Cassius M. Clay: Freedom's Champion

By Keven McQueen

The emancipationist Cassius M. Clay has long been one of Kentucky's most controversial and misunderstood figures. This new biography examines his important, though undervalued, place in history from the anti-slavery movement to his role as Lincoln's minister to Russia during the Civil War. Along the way the many fights, romantic entanglements, and political battles of Clay's life are explored. The author, a former guide at Clay's mansion, White Hall, unearthed long-forgotten documents such as newspaper and magazine articles, interviews with Clay, and family letters. As a result, this book contains much information found in no other Clay biography and therefore debunks many long-standing myths. In addition to the biography of Clay, the book contains a room-by-room tour of White Hall, several informative appendices, and a collection of ghost stories concerning Clay's mansion, making Cassius M. Clay: Freedom’s Champion ideal for both history buffs and the public at large.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 16, 2001
• ISBN: 9781618587879

Keven McQueen

Keven McQueen was born in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1967. He has degrees in English from Berea College and Eastern Kentucky University and is a senior lecturer in composition and world literature at EKU. He has written nineteen books on history, the supernatural, historical true crime, biography and many strange topics, covering nearly every region of the United States. In addition, he has made many appearances on radio, podcasts and television. Look him up on Facebook or at kevenmcqueenstories.com.

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TURNER PUBLISHING COMPANY

Publishers of America’s History

412 Broadway • P.O. Box 3101

Paducah, Ky 42002-3101

[phone]

By: Keven McQueen

Illustrations by: Kyle McQueen

Publishing Consultant: Douglas W. Sikes

Designer: Emily Kay Sikes

First Printing A.D. 2001

Copyright © 2001 Keven McQueen

All rights reserved

Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company

This publication was produced using available material. The publisher and author regret they cannot assume liability for errors or omissions.

This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the publisher and/or author.

Library of Congress Catalog No. 00-111863

9781618587879

LIMITED EDITION

Printed in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE: THE MAN

PART TWO: THE HOUSE

PART THREE: THE LEGEND

APPENDIX

ADDITIONAL CLAY DECENDANTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY: THE MAN

BIBLIOGRAPHY: THE HOUSE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEX

This book is dedicated to the memory of Nadine Casteel McQueen (1941-1982).

Special thanks to my colleagues, past and present, at White Hall and in the English Department at Eastern Kentucky University.

e9781618587879_i0003.jpg

The Champion of Liberty Lithograph and published by N. Currier, 1846, from a daguerreotype by Plumbe.

PART ONE: THE MAN

He was one of the few Southern emancipationists in the years preceding the Civil War. He was in President Lincoln’s cabinet as Minister to Russia. He was a fiery orator, a bold duelist and fighter, a celebrated soldier, a controversial newspaper editor, a shrewd politician, and one of the most lauded and reviled men of his time. Yet, Cassius Marcellus Clay of Kentucky is today one of history’s inexplicably overlooked figures.

This remarkable man, a first cousin (once removed) of the more famous Henry Clay, was born in the master bedroom of his ancestral home, Clermont, in Madison County, Kentucky, on October 19, 1810. His father, Green Clay, was a remarkable man in his own right.

Green Clay (1757-1828) was originally from Powhatan County, Virginia. While still a teenager, Green struck out for the wilderness of what was later to become the state of Kentucky. In fact, he was one of the state’s earliest explorers, and his adventurous spirit was on a par with that of the more famous Daniel Boone, alongside whom Green fought Indians at Fort Boonesborough, also in Madison County, Ky., in September 1778. A few years previously, Clay had also fought as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. As Green Clay grew more politically prominent, he served several years in the Kentucky Legislature.

Clay was also quite the businessman. He was a land surveyor at a time when the job was prone to a number of occupational hazards, such as fighting off attacks from Indians and wild animals. Due to the scarcity of printed currency in those days, surveyors were entitled to take half the land they surveyed as payment for their services. Green Clay made sure his land claims were legally binding, unlike other early Kentucky explorers who died in poverty, or— like Daniel Boone— spent considerable time in court fighting losing battles to get back land that was rightfully theirs.

The government also gave Clay much real estate through land grants as a reward for having served nobly as a Brigadier-General in the War of 1812. Clay ended up owning many thousands of acres of land across Kentucky— 40,000 acres in Madison County alone. He owned a large piece of Fayette County, and all of Bourbon and Clay Counties. He also owned sizable portions of several other states, including Ohio. Tennessee, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, and Arkansas.

