neil A. Rebels and Renegades: A Chronology of Social and Political Dissent in the United States. Florence, Ky.: Taylor & Francis, 2002.
• "Henry C. Frick Dies." New York Times. December 3, 1919.
• Keve, Paul W. Prisons and the American Conscience: A History of U.S. Federal Corrections. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
• Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.
• Markel, Howard. Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
• Perkins, John. Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. New York: Broadway Books, 2009.
• Petrucelli, Alan W. "A Fresh Look: Viewing Vanka Murals a Religious Experience." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. July 14, 2008.
• Skrabec, Quentin R. Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2010.
• Smith, Roberta. "Change Arrives on Tiptoes at the Frick Mansion." New York Times. August 28, 2008.
• Standiford, Les. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005.

Further reading[link]

• Apfelt, Brian. "The Corporation- 100 Years of the United States Steel Corp."
• Sanger, Martha Frick Symington. Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Abbeville Press, 1998.
• Sanger, Martha Frick Symington. The Henry Clay Frick Houses: Architecture, Interiors, Landscapes in the Golden Era. New York: Monacelli Press, 2001.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Henry Clay Frick

• Official Frick Collection Website
• The Frick Art & Historical Center and Clayton
• Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archives
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Frick, Henry Clay". Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922. 
  • "Frick, Henry Clay". The Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1918. 
  • "Frick, Henry Clay". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 

Category:American steel industry businesspeople

Henry Clay
Portrait by Matthew Harris Jouett, 1818
8th, 10th and 13th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
In office March 4, 1823 – March 4, 1825 March 4, 1815 – October 28, 1820 March 4, 1811 – January 19, 1814
9th United States Secretary of State
In office March 4, 1825 – March 4, 1829
President	John Quincy Adams
Preceded by	John Quincy Adams
Succeeded by	Martin Van Buren
United States Senator from Kentucky
In office March 5, 1849 – June 29, 1852 November 10, 1831 – March 31, 1842 January 4, 1810 – March 4, 1811 December 29, 1806 – March 4, 1807
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky's 3rd district 2nd district (1813–1821)
In office March 4, 1823 – March 4, 1825 March 4, 1815 – March 3, 1821 March 4, 1811 – January 19, 1814
Personal details
Born	April 12, 1777 (1777-04-12) Hanover County, Virginia
Died	June 29, 1852 (1852-06-30) (aged 75) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Democratic-Republican National Republican Whig
Spouse(s)	Lucretia Hart Clay
Children	Henrietta Theodore Thomas Susan Anne Lucretia Henry, Jr. Eliza Laura James Brown Clay John Morrison Clay
Profession	Law
Religion	Episcopalian
Signature

Henry Clay, Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852), was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives. He served three different terms as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and was also Secretary of State from 1825 to 1829.

Clay was a dominant figure in both the First and Second Party systems. As a leading war hawk, he favored war with Britain and played a significant role in leading the nation to war in 1812.^[1] Later he was involved in the "Corrupt Bargain" of 1824, after which he was appointed Secretary of State by newly elected President John Quincy Adams, earning the scorn of Andrew Jackson. He was the foremost proponent of the American System, fighting for an increase in tariffs to foster industry in the United States, the use of federal funding to build and maintain infrastructure, and a strong national bank. He opposed the annexation of Texas, fearing it would inject the slavery issue into politics. Clay also opposed the Mexican-American War and the "Manifest Destiny" policy of Democrats, which cost him votes in the close 1844 election.

Dubbed the "Great Pacificator," Clay brokered important compromises during the Nullification Crisis and on the slavery issue. As part of the "Great Triumvirate" or "Immortal Trio," along with his colleagues Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, he was instrumental in formulating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. He was viewed as the primary representative of Western interests in this group, and was given the names "Henry of the West" and "The Western Star."^[2] A plantation owner, Clay held slaves during his lifetime but freed them in his Will.^[3]

Abraham Lincoln, the Whig leader in Illinois, was a great admirer of Clay, saying he was "my ideal of a great man." Lincoln wholeheartedly supported Clay's economic programs.^[4] In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Clay as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.^[5]

Early life and education[link]

Childhood[link]

Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, at the Clay homestead in Hanover County, Virginia in a story-and-a-half frame house. It was an above-average home for a common Virginia planter of that time. At the time of his death, Clay's father owned more than 22 slaves, making him part of the planter class in Virginia (those men who owned 20 or more slaves).^[6]

Henry was the seventh of nine children of the Reverend John Clay and Elizabeth Hudson Clay.^[7] His father, a Baptist minister nicknamed "Sir John," died four years after his birth (1781).^[6] The father left Henry and his brothers two slaves each, and his wife 18 slaves and 464 acres (188 ha) of land.^[8] Henry Clay was a second cousin of Cassius Marcellus Clay, who became an abolitionist in Kentucky.

