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Clay has been overrated as a politician and underrated as a statesman."

One biographer concluded that "there was a serious statesman in him along with the gamester-politician behind his never-ending series of plausible expedients there was a consistency of purpose. His personal 'Magnetism-his passionate, charming, and ingratiating manner-made Clay one of America's best-loved politicians but his consuming ambition for the presidency led him to compromise his principles in a series of major blunders that frustrated those public figures and private citizens who sought his forceful leadership. Henry Clay has been aptly labeled "the most influential member"' of the Senate during its golden age of the 1830's and 1840's. After the 1829 inauguration of President Andrew Jackson's administration, with its emphasis on a limited role for the federal government and sectional autonomy, the American System became the focus of anti-Jackson opposition that coalesced into the new Whig party under the leadership of Henry Clay. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System." In the years from 1816 to 1828, Congress enacted programs supporting each of the American System's major elements. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry a national bank to foster commerce and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. From the nation's earliest days, Congress has struggled with the fundamental issue of the national government's proper role in fostering economic development.