Not merely content to own land, Green Clay also found clever ways to make the most of his holdings. He owned toll roads, the Clay’s Ferry on the Kentucky River, and even distilled his own liquor to be served at taverns he also owned. As a result, the former impoverished teenage explorer was, by the time of his death at 71, one of the wealthiest men in the state, if not the wealthiest.

On March 14, 1795, Green Clay married Sally Lewis (1776-1867), who was to bear him seven children, of which Cassius was the youngest surviving child. (See Appendix B for a list of Cassius’s siblings.) Sally was a strict Calvinist Baptist who reared her children to be scrupulously honest and to fight for what they believed was right— lessons that young Cassius obviously took to heart. He later wrote of his mother: With her, truth was the basis for all moral character.

For a few years, Green and his family lived in a log cabin on a 2,250 acre piece of land he owned a few miles from Fort Boonesborough, very near the Kentucky River. (In later years, Cassius used the still-existing cabin as an office until it burned down in 1864 along with many of his personal papers.) However, in 1798, Green Clay decided to build a house befitting his stature in the community.

The new house was named Clermont; it was a two-story brick Georgian house complete with real glass windows, an attic, and a basement— a mansion in a region where most settlers were still living in log cabins or crude wooden structures. Clermont was built using slave labor, for Green Clay was also one of the largest slaveowners in the state.

Glimpses into Cassius’s youth may be found in a couple of extant letters he wrote when he was a child to his eldest brother Sidney Payne Clay, who was attending college at Princeton. New Jersey. They are presented as written, charming errors in spelling and grammar intact. In the first, written when he was eight, Cassius discusses school, his pets, and an overheard adult conversation, among other matters of interest to a child:

January 25th 1819

Dear Brother

I have left Richmond and I am now living at home. [Brother] Brutus and myself are going back to school to Philip R. Denham at my Fathers old school house. [Sisters] Paulina and Sally Ann are living at home. They are all well at Mr. Smiths. Sister cooks very poor. Your trees are growing very well and some are high as the fence. Pen is fat and lazy. Gunneris a pretty good dog. Father is got Sound from Aunt Patty. He thinks he is the best dog in the state. Capt. Rodes and Col. Irvine is decided there is so much paper money its not worth much a count. Your sweet heart Susan is married. I want to see them fish and curiosities you wrote to me about. I am going to school this morning and I have no time to write any more.

Farewell brother.

Cassius M. Clay.

The second letter, written by Clay when he was nearly ten, offers a child’s perspective on plantation life at old Clermont:

Madison County, June 11, 1820

Dear brother,

I have not ben to school for five weeks past and I expect to go to school [illegible] Mr. Quin next week. When I left school last I was cyphering in the rule of reduction. I was reading to day about that big turkle [turtle?] that you was telling me about in your last letter. Father sold one hundred one nine sheep for one dollar a peace. Your trees are growing very pretty indeed. Them that were planted in the meadows are plenty big enough to set out. They are higher than the fense.

Pen and Gunner and Sound is all a live. Pen is very old and lazy. Sound is very sharp. Gunner hunts very well. Mr. Durbin still does business for father. Samuel Osten is the oversear now. Ambus Christopher still lives at the far quarter.

Father has three pecon trees a bout one foot high. Your seader trees that were planted by the carriage house are all dead but one that is as high as my head. It is so thick that I cant hardly sea thugh it. Your weeds that were set out in the tulip bed are growing very pretty.

Father has built him a big new stone barn for to put rye and wheat &c. Kitty and Jack and his family now lives at the pond. Father [had] big gate [set] up by Harners house to come through the rye field to the stiles and another one by the garden to come in the yard. Woric and Nanny and hur family now lives at the old cider press. Joe still works in the black smith shop. Two of fathers big [illegible] trees are dead. Fathers pond had a plenty water last summer for stock when people in town had to buy water for to drink.

But childhood at Clermont was not completely idyllic: the institution of slavery left young Clay with mixed emotions. In his Memoirs (1886), Cassius related that even as a child, he felt slavery was morally wrong, but he accepted it as the way things had to be. However, he was badly shaken by an incident that took place when he was a small boy. A slave girl named Mary, who had been his playmate, stabbed to death a cruel overseer named Payne in a panic after he threatened her. Everyone agreed Mary had acted in self-defense; indeed, she was even acquitted by a jury of white men. Nevertheless, Cassius’s brother Sidney (an emancipationist himself), who was in charge of the farm at the time, was pressured to sell her down the river to a plantation in the deep South. Some form of punishment was felt to be in order, even in a case of self-defense. The stark injustice of Mary’s fate was to affect Cassius’s opinion of slavery in later years.