The widow Elizabeth Clay married Capt. Henry Watkins, who was an affectionate stepfather. Henry Watkins then moved the family to Richmond, Virginia.^[9] Elizabeth had seven more children with Watkins, bearing a total of sixteen.^[8]

Education[link]

In Richmond, Clay was hired as a shop assistant.^[9] His stepfather secured Clay employment in the office of the Court of Chancery, where he displayed an aptitude for law.^[10] There he became friends with George Wythe.^[10] Hampered by a crippled hand, Wythe chose Clay as his secretary.^[10] After Clay was employed as Wythe's amanuensis for four years, the chancellor took an active interest in Clay's future; he arranged a position for him with the Virginia attorney general, Robert Brooke. Clay received no formal legal education but, as was customary at the time, "read the law" by working and studying with Wythe, Chancellor of the Commonwealth of Virginia (also a mentor to Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, among others) and Brooke.^[11] Clay studied for the bar for a year under Brooke and was admitted to practice law in 1797.^[9]

Legal career[link]

In November 1797, Clay relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, the growing town near where his family then resided in Woodford County. He soon established a reputation for his legal skills and courtroom oratory.^[12] Some of his clients paid him with horses and others with land. Clay came to own town lots and the Kentucky Hotel.

By 1812, Clay owned a productive 600-acre (240 ha) plantation, which he called "Ashland," and numerous slaves to work the land.^[3] He held 60 slaves at the peak of operations, and likely produced tobacco and hemp, the two chief commodity crops of the Bluegrass Region.

One of Clay's clients was his father-in-law, Colonel Thomas Hart, an early settler of Kentucky and a prominent businessman.^[13] Clay's most notable client was Aaron Burr in 1806, after the US District Attorney Joseph Hamilton Daviess indicted him for planning an expedition into Spanish Territory west of the Mississippi River. Clay and his law partner John Allen successfully defended Burr.^[14] Some years later Thomas Jefferson convinced Clay that Daviess had been right in his charges. Clay was so upset that many years later, when he met Burr again, Clay refused to shake his hand.^[15]

Marriage and family[link]

After beginning his law career, on April 11, 1799, Clay married Lucretia Hart at the Hart home in Lexington, Kentucky. She was a sister to Captain Nathaniel G. S. Hart, who died in the Massacre of the River Raisin in the War of 1812.^[13]

Clay and his wife had eleven children (six daughters and five sons): Henrietta (1800–1801), Theodore (1802–1870), Thomas (1803–1871), Susan (1805–1825), Anne (1807–1835), Lucretia (1809–1823), Henry, Jr.(1811–1847), Eliza (1813–1825), Laura (1815–1817), James Brown (1817–1864), and John (1821–1887).

Seven of Clay's children died before him as well as his wife. By 1835 all six daughters had died of varying causes, two when very young, two as children, the other two as young women: from whooping cough, yellow fever, and complications of childbirth. Henry Clay, Jr. was killed at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War.

Lucretia Hart Clay died in 1864 at the age of 83. She is interred with her husband in the vault of his monument at the Lexington Cemetery. Henry and Lucretia Clay were great-grandparents of the suffragette Madeline McDowell Breckinridge.^[16]

Early political career[link]

State legislator[link]

View of Henry Clay's law office (1803-1810), Lexington, Kentucky

In 1803 Clay was elected to serve as the representative of Fayette County in the Kentucky General Assembly. As a legislator, Clay advocated a liberal interpretation of the state's constitution and initially the gradual emancipation of slavery in Kentucky, although the political realities of the time forced him to abandon that position.^[3] Clay also advocated moving the state capitol from Frankfort to Lexington. He defended the Kentucky Insurance Company, which he saved from an attempt in 1804 by Felix Grundy to repeal its monopolistic charter.^[17]

