Henry Clay

Henry Clay was born in Hanover County Virginia on April 12, 1777. He attended public schools and he later became the apprentice of a respected lawyer in Richmond, Virginia named George Wythe. After Clay was admitted to the bar in 1797 (at the age of twenty) he moved to Lexington, Kentucky where he opened his own law practice. He quickly made a name for himself with his brilliance in and out of the court room. He did not stay at his law practice long before he moved to politics. Clay was an American Statesman who severed in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He also made five failed bids at the US Presidency. Although he never became president he had a profound effect on our country. He applied himself to many different issues such as slavery, politics, and protecting domestic industries.

Clay held many different important positions through out his career. At the age of twenty-two he was elected to the Constitutional Convention in Kentucky, Four years later at the age of twenty-six he was elected to Kentucky’s State Legislature, and at the age of twenty-nine (a full year before the legal age of thirty stated in the Constitution) he was appointed to fill a vacant term in the United States Senate. Clay did all of these things before he turned the age of thirty. After leaving the Senate in 1807, he again served in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and was chosen as Speaker of the House. A year later, he was elected to another