As Cassius grew up, he developed into a strikingly handsome and impressively strong young man. He weighed 215 pounds and was six feet three inches tall, making him roughly seven to nine inches taller than the average man of that era. He enjoyed fishing and hunting. A superior athlete, he excelled at wrestling, boxing, football, baseball, and more obscure sports such as bandy-ball and tripball. Young Clay also became an expert in the use of weaponry, mastering the rapier, the broadsword, the dueling pistol, and the rifle. He would remain a crack shot his entire life; he boasted in his final years that at age 86 he was able to shoot at a distance of eighty yards two wild dogs that were menacing his sheep.

Clay’s first taste of higher education began when he attended Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Bardstown. Ky. His Memoirs indicate that he enjoyed his experiences there: I had formed quite an attachment to many friends, Catholic and Protestant, and who made me ever tolerant in religion. Afterwards, he attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., in 1829, and then entered Yale as a junior in 1831, where he majored in oratory.

While at Yale, one of the crucial moments in Cassius Clay’s life occurred: he attended a fiery speech by the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Hearing Garrison’s words, the long-simmering hatred Cassius felt for slavery finally boiled over: I then resolved... that, when I had the strength, if ever, I would give slavery a death struggle. From this point on, Cassius would never waver in his opposition to slavery, even at great personal risk from being one of the very few emancipationists who dared live in slaveholding territory.

Even this early in his life, Clay had a much clearer conception of the inevitable effects of slavery than did many of his countrymen. In a letter to his brother Brutus which Clay wrote at Yale on December 4, 1831, the newly converted emancipationist included a prediction of the Civil War still thirty years in the future: The slave question is now assuming an importance in the opinions of the enlightened and humane, which prejudice and interest can not long withstand. The slaves of Virginia, Kentucky, and in fact all the slave holding states must soon be free! The voice of the civilized of Europe and the greater part of the United States is against slavery, not speculatively, but actively and in an event of insurrection we are to expect to engage not only the blacks but the whites of the free states. These are surmises of mine, but we may live to see the event. I think moreover there will be a dissolution of the general government before fifty years— however much it may be deprecated and laughed at now.

It was during his time at Yale that Cassius made his very first public antislavery speech, on February 22, 1832, during a centennial celebration of Washington’s birthday. (It is worth noting that Cassius was an emancipationist, not an abolitionist. The latter group was more radical than the former. Emancipationists wanted to see slavery ended by legal means, such as a Constitutional amendment, rather than by illegal ones, such as helping slaves run away via the Underground Railroad. In later years, Clay would argue that since slavery was allowed by law, it must then be eradicated by law. In addition, abolitionists felt slavery should be ended immediately; emancipationists thought slavery should be ended gradually, to allow slaves a chance to learn a trade and become literate, and also to allow plantation owners time to prepare for the economic blow that would follow if their workforce was taken away from them.)

While still at the Jesuit College, Cassius rushed back to Clermont after receiving word that his father was dying of cancer. On October 31, 1828, as the old explorer lay on his deathbed, he pointed in the direction of the family cemetery and said I have just seen death come in at that door. Shortly after saying this, Green Clay died. He was generous to each of his children in his will, leaving them slaves, material possessions, and land (or in his daughters’ cases, unrestricted use of the land, since women could not then legally own property). Remarkably, Green Clay also freed several of his slaves in his will, giving them twenty dollars apiece and fifty acres of land below the Tennessee River.

Sally Lewis Clay, Green’s widow, married a Baptist preacher named Jeptha Dudley on April 20, 1831, and afterwards moved to Frankfort.

After leaving Yale, Cassius returned to Clermont, which had been left to him in Green Clay’s will along with 2,200 acres of land. He also inherited a number of slaves. These were given to him in trust, and since he had to abide by the conditions set in the will, Cassius was unable to free them for several years. Sometime in the early 1840s (probably late 1843) Cassius at last was able to begin legally freeing his slaves. In a letter written to his brother Brutus dated January 6, 1844, he noted that I propose getting free papers from the county court for the slaves I have already liberated including the four left me by Aunt Patsey. All his personal trust-slaves— by one estimate, $50,000 worth— were freed by the end of 1844, a full seventeen years before the Civil War. Green Clay also willed Cassius several additional slaves in trust for the latter’s heirs. These slaves Cassius was never able to free since legally speaking they did not belong to him.

