The Balance of Power | Henry Clay and the Struggle for the Union

Students watching this video will be introduced to Kentucky’s Henry Clay and the concept of “balance of power.”

Clay (1777-1852), a Kentucky attorney and slaveholder, served as a leader in the House of Representatives and Senate for most of his adult life. Students will explore how peace between North and South in the decades before the Civil War was kept by maintaining a balance of power — an even division between the slave states and the free states. That balance was threatened when the Missouri Territory petitioned Congress in 1819 to enter the Union as a slave state.