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C. M. Clay
1860-1900
E. Anthony
USA: New York, New York City
Photograph on paper mounted on board
overall: 4 x 2 6/16 in.; 10.16 x 6.0325 cm
Gift of Mrs. Doris Hudson May
78.14.12.2

Carte de visite photograph; portrait of C.M. Clay sitting, wearing suit with hands in lap; printed on reverse "Published by/ E. & H. T. ANTHONY, / 501 Broadway, / New York. / EA. / FROM / PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVE / in / BRADY'S / National Portrait Gallery"; written above photographic information in pencil "C. M. Clay."


Cassius Marcellus Clay was born October 19, 1810 near Lexington, Kentucky on a slaveholding plantation. He attended Transylvania University in Kentucky then earned a law degree at Yale University. Hearing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison at Yale awakened Clay’s anti-slavery views; he freed the slaves he legally owned in 1844. In 1845 Clay began an abolitionist newspaper, the True American, in Lexington, which proved to be a risky endeavor; it failed in 1846. Though Clay sparked controversy with the True American and his antislavery orations, he did not back down from his emancipationist views. Clay served as a captain in the Kentucky Militia during the Mexican-American war and he served for a short while as a Major General in the Civil War. From 1863-1869 he served as Minister to Russia, aiding in negotiations that resulted in the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Clay retired to the family plantation in Kentucky and passed away on July 22, 1903; his funeral was attended by both members of the white and African-American community. A newspaper remarked, "...the negroes were lined up to pay their last respects to the man whom they honored as the Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky." Clay is buried in Richmond, Kentucky.



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