Henry Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia on 12 April 1777, the son of Rev. John and Elizabeth (Hudson) Clay. His father died when Clay was four years old and his later political strategy portrayed his childhood as impoverished, creating the image recalled by Robert C. Winthrop of an intrepid boy “on a bare-backed pony, with a rope-halter instead of a bridle, riding fearlessly and sometimes furiously, to a neighboring mill, to replenish his mother's meal bag as often as it was empty”—the “Mill Boy of the Slashes.” In reality, Henry and his family lived in relative comfort on his grandfather's tobacco plantation where twenty-one people were enslaved and when Henry's father died, he bequeathed two enslaved people to his son. Henry may not have had much formal education, but was able to work his way up from a shop boy in Richmond, to law clerk, and then lawyer and politician in the Kentucky state legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams. Clay was nominated for the presidency three times (out of five attempts), but despite a life spent in public service would never attain this ultimate goal.

The 1844 presidential campaign

The 1844 presidential campaign hinged on issues of slavery and the annexation of Texas. Democrats entered their convention with Martin Van Buren as the presumptive nominee, however, his opposition to the annexation of Texas eventually doomed him. On the eighth ballot, George Bancroft—delegate from Massachusetts—proposed James K. Polk as a compromise candidate. Polk supported the annexation of Texas and the re-occupation of Oregon Territory and promised to only serve one term. He was unanimously nominated on the next ballot with George Dallas as his vice presidential nominee. The Whig Party nominated standard bearer Henry Clay by acclamation and selected as his running mate Theodore Frelinghuysen, a colonizationist whose pious reputation balanced Clay's slaveholding, drinking, and duelling.

Third party candidates would also figure into the mix in 1844. Incumbent President John Tyler ran on the Democratic-Republican Party ticket before dropping out in August, having been assured by proxies of James K. Polk that under a Polk administration, Texas would be annexed. The antislavery Liberty Party fielded James G. Birney, a former slave owner turned staunch abolitionist, and Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saints, ran under the banner of the Reform Party. Smith became the first presidential candidate to be assassinated when he was attacked and killed in the Carthage (Illinois) Jail in June of 1844.

The "Mill Boy of the Slashes"

Although "Mill Boy of the Slashes" was a long-time nickname of Clay's, reflecting his mythologized origins as an impoverished barefoot boy riding bareback to the mill, in 1844 the nickname took on a particularly dark cast. In this political cartoon published anonymously that year, Henry Clay's slave owning and rumored cruelty to his enslaved people took center stage. A notice in the Emancipator and Free American newspaper described the print in this way:

"Mill Boy of the Slashes." –Some genius has contrived a lithograph picture with this title. There is an old Virginia mill and a negro hut, and tied up by the wrists against the hut is a colored woman, while a man, with a whip of a well known pattern, is slashing away at the poor creature's naked back, and the countenance and form of the man are surprisingly like "the Mill-Boy of the Slashes."

At a time when the annexation of Texas would have ensured the expansion of slavery to a new state, Henry Clay's complicated relationship with slavery and abolition lost him votes both North and South. As both a slave owner and an advocate of gradual abolition, Clay faced opposition from all sides. The creator of this cartoon conjured for his audience an image of the “Mill Boy of the Slashes” that was quite different from the bucolic image on our featured token.

Hurray, Hurray the Country's Risin' Vote for Clay & Frelinghuysen

According to Robert Remini's account, many Whigs found it "difficult … to believe that J. K. Polk [was] serious opposition" and victory for Clay in 1844 "seemed absolutely certain." The release of Clay's "Alabama Letter" in which he expressed "no personal objection to the annexation of Texas" led to accusations of waffling on the issue of slavery and its extension (although his actual position on the issue had not changed). Polk's enthusiastic support of Texas annexation and manifest destiny, an upswell in the number of Democratic voters, and the presence of James Birney in the race would seal Clay's defeat. In the end, Clay lost the popular vote to Polk by fewer than 40,000 votes (or 1.4%). Third party candidate Birney garnered 2.3% of the vote (the highest percentage ever won by the party), and enough votes in New York state to guarantee Clay's defeat. Along with William Jenning Bryan, Clay shares the distinction of being the only candidates to lose the presidency three times.

Campaign tokens and other memorabilia in the Massachusetts Historical Society

The token featured here is one of hundreds of pieces of campaign memorabilia—medals, tokens, buttons, ribbons, pins, and bumper stickers—in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. They range in date from buttons celebrating the inauguration of George Washington to a 2024 Harris Walz friendship bracelet. Search our online catalog ABIGAIL,  for the subject "Campaign Paraphernalia—Specimens."