Free Lincoln Unbound by Rich Lowry Page B

from the White House in 1861, he referred to Clay as “him whom, during my whole political life, I have loved and revered as a teacher and leader.”
    A gentleman farmer from Kentucky, the charismatic Clay inspired intense devotion. He occupied the commanding heights of American politics for decades, as Speaker of the House, as a senator, and as a frequent contender for the presidency. Clay is often said to have originated the phrase “self-­made man,” which eventually became synonymous with Lincoln. Confronted with the argument that one of his policies—­the tariff—­would only support the well-­heeled, Clay replied: “In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me, is in the hands of enterprising and self-­made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.” Clay depicted his own ascent as a rise up by the bootstraps. If he didn’t come from poverty, he was self-­educated. In his youth, he had taken the grain to the mill in an area referred to as the “slashes.” Hence, he was the “Millboy of the Slashes,” who had ascended to the status of great statesman.
    Elected to Congress in 1810, Clay started his career as a Jeffersonian hater of banks and Great Britain. A “War Hawk,” he agitated for hostilities with Britain—­and got them good and hard in the War of 1812. The United States suffered serial humiliations stemming from its military and financial weakness. The White House burned and the government nearly went bankrupt, while New England threatened to secede. A dismayed Clay turned around after the war and championed his famous “American System”—­banks, tariffs, and infrastructure—­to strengthen the economy and the union. It became the signature program of the Whigs.
    The Whigs can’t be pinned down cleanly in terms of contemporary political taxonomy. Daniel Walker Howe points to a possible very rough shorthand. One might say that the Whigs supported the “positive liberal state” (affirmatively working to increase opportunity and promote the public welfare), while the Democrats believed in the “negative liberal state” (leaving ­people to their own devices). Howe objects to this schema, though, ­because it makes Whigs sound too much like contemporary liberals, when the Whigs were much more concerned with upholding moral standards and imposing discipline.
    While the Whigs opposed executive power, they supported government action in furtherance of economic development. They believed in commerce and industrialization, saw a harmony of interests in all classes of society, and thought a rising tide lifts all boats. Denounced as the party of the rich, the Whigs countered via one of their newspapers: “Who are the rich men of our country? They are the enterprising mechanic, who raises himself by his ingenious labors from the dust and turmoil of his workshop, to an abode of ease and elegance; the industrious tradesman, whose patient frugality enables him at last to accumulate enough to forego the duties of the counter and indulge a well-­earned leisure.”
    Henry Clay’s program, Howe writes, embodied the Whig values of “order, harmony, purposefulness, and improvement.” The Whigs championed an evangelical-­inflected bourgeois morality. Their vision of economic progress meshed with a commitment to moral progress. A mass gathering of Whigs at Bunker Hill in 1840 professed, “We believe especially, in the benign influence of religious feeling and moral instruction on the social, as well as on the individual, happiness of man.” The Whigs encouraged both individual efforts at improvement, through self-­discipline and work, and collective efforts, exemplified by reform movements like temperance. They considered themselves the champions of the “sober, industrious, thriving ­people.”
    As the historian of the