our profiles of presidential candidates continues tomorrow night on american history tv, with a look at james blaine, republican presidential candidate in the 1884 election against grover cleveland. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern time here on c-span3. the c-span radio app makes it easy to continue to follow the 2016 election wherever you are. it's free to download from the

apple app store or google play. get audio coverage and up to the minute schedule information for c-span radio and television, plus podcast times. stay up to date on all the election coverage. c-span's radio app means you always have c-span on the go. >> c-span is touring cities across the country, exploring american history. up next, a look at our visit to ashland, henry clay's estate. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. ♪ we are at ashland, the henry clay estate, in lexington, kentucky. ♪

the mansion at ashland is a unique situation. clay's original home had to be torn down and rebuilt. it fell into disrepair and could not be saved. he rebuilt on the original foundation. what we have is a home that is essentially a five-part federal style home as henry clay had with italian details and architectural elements, et cetera, and added layer of aesthetic details added by the granddaughter and great granddaughter and so on. so it's very much a layer cake or as i like to refer to it an onion and you can peel layers back until you get to henry clay. henry clay was one of the

central figures of the 19th century. he was of the second generation of great american figures and henry clay guided the nation from its nascence to its ultimate test in the civil war. he was speaker of the house and senator and secretary of state but certainly as important a figure as there was between 1800 and 1850 or so. henry clay originally came from virginia. he was born in hanover county near richmond in an area called the slashes, he was born during the revolution. saw the nation form essentially, was growing up as the nation was being created and so he came along when our nation was still sort of a toddler taking the first steps and he was seeing that happen and wanted to do everything he could to ensure its long-term survival and its development, et cetera. his parents, his mother and stepfather, father having died

when he was 4, relocated when henry clay was 14. his stepfather's brother was one of the founders of versailles, kentucky and had good success there. henry clay's stepfather decided to follow on. when he obtained his law license and trained, he followed on and settled in lexington, one of the great cities of the western united states. henry clay first lived downtown in lexington and came to ashland in 18-well, bought the property in 1804. he began working on it in 1805 and actually residing on it by 1807. we know that in 1809 he places an ad for a lost horse which runs in the paper. he specifies he wants it returned to him at ashland and will offer a reward for so doing. we don't know if he ever got the horse back but that's the first mention of ashland as the name of his property and first time he identifies himself as being here at ashland.

we are currently in a room we call the study. we know from historical sources that henry clay had a study and that it was approximately in the location of the room we interpret as the study today. the study is the place where we tell the story of henry clay's careers other than politics and henry clay had two careers. he was an attorney, practiced law for better than 50 years. on the wall is henry clay's law license, dated november 6th, 1797. brought it with him from virginia and enabled him to have a 50-year career which he was successful at every level from local district to the united states supreme court. and on the second shelf of the bookcase and desk, the case reviews he used in preparing for cases. he also is mentioned in these

books because as i said he practiced at that level. he was heard a number of times at the united states supreme court. among other things, the man who introduced the brief to the united states supreme court. the amicus brief is filed by someone who is not a part of the case, neither the defendant nor the plaintiff but who has a vested into it and also known as a friend of the court brief. clay was the first to file such a brief in this now standard part of the supreme court jurisprudence. the career he enjoyed the most was farming, he threatened to give up politics and law for it several times. though he never did that. he had a farm he was very proud. he said i was better off than moses, and i acquired that farm not by hereditary descent but by my own hard work. that was very important to clay. he thought a great deal of people who made their own way and were self-made. he coined the term self-made man to refer to these sorts of folks. it was a plantation and grew thousands of tons of it making rope and sails and cotton industry and et cetera.

we have a textbook on which he wrote a chapter. his advice was so widely sought people often asked him to write it down on a variety of agricultural topics and in this case published in a textbook for farming on the subject of hemp. this is another example. this letter is a letter that henry clay wrote 23rd june, 1837 and writing to a gentleman who has written him for advice on jackson jennies. henry clay raised jennies to create mules which he sold down south. he explains where to buy them and how to raise them and how to go about breeding and all of that sort of thing. it's a really nice example of that sort of advice. it features one of my favorite

lines of henry clay's, he says at the beginning of paragraph 3. i believe there are more good as asses now in kentucky than any other country in the world. that's a fun line there. but it's a really good letter that shows how sought his advice was and how good it could be. the volume here on the desk next to it is henry clay's stock journal. he kept this book to record stock transactions and to record breeding records and pedigrees, all sorts of interesting information about the farm here at ashland and it's very important to us in understanding that farm and understanding what he did here and how he did it. the other area in which henry clay made great contributions agriculturally, particularly to lexington in terms of making

