Clement Claiborne Clay

Clement Clay
Confederate States Senator from Alabama
In office February 18, 1862 – February 17, 1864
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Richard Walker
United States Senator from Alabama
In office November 29, 1853 – January 21, 1861
Preceded by	Jeremiah Clemens
Succeeded by	Willard Warner
Personal details
Born	(1816-12-13)December 13, 1816 Huntsville, Alabama, US
Died	January 3, 1882(1882-01-03) (aged 65) Gurley, Alabama, US
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Virginia Tunstall
Alma mater	University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa University of Virginia

Clement Claiborne Clay (December 13, 1816 – January 3, 1882) was a United States Senator (Democrat) from the state of Alabama from 1853 to 1861, and a Confederate States Senator from Alabama from 1861 to 1863. His portrait appears on the Confederate one-dollar note (4th issue and later).

Biography

Early life

Clement Clay was born with a strong political pedigree; he was the oldest son of Clement Comer Clay, a former senator and governor of Alabama. He was also a third cousin of Henry Clay, the noted statesman from Kentucky. Clay attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and graduated in 1834. He obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1839 and was admitted to the bar in Alabama in 1840.

Marriage and family

In 1843 he married to Virginia Tunstall. They had one child, who died in infancy. After his death in 1882, she remarried to David Clopton, a judge, and was known as Virginia Clay-Clopton. Virginia wrote Belle of the Fifties, a memoir with New York journalist Ada Sterling, published in 1904 and re-issued in 1905. Belle was one of three particularly recommended by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to its membership for serious study.^[1]

Career

Clay was elected as a member of the Alabama State House of Representatives in 1842, 1844, and 1845. He was appointed as a county judge in Madison County, Alabama, where he served from 1848 to 1850. He ran for a seat in the United States Congress in 1850, but was not elected. In 1853, he was elected by the Alabama legislature to serve in the United States Senate in a term beginning March 4, 1853. Due to the legislature's delay in filling the position, he served from November 29, 1853 to January 21, 1861. He withdrew from the senate when Alabama seceded from the Union before the American Civil War. He was subsequently elected by the Alabama Confederate legislature as Senator in the First Confederate Congress, where he served from 1862 until 1864.

Clement Clay and Jacob Thompson were head of the Confederate secret agents. They had employed John Wilkes Booth for some services before he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Due to suspicions that Clay was involved in the assassination plot of Lincoln, he and his wife were arrested and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe in Hampton, Virginia in 1865; they were held for about a year.

Postwar years

The Clays returned to Alabama and struggled to rebuild their lives. Clay practiced as an attorney. Clement Clay died in 1882 in Madison County and is interred at Maple Hill Cemetery.

References

• Clement Claiborne Clay at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-04-06
• Short biography on Political Graveyard

Further reading

• Clay-Clopton, Virginia. A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853-66, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1905, c1904, full online text available at Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina.
• Nueremberger, Ruth Ketring. The Clays of Alabama, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1958.

External links

• "Clement Claiborne Clay". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2009-04-06. 

United States Senators from Alabama Class 2 King Lewis Fitzpatrick Clemens C. Claiborne Clay Warner Goldthwaite Morgan Bankhead, Sr. Comer J. Heflin Bankhead, Jr. Swift Sparkman H. Heflin Sessions Class 3 Walker Kelly Chambers Pickens McKinley Moore McKinley C. Comer Clay Bagby King Fitzpatrick Spencer Houston Pryor Pugh Pettus Johnston White Underwood Black Graves Hill J. Allen M. Allen Stewart Denton Shelby