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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—AlabamaCLAY, Clement Claiborne, Jr.
(1816—1882)
Senate Years of Service:
1853-1861
Party:
Democrat
CLAY, Clement Claiborne, Jr., (son of Clement Comer Clay), a Senator from Alabama; born in Huntsville, Ala., December 13, 1816; graduated from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1834 and from the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1839; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Huntsville, Ala., in 1840; member, State house of representatives 1842, 1844, 1845; judge of the county court of Madison County 1846-1848; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1850 to the Thirty-second Congress; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy in the term commencing March 4, 1853, caused by the failure of the legislature to elect; reelected in 1858 and served from November 29, 1853, to January 21, 1861, when he withdrew; chairman, Committee on Commerce (Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses): member of the Confederate Senate 1861-1863; was a diplomatic agent of the Confederate States; arrested and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe in 1865; after the war settled on his plantation in Jackson County, Ala., and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits and to the practice of law; died at ‘Wildwood,’ near Gurley, Madison County, Ala., January 3, 1882; interment in Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, Ala.
Bibliography
American National Biography
; Dictionary of American Biography
; Clay-Clopton, Virginia. A Belle of the Fifties
. 1904. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969; Nueremberger, Ruth Ketring. The Clays of Alabama
. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1958.
Bleser, Carol K., and Frederick M. Heath. “The Impact of the Civil War on a Southern Marriage: Clement and Virginia Tunstall Clay of Alabama.” Civil War History
30 (September 1984): 197-220.
Nuermberger, Ruth Ketring. The Clays of Alabama: A Planter-Lawyer-Politician Family
. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1958.
Sterling, Ada, ed. A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853-1866.
1905. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969.
Watson, Elbert L. “Clement Claiborne Clay.” In Alabama United States Senators
, pp. 57-63. Huntsville, AL: Strode Publishers, 1982.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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