lexington what it was was horses. henry clay had a number of great horses here at ashland, had a prized bull or zimbo and two prized mares, all thoroughbreds, magnolia and margaret have lines of descent that include 11 kentucky derby winners. in this year's triple crown races while we can't claim american pharaoh, we can claim fermento who ran in the belmont against american pharaoh. we're on the second level of ashland, second floor landing and here we have one of our most important portraits of henry clay, we have many but few that would rise to the level of importance of this one. the reason for that is that this portrait is a visual encapsulation of clay's political ideology. this is a copy of an original painted here at ashland in 1842. by artist from philadelphia, the

whig party was the political party and wanted to have a visual image to help him get nominated for the presidency and ultimately elected in 1844. clay's ideology was economic in nature. he felt that the best way to ensure that the nation remained united and intact through a strong national economy. that blended the agricultural economy of the south and industrial economy of the north together as one into one strong national economy. you can see at the bottom corner, the anville and shovel representing industrial north and plow and cattle representing the agricultural south. clay called his plan the american system and it had several planks. the first of those was something he called internal improvements. those improvements would include roads and bridges and waterways and other sorts of infrastructure funded by the federal government. today lexington sits at the

confluence of i-75 and i-64. clay would have loved you can go any direction, north, east, south or west from his hometown on that type of infrastructure. that's what he wanted to accomplish. he had a system of protected tariffs to protect from foreign influence, particularly british influence. finally he wanted to create a bank of the united states which would lend money to state banks which could then be lent out to stimulate industry and agriculture, furthering the american economy. one of the things that is kind of interesting about the second floor at ashland, it's personal space predominantly. family space. the room we're in now is henry clay's bedroom. we have it set up with his bed which he used for about 20 years, he liked this bed so much he wrote a newspaper testimonial praising its maker and helped the man who designed it to patent the design. so bed of which he was very fond. slept very comfortably, et cetera. before all of that clay was not home a great deal. he traveled a great deal for a

variety of reasons and traveled for politics and traveled for the law for business. he traveled for pleasure and often he traveled for his health. clay was a man for reasons that aren't entirely clear that seemed to be challenged healthwise and had a lot of health complaints over the course of his life and often go places like olympian springs or white sulphur springs where the green briar is in west virginia to take waters or to engage in treatments for his health. when henry clay traveled, he used some of the items that we have here, we have a hat box with his name and address on it that he carried his top hat in. this is a lap desk which is kind of the laptop of henry clay's day. the cane belonged to henry clay and he gave it to a fellow gentleman, a common gift during this era, but one of the things that's interesting about the

cane, there's a blade inside it. we don't if he ever used the blade. he was an immensely popular figure and he was someone whose visage was well known. so when he arrived, it was an event, people wanted to get to meet him and get to know him and interact with this famous and important person. that could create somewhat of a frenzy. we know where he showed up in town one time and group of ladies assembled with scissors because they wanted locks of his hair. as soon as he got off stage, they basically charged him and chased him down the street. clicking their scissors trying to get a lock of air. he eventually locked himself in a hotel for 30 minutes until the crowd disbursed. having a little personal protection was a bit of comfort to him. this is the most impressive of all artifacts, this is henry clay's trunk.

this trunk was made for him by ian w. stokes of louisville. you can see on the inside here, it's pretty spectacular. we recently discovered -- i recently discovered in photographing it that it's also heavily decorated on the outside. and right there is an image of henry clay and above it is a beehive and stars and drapery around the edges. it's an incredible piece of work. in addition to being very functional trunk. clay was an interesting human being. as interesting as he was politically or as a lawyer or farmer, et cetera, he was perhaps more interesting as a person. people loved henry clay, even if they disagreed with him politically, they loved him as a person. he loved to gamble, which was not uncommon for people of his social class in the south. lucretia was asked once if it concerned her and she said heavens, no, he almost always wins.

he did lose occasionally. usually he could find a way out of that without ultimately coming off with a loss. he could win something back or get whoever he was gambling with to assuage the debt. on the mantle we have a tantilos, contains several decanters and a number of glasses all in a little frame. clay carried it in his coach and it would be filled with any number of beverages. we know from receipts of clay that he enjoyed a number of good beverages, sherry, port, and he was a kentuckian, so he drank bourbon. clay was criticized for these activities and habits, anyone who thinks dirty campaigns are a new thing, something that's only happened recently need only back to look at henry clay to say that is not the case. we have a great cartoon on the wall that illustrates that and

