Henry Clay
Historical reputation

Clay's Whig Party collapsed four years after his death, but Clay cast a long shadow over the generation of political leaders that presided over the Civil War. Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote stated his opinion that "had there been one such man in the Congress of the United States as Henry Clay in 1860–1861 there would, I feel sure, have been no civil war". Clay's protege and fellow Kentuckian John J. Crittenden attempted to keep the Union together with the formation of the Constitutional Union Party and the proposed Crittenden Compromise. Though Crittenden's efforts were unsuccessful, Kentucky remained in the Union during the Civil War, reflecting in part Clay's continuing influence. Abraham Lincoln was a great admirer of Clay, saying he was "my ideal of a great man." Lincoln wholeheartedly supported Clay's economic programs and, prior to the Civil War, held similar stances about slavery and the Union. Some historians have argued that a Clay victory in the 1844 election would have prevented both the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War.

Clay is generally regarded as one of the important political figures of his era. Most historians and political scientists consider Clay to be one of the most influential speakers of the house in U.S. history. 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 A. Taft. A 1986 survey of historians ranked Clay as the greatest senator in U.S. history, while a 2006 survey of historians ranked Clay as the 31st-most influential American of all time. A 1998 poll of historians ranked Clay as the most qualified unsuccessful major party presidential nominee in U.S. history. In 2015, political scientist Michael G. Miller and historian Ken Owen ranked Clay as one of the four most influential American politicians who never served as president, alongside Alexander Hamilton, William Jennings Bryan, and John C. Calhoun. Noting Clay's influence over the United States in the last three decades of his life, biographer James Klotter writes that "perhaps posterity should no longer call it the Jacksonian Era... and instead term it the Clay Era."
startend:end_checker