Henry Clay and Richard Mentor Johnson were from Kentucky; Felix Grundy and John Sevier from Tennessee; Peter Buell Porter, from Buffalo, New York and John C. Calhoun from the back woods of South Carolina.[1]
Henry Clay (1777-1852) was, in 1812, an articulate Kentuckian, aged 35. The youthful orator had twice filled the vacant seats of Kentucky senators. In 1810 he was overwhelmingly elected as a congressman from Kentucky to the House of Representatives. He gathered a following of new, young congressmen who wanted to force the United States into declaring war on Britain. They elected him speaker of the House. [2]
He was a Democratic-Republican adept at managing the mechanics of House leadership. Soon, he had assigned his fellow War Hawks to head influential committees. When James Madison asked Congress to declare war, many incorrectly blamed Clay for bringing the nation into war.[3]
Richard Mentor Johnson (1780-1850) also was elected to the House of Representatives, the first native Kentuckian to serve there. Like Clay, he was a young Democratic-Republican. When he voted for declaring war against Britain in 1812 he was in his early thirties. He served gallantly in the War of 1812, fighting under the command William Henry Harrison, sustaining five bullet wounds. After the war, he was re-elected to the House, where he was chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs.[4]
Next: Who were the War Hawks from Tennessee—Felix Grundy and John Sevier?
[1] Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, V. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 402.
[2] “Henry Clay” American National Biography.
[3] “Clay” ANB.
[4] “Richard Mentor Johnson” American National Biography.
