The Lion of White Hall, Part 1 of 4
Early efforts toward abolition
He was named after his father, who was named after fellow Kentuckian and abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay.
Abolitionism was a movement in Western Europe and the Americas in that era, to end the slave trade and for blacks to be treated on the same level as whites, and to be allowed to pursue their own directions in their lives, like any other.
Cassius Clay, the abolitionist, was the son of a wealthy landowner who had numerous slaves who he worked on his farmland in Kentucky. He became prominent as an anti-slavery crusader, serving three terms in the Kentucky General Assembly before falling into disfavor due to his stance on abolitionism, the hot-button issue of that era.
His espousal of the plight of blacks in America he gave during his speech at the Washington Centennial at Yale, his alma mater, caused slaveholders to hate him, especially those in his home state of Kentucky.
He started an anti-slavery newspaper that was called the True American. Soon he began receiving death threats. That led him to start carrying a gun and knife. He barricaded his office, but a mob broke in and stole his printing equipment. It was eventually located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rather than returning to Lexington, he resumed his work in Cincinnati.
Clay was a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Some thought he would become Lincoln’s secretary of war, but the waves he created over the issue of slavery caused several to fear it may lead to friction with Southern states.
Instead, Lincoln offered Clay the ambassadorship to Spain, a position he eventually turned down. About that time, Clay read about Russia Czar Alexander’s stand on abolition and informed President Lincoln that he would be pleased to become the United States ambassador to Russia if it were offered. It was offered and he promptly accepted. Later, the president asked Ambassador Clay to return to the states to accept a commission as a major general.
Clay didn’t accept the commission until President Lincoln informed him he would sign the emancipation proclamation, one of the most famous in our nation’s history.
Lincoln sent Clay to assess the mood for the emancipation in the border states. Following Clay’s return, Lincoln issued the proclamation. Clay then returned to Russia in 1863 and remained until 1869, There, he was influential in the United States’ negotiations for the purchase of Alaska.
Clay’s whole life was one of strife and turmoil. In that era, an insult often resulted in a challenge to a duel. If the challenge was accepted, it generally resulted in a death. Many of the early leaders of our country participated in such duels.
“I never looked for trouble with anyone,” Clay said later in life. “I will admit, however, that I’ve never gone out of my way to avoid it. I have had many encounters through the years, but I have only been whipped twice. Those were by my mother and my older brother.
“My brother was older and much stronger. I tended to tease and play tricks on him until I went too far. One day we were trimming trees in the orchard and he had a ladder that he used to reach the higher limbs. I took his ladder a few times while he was up in a tree and he had to jump down. He warned me but I kept it up until he caught me and whipped me good with some of the sprouts that were trimmed from the trees. If I think about it I can still feel the stinging today.
“I didn’t cry but I learned my lesson. I stopped teasing him then and there because I knew what would come next. As I grew up, however, it seemed that trouble was looking for me.”
Clay explained that he had this introduction to dueling at the age of 23.
“I was engaged to be married and I had a rival suitor who wrote a letter to my sweetheart’s mother in which he made a number of obnoxious charges about me,” he began. “She showed me the letter and asked for me to explain it. It perturbed me greatly and I explained it by going to Louisville where I looked for the man, a doctor by the name of Declarey, who wrote it.” Read more next week.
Copyright 2023 Jadon Gibson.
Jadon Gibson is a freelance writer from Harrogate.
His writings are both historic and nostalgic in nature.
If you like his stories, tell others as they may like them, too.
Thanks to Lincoln Memorial University, Alice Lloyd College and the Museum of Appalachia. for their assistance.