First Senate appointment and eligibility[link]

Clay's influence in Kentucky state politics was quickly such that in 1806 the Kentucky legislature elected him to the Senate seat of John Breckinridge. He had resigned when appointed as US Attorney General. The legislature first chose John Adair to complete Breckinridge's term, but he had to resign over his alleged role in the Burr Conspiracy.^[18] On December 29, 1806, Clay was sworn in as senator, serving for less than one year that first time.^[19]

When elected by the legislature, Clay was below the constitutionally required age of thirty. His age did not appear to have been noticed by any other Senator, and perhaps not by Clay.^[19] Three months and 17 days into his Senate service, he reached the age of eligibility.^[20] Such an age qualification issue has occurred with only two other U.S. Senators. Joe Biden was also elected to the Senate at the age of 29, but he had reached the required age of 30 before being sworn in.^[21]

Speaker of the State House and duel with Humphrey Marshall[link]

When Clay returned to Kentucky in 1807, he was elected the Speaker of the state House of Representatives.^[22] On January 3, 1809, Clay introduced a resolution to require members to wear homespun suits rather than those made of imported British broadcloth. Two members voted against the measure. One was Humphrey Marshall, an "aristocratic lawyer who possessed a sarcastic tongue," who had been hostile toward Clay in 1806 during the trial of Aaron Burr.^[23]

Clay and Marshall nearly came to blows on the Assembly floor, and Clay challenged Marshall to a duel. The duel took place on January 9 in Shippingport, Kentucky. They each had three turns. Clay grazed Marshall once, just below the chest. Marshall hit Clay once in the thigh.^[23]

Second Senate appointment[link]

In 1810, United States Senator Buckner Thruston resigned to serve as a judge on the United States Circuit Court, and Clay was again selected to fill his seat.

Speaker of the House[link]

Early years[link]

In the summer of 1811, Clay was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was chosen Speaker of the House on the first day of his first session, something never done before or since. During the fourteen years following his first election, he was re-elected five times to the House and to the speakership.^[24] Like other Southern Congressmen, Clay took slaves to Washington, DC to work in his household. They included Aaron and Charlotte Dupuy, their son Charles and daughter Mary Ann.^[25]

Before Clay's election as Speaker of the House, the position had been that of a rule enforcer and mediator. Clay made the position one of political power second only to the President of the United States. He immediately appointed members of the War Hawk faction (of which he was the "guiding spirit")^[1] to all the important committees, effectively giving him control of the House. This was a singular achievement for a 34-year-old House freshman. During his early House service, Clay strongly opposed the creation of a National Bank, in part because of his personal ownership in several small banks in his hometown of Lexington. Later he changed his position and, when he was seeking the presidency, gave strong support for the Second National Bank.

The War Hawks, mostly from the South and the West, resented British violations of United States (US) maritime rights and its treatment of US sailors; they feared British designs on US territory in the Old Northwest. They advocated a declaration of war against the British.^[26] As the Congressional leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, Clay took charge of the agenda, especially as a "War Hawk" supporting the War of 1812 against the British Empire. Later, as one of the peace commissioners, Clay helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent and signed it on December 24, 1814.^[3] In 1815, while still in Europe, he helped negotiate a commerce treaty with Great Britain.

Henry Clay helped establish and became president in 1816 of the American Colonization Society, a group that wanted to establish a colony for free American blacks in Africa; it founded Monrovia, in what became Liberia, for that purpose. The group was made up of both abolitionists from the North, who wanted to end slavery, and slaveholders, who wanted to deport free blacks to reduce what they considered a threat to the stability of slave society. On the "amalgamation" of the black and white races, Clay said that "The God of Nature, by the differences of color and physical constitution, has decreed against it."^[27] Clay presided at the founding meeting of the ACS on December 21, 1816, at the Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C. Attendees included Robert Finley, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, and Daniel Webster.

The "American System"[link]

Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun helped to pass the Tariff of 1816 as part of the national economic plan Clay called "The American System," rooted in Alexander Hamilton's American School. Described later by Friedrich List, it was designed to allow the fledgling American manufacturing sector, largely centered on the eastern seaboard, to compete with British manufacturing through the creation of tariffs.