In addition to freeing his personal servants, Clay purchased thirteen more slaves from others so he could give them their freedom, intending that families would not be separated. He estimated in chapter 28 of his Memoirs that The buying and liberating of these slaves, half of whom never entered my service, cost me about ten thousand dollars. Many of Clay’s ex-slaves stayed on the property as hired help. The fact that Cassius was willing to set his slaves free and then pay them wages was certainly not appreciated by his slaveholding neighbors.

(An interesting side note: many visitors to White Hall ask whether there is a connection between Cassius Marcellus Clay and Muhammad Ali, who changed his name from Cassius M. Clay upon becoming a Muslim in 1968. Ali, who is from Louisville, Ky., was certainly named after this particular Cassius, but also Ali has stated that his ancestors did in fact work at White Hall.)

Shortly after his return to Kentucky, another major event in Cassius’s life unfolded. He re-enrolled at Transylvania University to obtain a degree in law, and while in Lexington he met Mary Jane Warfield (1814-1900), daughter of Maria Barr and Dr. Elisha Warfield, a prominent physician and one of Kentucky’s earliest racehorse breeders.

The romance got off to an ominously shaky start when it was opposed by both families. Just before the Clays’ wedding, however, a more serious problem developed. A former suitor of Mary Jane’s, a Louisville physician and member of the Kentucky Legislature named Dr. John Declarey, had written her a letter full of invidious comments about Cassius. According to journalist Franklin Reynolds, Declarey insinuated that Cassius had been intimate with a young Madison County woman, with the result that her family had to move to Texas in shame. Declarey also accused Cassius of having a physical relationship with a slave girl. The note was intercepted by Mary Jane’s mother, who then foolishly showed Cassius the letter. Naturally, Cassius felt the need to defend his reputation, though he later stated that the letter should have been thrown into the fire, and nothing shown to me.

Cassius and a friend named James Rollins traveled to Louisville to seek satisfaction from the doctor. They found him on the steps of the hotel where he lived, the Old Inn. Clay showed Declarey the letter and asked if he had any explanations or apologies to make. Receiving no answer, Clay produced a hickory stick he had brought just for the occasion and gave Declarey a thrashing as Rollins discouraged would-be interlopers with a pistol. He then announced that he would be rooming at the very same hotel where Declarey lived, should the doctor wish to fight some more. Not long after retiring to his quarters, Clay received word that Declarey had challenged him to a duel.

The rivals met twice for the purpose of dueling, but on both occasions were thwarted by the presence of enormous crowds. Declarey’s friends suggested to Rollins that the match be held on February 26, 1833— which also happened to be the date set for Clay’s wedding. Rollins refused, figuring the Declarey camp had already had enough time to set a more reasonable date, and publicly declared his and Clay’s intention to return to Lexington on the morning of the wedding. The pair assumed that if the doctor were truly serious about fighting the duel, this would give him sufficient time to choose the time and location for it.

The date for their departure arrived with no word from Declarey, so Clay and Rollins returned to Lexington for the impending wedding. Cassius and Mary Jane were married at the Meadows, the Warfield family home, on February 26 as planned.

However, only a few days after the ceremony, Declarey began claiming publicly that Clay had fled Louisville in cowardice, and that he would give Clay a good cowhiding if they ever met again. Cassius initially resisted challenging the insult on the grounds that For a man to leave a newly-married wife to return to fight her rejected suitor was too absurd even for the fool-code of dueling, but upon reflection he decided to pay the doctor another visit while returning from a trip to Cincinnati and St. Louis.

Once in Louisville. Clay armed himself and went to Declarey’s hotel, where he sat in the lobby for the doctor’s inevitable return. At dinner time, Clay entered the dining room and leaned on a colonnade, biding his time until the doctor finished his meal. When Declarey glanced up and saw Clay, he turned pale and immediately retreated. Clay stayed in town an extra day waiting for a challenge, and when none seemed forthcoming, he returned to Lexington again. The next day he discovered that the thoroughly intimidated physician had committed suicide by slashing his wrists.

Over fifty years later when writing his autobiography, Clay would place the blame for the tragedy on Mary Jane’s mother, whom he felt should have been prudent enough not to show him the doctor’s insulting letter in the first place. The trouble with Declarey was to be merely one of the first in a long series of such challenges.

Settling into married life, Cassius became involved in politics. In 1835, he served in the Kentucky House of Representatives as a Whig, and in 1840 he became a member of the General Assembly. His success in these elections was all the more incredible considering that his outspoken opinions made him