shows a group of citizens throwing sticks and rocks and things and they are labeled, drinking, duelling, gambling, and cursing. clay is standing opposite and has another man by the collar, that was his running mate. he was chosen not because he was necessarily the most famous political figure or even the best qualified, but because he was someone who did not duel, drink, gamble or curse, a religious man. the thinking was, if that concerns you about henry clay, no problem, we've got a guy for you that will be okay. so this was an issue he had to deal with and one of the things that challenged him in his campaigns and one of the reasons he lost some votes in the campaigns he ran for president. henry clay's enemy said many things about him over the course of years. being a card player, they often accused him of being a cheat, a black leg, impugning his reputation or character to the fact he did play cards and may cheat in politics or in public

affairs, of course they chastised him for his views over slavery. people from the north particularly didn't like the fact he was a slave holder and saw it as hypocritical that he owned saves and argued for their emancipation and colonization. so there were a lot of things that they lobbed at him. in addition to all of the personal characteristics he had to deal with. the room we're in now is a bit of a interpretive speculation. we don't actually know henry clay had this space. as a wealthy man, he most likely would have had a room off his bedroom where he would have been able to dress and bathe called the dressing room. that's where we are now off the henry clay bedroom is the dressing room. one of the most important issues of clay's time was slavery, that issue occupied the entire nation and clay knew that had to deal with that. dealt with it most personally as

a slave owner. clay owned anywhere between 30 and 50 people at the time and probably 75 over the course of his life. so it was a significant slave owner in the state of kentucky. the most famous family of slaves that were here at ashland were the dupuis, their son charles and daughter marianne. they are so well known, predominantly because lotty sued clay for her freedom. in 1829, she filed a lawsuit in washington, he was serving as secretary of state. she had been there for a while with her family living at the decatur house and became convinced that she and her daughter were due their freedom. the suit was heard but she was unsuccessful. clay did ultimately emancipate both lotty and marry ann and charles. clay was a slave owner from birth and inherited slaves in the will when he was 4. grew up in the slave-owning times. and that colored his views on the subject. clay believed that a solution needed to be found to deal with

the issue of slavery, something that the country could accept as a whole and could move forward with and it would ultimately resolve once and for all what should be done about slavery. so clay came up with a solution that he believed would avoid social chaos as a result of sudden and abrupt abolition of slavery, which results in a sudden large mass of free african-americans that would not be accepted into society by white americans. the solution he came up with was called the american colonization society of acs. he presided over the founding of that organization on december 21st, 1816 and had its goal convincing slave owners to emancipate their slaves and colonize them to liberia on the west coast of africa. very few americans bought into it. slave owners saw it as something they didn't want to do and had no interest in freeing their slaves. abolitionists saw it as a hypocrisy, very few were left in

what he felt was the middle ground most would adopt. so it just didn't work out very well. clay was sure it was the way forward. so sure of it was he that in 1839 he did a speech for a friend that he was going to give in public a short time later. his friend said to him, henry, you can't do this. it will never work. you can't take this tack. you'll never get elected with this. clay said, i don't care, i should rather be right than be president. it doesn't matter what happens to me and doesn't matter if i get elected. what matters is what's right for the country. i must always do what is right for the country and what is right for the country is support this ideology. this will get us through and deal with the issue. unfortunately we know it didn't but that is what henry clay believed was the way forward. clay ended his life in washington, d.c. he returned in 1849 to resume his place in the senate and accomplished the compromise of 1850, but was always very sick during that period. he had tuberculosis, something he didn't believe for a long

time but it took a further and further toll on him. he barely got through the compromise of 1850 and wasn't in the legislature at the time it was passed. clay was a role model for many statesmen, particularly the mid and late 18th century as cited him who was a great american, whom they would like to emulate in political careers, most notably lincoln. he called him my ideal of a statesmen for whom i fought my whole humble life. he campaigned for clay. he voted for clay. he quoted clay regularly, 41 times in the lincoln/douglass debates alone. always saw clay as the political role model to which one should aspire, what one should try to be as a political figure and carry this political ideology forward as his own when he became a representative in our national government and ultimately president. while lincoln said in his eulogy of clay, would we be what we

are, what we can be without henry clay? i think the answer to that is probably not. clay kept the nation together, kept it moving forward at a critical time in its development. he's instrumental in moving the country from its birth to the development. he's instrumental in moving the country from its birth to the ultimate forge which will allow it to emerge into full maturity. on saturday c-span's issues spotlight looks at police and race relations. we'll show president obama at the memorial service for five police officers shot and killed in dallas. >> when the bullets started flying, the men and women of the dallas police, they did not flinch and they did not react recklessly. >> and south carolina republican senator tim scott giving a speech on the senate floor about his own interactions with police. >> but the vast majority of the time i was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new