After the conclusion of the War of 1812, British factories were overwhelming American ports with inexpensive goods. To persuade voters in the western states to support the tariff, Clay advocated federal government support for internal improvements to infrastructure, principally roads and canals. These internal improvements would be financed by the tariff and by sale of the public lands, prices for which would be kept high to generate revenue. Finally, a national bank would stabilize the currency and serve as the nexus of a truly national financial system.

Clay's American System ran into strong opposition from President Jackson's administration. One of the most important points of contention between the two men was over the Maysville Road. Jackson vetoed a bill which would authorize federal funding for a project to construct a road linking Lexington and the Ohio River, the entirety of which would be in the state of Kentucky, because he felt that it did not constitute interstate commerce, as specified in the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.

Foreign policy[link]

In foreign policy, Clay was the leading American supporter of independence movements and revolutions in Latin America after 1817. Between 1821 and 1826, the U.S. recognized all the new countries, except Uruguay (whose independence was debated and recognized only later). When in 1826 the U.S. was invited to attend the Columbia Conference of new nations, opposition emerged, and the American delegation never arrived. Clay supported the Greek independence revolutionaries in 1824 who wished to separate from the Ottoman Empire, an early move into European affairs.

The Missouri Compromise and 1820s[link]

In 1820 a dispute erupted over the extension of slavery in Missouri Territory. Clay helped settle this dispute by gaining Congressional approval for a plan called the "Missouri Compromise". It brought in Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state (thus maintaining the balance in the Senate, which had included 11 free and 11 slave states), and it forbade slavery north of 36° 30' (the northern boundary of Arkansas and the latitude line) except in Missouri.

Portrait of Henry Clay

Election of 1824 and Secretary of State[link]

By 1824, the unparalleled success of the Democratic-Republican Party had driven all other parties from the field. Four major candidates, including Clay, sought the office of president. Because of the unusually large number of candidates receiving electoral votes, no candidate secured a majority and the tie between the two front runners, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, was broken in the House of Representatives.

Clay used his political clout to secure the victory for Adams, who he felt would be both more sympathetic to Clay's political views and more likely to appoint Clay to a cabinet position. When Clay was appointed Secretary of State, his maneuver was called a "corrupt bargain" by many of Jackson's supporters and tarnished Clay's reputation.

Slave freedom suit[link]

As Secretary of State, Clay lived with his family and slaves in Decatur House on Lafayette Square. As he was preparing to return to Lexington in 1829, his slave Charlotte Dupuy sued Clay for her freedom and that of her two children, based on a promise by an earlier owner. Her legal challenge to slavery preceded the more famous Dred Scott case by 17 years. The "freedom suit" received a fair amount of attention in the press at the time. Dupuy's attorney gained an order from the court for her to remain in DC until the case was settled, and she worked for wages for 18 months for Martin Van Buren, the successor to Secretary of State and the Decatur House. Clay returned to Ashland with Aaron, Charles and Mary Ann Dupuy.^[28][29]

The jury ruled against Dupuy, deciding that any agreement with her previous master Condon did not bear on Clay. Because Dupuy refused to return voluntarily to Kentucky, Clay had his agent arrest her. She was imprisoned in Alexandria, Virginia before Clay arranged for her transport to New Orleans, where he placed her with his daughter and son-in-law Martin Duralde. Mary Ann Dupuy was sent to join her mother, and they worked as domestic slaves for the Duraldes for another decade.^[28]

In 1840 Henry Clay finally gave Charlotte and her daughter Mary Ann Dupuy their freedom. He kept her son Charles Dupuy as a personal servant, frequently citing him as an example of how well he treated his slaves. Clay granted Charles Dupuy his freedom in 1844.^[28] While no deed of emancipation has been found for Aron Dupuy, in 1860 he and Charlotte were living together as free black residents in Fayette County, Kentucky. He may have been freed or "given his time" by one of Clay's sons, as Dupuy continued to work at Ashland, for pay.^[25]

Decatur House in Washington, DC, a National Historic Landmark and museum on Lafayette Square near the White House, has exhibits on urban slavery and Charlotte Dupuy's freedom suit against Henry Clay.^[28]

Senate career[link]

The Nullification Crisis[link]

After the passage of the Tariff of 1828, dubbed the "tariff of abominations" which raised tariffs considerably in an attempt to protect fledgling factories built under previous tariff legislation, South Carolina declared its right to nullify federal tariff legislation and stopped assessing the tariff on imports. It threatened to secede from the Union if the Federal government tried to enforce the tariff laws. Furious, President Jackson threatened to lead an army to South Carolina and hang any man who refused to obey the law.

