Elder Elder pdf The Medals and Tokens of Henry Clay (Classic Reprint)

By THOMAS L. ELDER. An Address Delivered Before The American Numismatic Society, January 3, 1918. The precepts, character and life of that distinguished and picturesque statesman, Henry Clay, find ample expression on the many medals and tokens issued in his honoicover ng the periods during which he was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Those phrases and inscriptions do not convey their full meaning to the collector or layman unless he is familiar with the life and acts of the man himself and with the history of the times in which he lived. With such a subject as Henry Clay we have a good deal to consider in a single address, and the biographical and historical sketch I am about to give can only be an outline of some of the more important events of his life and times. The question as to how a man of such importance could have been overlooked for the Presidency I have several times heard asked, but not answered. How a man with over half a century of prominence, during which time he had occupied almost every honorable position except the Presidential chair, could have missed the crowning ambition of his life, I am going to attempt to make clear this evening. It was in Hanover county, Virginia, on A pril 12th, 1777, in a neighborhood mentioned on the tokens, The Slashes, that Henry Clay was born; and the year 1777 was known along the southwestern border as the bloody year of the three sevens. The territory in Kentucky where he early removed to was known in Indian fighting days as the Dark and Bloody Ground. His father, a Baptist clergyman, was a man of standing and character, while his mother was a daughter of George Hudson, of Hanover county, and said to have been a woman of exemplary character and of much public spirit. Clay slife does not seem to have been filled with so many hardships as Lincoln s, and his forefathers had more social stand(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)