Showing results for "Clay" in Americas

Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker of the House, as Secretary of State to John Quincy Adams - the man he put in office - and as acknowledged leader of the Whig party. As the broker of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay fought to keep a young nation united when westward expansion and slavery threatened to tear it apart. Yet, despite his talent and achievements, Henry Clay never became president.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, "it seems preordained", as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." But there was nothing predestined about the victory.

On a sultry August morning in 1970, the battered body of a young woman was hoisted from a dry well just outside Hogansville, Georgia. Author and investigator Clay Bryant was there, witnessing the macabre scene. Then fifteen, Bryant was tagging along with his father, Buddy Bryant, Hogansville chief of police. The victim, Gwendolyn Moore, had been in a violent marriage. That was no secret. But her husband had connections to a political machine that held sway over the Troup County Sheriff's Office overseeing the case. To the dismay and bafflement of many, no charges were brought.

Cassius Marcellus Clay was a Kentucky planter, politician, and abolitionist. He freed the slaves on the estate inherited from his father and paid them a wage. Clay argued that no cordial union could exist between liberty and slavery, concluding his speech with, “If you would have peace, be just, for justice is the only peace.”

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling series Campfire Stories: Close Calls comes a new original audiobook that brings to life the bold, hair-raising, and often tragic adventures of a generation of eighteenth-century frontiersmen: the Long Hunters. Steven Rinella (The MeatEater...

Schultz States: "Camping one time with Black Elk, he told me this tale of the Dreadful River Cave. I never attempted to enter the cave, but how many, many times I have paused at the foot of its falls, watching...." Adopted Blackfeet tribe member James Willard Schultz relates the surprising story as told to him by Chief Black Elk. Schultz was one of the last of the old frontiersmen and Indian fighters... He joined a tribe of Blackfeet Indians and for years roamed with them over the buffalo-covered plains.