The crisis worsened until 1833 when Clay, again a U.S. Senator re-elected by Kentucky in 1831, helped to broker a deal in Congress to lower the tariff gradually. This measure helped to preserve the supremacy of the Federal government over the states, but the crisis was indicative of the developing conflict between the northern and southern United States over economics and slavery.

Opposition to Jackson and creation of Whig Party[link]

Henry Clay

After the election of Andrew Jackson, Clay led the opposition to Jackson's policies. His supporters included the National Republicans, who were beginning to identify as "Whigs" in honor of ancestors during the Revolutionary War. They opposed the "tyranny" of Jackson, as their ancestors had opposed the tyranny of King George III. Clay strongly opposed Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, and advocated passage of a resolution to censure Jackson for his actions.

In 1832 the National Republicans unanimously nominated Clay for the presidency. Jackson was nominated by the Democrats. The main issue was the policy of continuing the Second Bank of the United States. Clay lost by a wide margin to the highly popular Jackson (55% to 37%).

In 1840, Clay was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but he was defeated at the party convention by supporters of war hero William Henry Harrison. Harrison was chosen because his war record was attractive, and he was seen as more likely to win than Clay.

In 1844, Clay was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. Clay lost in part due to national sentiment in favor of Polk's "54°40' or Fight" campaign. This was to settle the northern boundary of the United States with Canada, then under the control of the British Empire. Clay opposed admitting Texas as a state because he believed it would reawaken the slavery issue and provoke Mexico to declare war. Polk took the opposite view, supported by most of the public, especially in the Southern United States. The election was close; New York's 36 electoral votes proved the difference, and went to Polk by a slim 5,000 vote margin. Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney won slightly more than 15,000 votes in New York and likely attracted votes that might have gone to Clay. His warnings about Texas proved prescient. The US annexation of Texas led to the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) (in which his namesake son died). The North and South came to increased tensions during Polk's Presidency over the extension of slavery into Texas and beyond.

The Compromise of 1850[link]

After losing the Whig Party nomination to Zachary Taylor in 1848, Clay decided to retire to his Ashland estate in Kentucky. Retired for less than a year, he was in 1849 again elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. During his term, the controversy over the expansion of slavery in new lands had reemerged with the addition of the lands ceded to the United States by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. David Wilmot, a Northern congressman, had proposed preventing the extension of slavery into any of the new territory in a proposal referred to as the "Wilmot Proviso".^[30]

On January 29, 1850, Clay proposed a series of resolutions, which he considered to reconcile Northern and Southern interests, what would widely be called the Compromise of 1850. While Clay originally intended the resolutions to be voted on separately, at the urging of southerners, Clay agreed to the creation of a Committee of Thirteen to consider the measures. The committee was formed on April 17. Clay as chair of the committee, on May 8 presented an omnibus bill linking all of the resolutions.^[31] The resolutions included:

• Admission of California as a free state, ending the balance of free and slave states in the senate.^[30]
• Organization of the Utah and New Mexico territories without any slavery provisions, giving the right to determine whether to allow slavery to the territorial populations.^[30]
• Prohibition of the slave trade, not the ownership of slaves, in the District of Columbia.^[30]
• A more stringent Fugitive Slave Act.^[30]
• Establishment of boundaries for the state of Texas in exchange for federal payment of Texas's ten million dollar debt.^[30]
• A declaration by Congress that it did not have the authority to interfere with the interstate slave trade.^[32]

The Omnibus bill, despite Clay's efforts, failed in a crucial vote on July 31 with the majority of his Whig Party opposed. He announced on the Senate floor the next day that he intended to persevere and pass each individual part of the bill. Clay was physically exhausted; the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him began to take its toll. Clay left the Senate to recuperate in Newport, Rhode Island. Stephen A. Douglas separated the bills and guided them through the Senate.^[33]