Henry Clay, Lincoln and the Morality of Slavery

 

Throughout his adult life Lincoln had one political hero:  Henry Clay.  Although a slave owner, Clay was uneasy about the institution, recognized the essential injustice of it, and how slavery was in contradiction of the great principles of liberty on which the nation was founded.  This was expressed most clearly in a speech made by Henry Clay to the American Colonization Society on January 20, 1827,  and which, the part cited below, Lincoln would refer to in a speech given 31 years later and which we will look at tomorrow on Lincoln’s 202nd birthday:

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