Claim clubs

In the early decades of the 19th century, settlers who arrived in western lands (what is now the Middle West) ahead of government land offices established claim clubs, makeshift associations also known as claim associations or squatter courts, to protect themselves and provide order on the frontier. Each club usually assumed authority over an area the size of a township, settling disputes over land rights and, when no officers were present, enforcing general matters of law and order.

Although these clubs were not, strictly speaking, legal entities, they proceeded as though they were sanctioned. By meeting, electing officers, and often forming constitutions, the clubs tried to reproduce political structures from settled regions of the United States. They grew out of the settlers’ desire to protect their claims from the intrusions of other unofficial settlers and, especially, from wealthy speculators. Before the Preemption Act of 1841, anyone squatting on land prior to its public sale could be ejected by speculators. After the law was passed, squatting on surveyed lands was legal, and the squatter had the right to preempt his claim before public sale, thus circumventing the bidding power of the speculators. This law did not solve squatters’ problems with speculators completely, since many would-be claimants who wanted to preempt their claims lacked the funds to pay for the land up front. Thus, claim clubs mediated disputes between competing claimants and speculators as well.

Joining a claim club was a simple process. For one dollar, members of a claim club could register a claim with the association. Elected secretaries or registrars kept records of each claim. If more than one settler claimed a given piece of land, the club arbitrated the dispute through a five-member jury. Disputants could also appeal any jury verdict by consulting the entire membership. This procedure was designed to deal both with the powerful speculators and with another common problem in these newly settled areas: claim jumpers. Without the official federal presence necessary to decide who owned what, jumpers often attempted to claim land that had already been registered with the claim association by another party. In these cases, the association’s elected marshal issued a verbal warning to the jumper. If this effort failed, the marshal and other members of the association would issue a “physical warning”—destroying a jumper’s personal property and improvements or even physically harming the jumper. Sometimes these attempts to oust the claim jumper led to deaths. Even when clubs were unsuccessful in their attempts to expel a supposed claim jumper, they ostracized these outlaws from the community, refusing to do business with them.

Most common in territories such as Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, claim clubs often operated under different criteria than those authorized by federal land law. Against official policy, clubs allowed minors to make claims and allowed claimants to register more than the standard 160 acres. Clubs established a kind of order on the frontier designed to withstand the influence of more powerful outsiders. When public land auctions finally occurred, members of claim associations would mobilize to protect their gains from any rivals. Though only quasi-legal themselves, the organized claim clubs were able to persuade many speculators to leave them alone. At land auctions, squatters would gather around a designated bidder, who was supposed to bid the minimum government price for each claim. If any outsider or speculator tried to bid higher on the property, claim associates would intimidate him, sometimes physically. Any speculator who resisted this coercion could expect to be treated the same way claimants treated jumpers.

Claim associations provided a means through which squatters could register, transfer, and mortgage claims without the presence of the federal land office. The clubs promoted self-sufficiency and often developed into powerful speculative organizations in their own right. They also proved that in the absence of federal authority, settlers could govern themselves efficiently. The spirited philosophy of self-defense and self-government found among the claim clubbers influenced the way laws were formed in these developing regions. State and territorial legislatures often validated the doctrines of the claim clubs, upholding the claims of settlers who came first and improved their land. While speculators wielded considerable power on the frontier, claim club ideals—mobilizing individuals to protect against outsiders—also exerted significant influence in the Middle West.

The establishment of claim clubs in frontier areas continued as standard practice until about 1870. Usually these clubs lasted only a few years, until federal officials took control. Although short-lived, the clubs were crucial to the formation of local communities and shaped the beliefs and attitudes of settlers determined to stake a permanent claim on the American frontier.

Further reading: Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1970 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976); Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789-1837 (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1990).

—Eleanor H. McConnell

Clay, Henry (1777-1852) politician

Henry Clay was an American statesman, secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency in 1824, 1832, and 1844, and in 1850, the architect of an important compromise to preserve the Union. A representative for the border state Kentucky and spokesman for the middle-of-the-road Whig Party, Clay sought to reconcile differences between the North and South on slavery. Clay also represented the nationalist outlook of the young, expanding Middle West. In support of the region’s territorial interests, he boldly urged war with Britain in 1812. His American System political platform called for protective tariffs for eastern manufacturers, federal financing for internal improvements in the West, and a national bank as he sought to link the industrial East with the agrarian West.

Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia, to a middle-class family. At the age of 20, after studying for the bar with the eminent George Wythe, Clay moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he developed a thriving practice. He was blessed with a quick mind, a flair for oratory, and an ability to charm both sexes with his easy, attractive manner. That he loved to drink and gamble was no drawback in an age that admired both vices. Ambitious for worldly success, Clay married into a wealthy and socially prominent family and soon gained entry into Kentucky’s most influential circles. While still in his 20s, he was elected to the state legislature, in which he served for six years, until 1809.

In 1810 Clay was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, and from 1811 he served as Speaker of the House. As a spokesman of western expansionist interests and leader of the War Hawks, he stirred up enthusiasm for war with Great Britain and helped bring on the War Of 1812. After a brief absence in 1814 to aid in the peace negotiations leading to the Treaty Of Ghent, Clay returned to Congress and began to formulate his “American System,” a national program that ultimately included federal aid for internal improvements and tariff protection of American industries.

While Henry Clay was not the author of the Missouri Compromise, he was instrumental in facilitating its final form and passage through Congress. In 1818 the Territory of Missouri, which was part of the Louisiana Purchase, applied for admission to the Union. slavery was legal in the Territory of Missouri, and about 10,000 slaves lived there. Most people expected Missouri to become a slave state. When the bill to admit Missouri to the Union was introduced, there were an equal number of free and slave states. The admission of Missouri threatened to destroy this balance. But during the next session of Congress, Maine applied for admission to the Union. Missouri and Maine could then be accepted without upsetting the balance between free and slave states, and the Missouri Compromise became possible.

