Of Clay, a contemporary said, “Naturally pugnacious, he would fight the wind did it blow from the South side when he wanted it to blow from the North.” Clay’s father, Revolutionary War veteran and local politician Green Clay, lived near Louisville and owned several businesses and many slaves his son’s contrary views had evolved in the North.Īfter attending Lexington’s Transylvania University, the younger Clay headed to Yale. Twice during the 1860s he served as United States Ambassador to Russia, invoking Czar Alexander II’s freeing of 23 million serfs to prod President Abraham Lincoln toward issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. When the first weeks of the Civil War found him in the nation’s capital, Clay organized a battalion of 300 volunteers to defend the White House. He fought in the Mexican War, spending 18 months in Mexico City as a prisoner of war. His drive took him far beyond the comforts of his family’s estate, White Hall.Ĭlay served three terms in Kentucky’s legislature. Instead of retreating into wealth and the privileged life of a southern planter, Clay campaigned ardently against slavery, decrying its harm to blacks and to poor whites.

After giving a speech in Texas denouncing slavery in 1849, he singlehandedly fought off six attackers. Clay moved his printing operation to Cincinnati, continuing to edit at his Lexington office. Clay’s hubris so inflamed neighbors that while he was sick at home a mob emptied the premises. A realist, he fireproofed his print shop with iron, positioned two cannons at the door, and hung rifles on the wall. Son of a prominent area planter, Clay had freed his slaves the year before. In 1845, Cassius Marcellus Clay of Lexington proclaimed himself first to “ever beard the monster in his den,” when he founded True American, an antislavery newspaper. When in 1964 Louisville-born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., converted to Islam, taking as his name Muhammad Ali, the 22-year-old heavyweight boxing champion was casting off a monicker made legendary by another flamboyant Kentucky fighter given to dramatic pronouncements.

The Lion of White Hall at Rest: Clay in his middle years displayed no less resolve against slavery than he did as a youth.

Cassius marcellus clay sr