twenty-third year Mr. Clay was licensed to practise law, and emigrated to
Lexington, Kentucky. Here he commenced and continued the practice till
the year 1803, when he was first elected to the Kentucky Legislature. By
successive elections he was continued in the Legislature till the latter
part of 1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single session
in the United States Senate. In 1807 he was again elected to the Kentucky
House of Representatives, and by that body chosen Speaker. In 1808 he was
re-elected to the same body. In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a
vacancy of two years in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was elected
to the United States House of Representatives, and on the first day of
taking his seat in that body he was chosen its Speaker. In 1813 he was
again elected Speaker. Early in 1814, being the period of our last
British war, Mr. Clay was sent as commissioner, with others, to negotiate
a treaty of peace, which treaty was concluded in the latter part of the
same year. On his return from Europe he was again elected to the lower
branch of Congress, and on taking his seat in December, 1815, was called
to his old post-the Speaker's chair, a position in which he was retained
by successive elections, with one brief intermission, till the
inauguration of John Quincy Adams, in March, 1825. He was then appointed
Secretary of State, and occupied that important station till the
inauguration of General Jackson, in March, 1829. After this he returned
to Kentucky, resumed the practice of law, and continued it till the
autumn of 1831, when he was by the Legislature of Kentucky again placed
in the United States Senate. By a reelection he was continued in the
Senate till he resigned his seat and retired, in March, 1848. In
December, 1849, he again took his seat in the Senate, which he again
resigned only a few months before his death.

By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the beginning of
Mr. Clay's official life in 1803 to the end of 1852 is but one year short