The compromise admitted Maine as a free state and authorized Missouri to form a state constitution. The compromise also banned slavery from the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri, the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, except in the state of Missouri. This compromise was not immediately acceptable to all parties, especially those in Missouri Territory. Working hand-in-hand with Senator John Holmes of Maine, Clay ironed out the wrinkles, and in 1821 he pushed the amended Missouri Compromise through Congress.

In 1828 Clay again supported Adams for president, but Jackson won the White House. Three years later, Clay was elected to the U. S. Senate and led the National Republicans, who were beginning to call themselves the Whig Party. Hoping to embarrass Jackson, Clay led the Senate opposition to the president’s policies, but when the election came, Jackson was overwhelmingly reelected.

Around this time, a crisis developed over tariffs. South Carolina’s nullification of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 as well as Jackson’s threats of an armed invasion of that state allowed Clay to gain political ground. Working, even at the cost of his own protectionist views, toward a compromise with the faction led by John C. Calhoun, he helped to promote the Compromise Tariff of 1833.

As a candidate for the presidency in 1824, Clay had the fourth-largest number of electoral votes. With no candidate having a majority, the election was decided in the

House of Representatives. Clay released his electoral votes to John Quincy Adams in return for Adams naming Clay secretary of state. Adams won the election by a one-vote margin. The deal struck between Adams and Clay became referred to as the “corrupt bargain,” and many thought Jackson had been “robbed” of the presidency. The public outcry was strong, and the stigma of the “corrupt bargain” would haunt Adams’s presidency and be instrumental in his serving only a single term. It would also be an impediment to Clay’s future political fortunes.

In December 1831 the National Republicans once again nominated Henry Clay for the presidency. Clay returned to the national spotlight feeling pessimistic about his chances of defeating Jackson. He therefore made his primary goal to bring a measure to Congress that would put the administration in an embarrassing position. Clay proposed a modification of the tariff. This would have reduced revenues and put off Jackson’s intended repayment of the national debt by nearly a year. If Jackson vetoed it, he would alienate northern states, like Pennsylvania, whose votes he needed. If he signed it, it would alienate Jackson’s southern supporters. In the end Clay’s strategy failed when Congress passed a bill moderate enough to enable Jackson to sign it without alienating either faction.

Clay opposed the Jackson regime at every turn, particularly on the issue of a national bank. When, in 1833, Jackson had the deposits removed from the Second Bank of THE United States to various other banks, Clay secured a Senate resolution censuring the president.

In 1840 Clay lost the Whig nomination to William Henry Harrison, but Clay supported him. When Harrison was elected, Clay was offered the post of secretary of state, but he chose to stay in the Senate, where he planned to reestablish the Bank of the United States. However, the unexpected accession of John Tyler to the presidency upon the death of Harrison less than a month after taking office, and Tyler’s vetoes of Clay’s bills, caused Clay to resign his Senate seat in 1842.

In 1844 Clay ran for president against James K. Polk, an avowed expansionist. Earlier Clay had publicly opposed the annexation of Texas. During the campaign, however, he modified his position, agreeing to annexation if it could be accomplished with the common consent of the Union and without war. This shift probably lost him New York State, with which he could have won the election. His failure was crushing for him and for the Whig Party. In 1848, his party refused him its nomination, feeling that he had no chance, and his presidential aspirations were never fulfilled.

Slavery had been given limits by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and for some time there was no opportunity to overstep those limits. However, the new territories made renewed expansion of slavery a real likelihood. After the

Mexican-American War, Texas, which already permitted slavery, naturally entered the Union as a slave state. But California, New Mexico, and Utah did not have slavery, and when the United States prepared to take over these areas in 1846, there was great sectional conflict on what to do with them.

Southern opinion held that all the territories had the right to sanction slavery. The North asserted that no territories had that right. In 1848, nearly 300,000 men voted for Free-Soil Party candidates who declared that the best policy was to contain and discourage slavery. The Midwestern and border-state regions (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) were even more divided, however, with many favoring popular sovereignty as a compromise.

After being reelected to the Senate in 1849, Henry Clay denounced the extremists in both North and South, asserted the superior claims of the Union, and was chiefly instrumental in shaping the Compromise of 1850. It was the third time that he had stepped forward to avert a breakup of the Union in a crisis, and thus he has been called the Great Pacificator and the Great Compromiser.

The key provisions of the compromise were: California was to be admitted as a Free-Soil state; that the remainder of the new annexation be divided into the two territories of New Mexico and Utah and organized without mention of slavery; that the claims of Texas to a portion of New

Henry Clay (Library of Congress)

Mexico should be satisfied by a payment of $10 million; that more effective machinery be established for catching runaway slaves and returning them to their masters; and that the buying and selling of slaves (but not slavery itself) be abolished in the District of Columbia. For the last time, Henry Clay had been instrumental in pacifying the growing sectional unrest. The country breathed a collective, albeit temporary, sigh of relief.

Clay was not to live much longer after the passage of the compromise. He spent the summer of 1851 at Ashland, where he made his will, providing for the disposition of his estate and the freeing of his slaves. Though dying of tuberculosis, he returned to Washington that fall and answered the first Senate roll call. Thereafter he was closely confined to his room in the National Hotel, where he died on the morning of June 29, 1852.

Further reading: Maurice G. Baxter, Henry Clay and the American System (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995); Robert Vincent Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).

—Richard L. Friedline