Henry Clay Offering His California Compromise to the Senate on 5 February 1850 Artist Peter F. Rothermel captures the high intensity of the seventy-three-year-old Kentuckian’s last significant political act. Citizens who packed the galleries of the U.S. Senate had come to hear the renowned orator explain that his package of compromises required mutual concessions from both North and South but no sacrifice of “great principle” from either. Friends called his performance the “crowning grace to his public life.”

The Granger Collection, New York.