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/* Compromise of 1850 */
[[Image:Henry-clay5.jpg|thumb|420px|Clay appeals for compromise in the Senate, 1850]] In 1849 Clay returned to the Senate in a last effort to modify the influence of the increasing numbers of extremists, Northern and Southern. His [[Compromise of 1850]] was intended to satisfy both sections, brought California into the Union as a free state, ended the slave trade in Washington DC (but did not abolish slavery there), and included other provisions intended to balance Southern and Northern interests. Its most controversial provision, the [[Fugitive Slave Law]], would have guaranteed slaveholders the return of their runaways and thus presumably have done away with the root of sectional differences. Clay hoped that this, his last and greatest compromise, would forever prevent a civil war. Alongside Clay in the Senate were the other two of the great triumvirate which had dominated American politics for more than thirty years.<ref>Peterson 1987</ref> The dying [[John C. Calhoun]] demanded for the South what was in effect equality with the federal government. [[Daniel Webster]], on the other hand, joined with Clay in his famous Seventh of March address and pleaded for an end to sectional strife. Clay was unable to get his compromise passed but Democrat [[Stephen A. Douglas]] unpackaged the compromise so that each component was passed by a different coalition. The compromise effectively postponed war for another decade, but Clay did not live to see the collapse of his Whig party after it lost the 1852 elections.
===Legacy===
He died in Washington on June 29, 1852. Clay lacked Webster's powerful logic and learning and Calhoun's cast-iron principles, but he was equal to both men in national power and he outranked them in the affection he inspired. Although his program of compromise suffered a loss of prestige during the secessionist crisis, it was renewed in the vision of one of his admirers: [[Abraham Lincoln ]] called his fellow Kentuckian "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life."<ref>Mark E. Neely, Jr. "American Nationalism in the Image of Henry Clay: Abraham Lincoln's Eulogy on Henry Clay in Context." ''Register of the Kentucky Historical Society'' 1975 73(1): 31-61.</ref>
==Quotes==
"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity."<ref>https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/henry-clay-1607.php</ref>
