CASSIUS M. CLAY, "LION" - The Filson Historical Society

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1957] Cassius M. Clay 145 Mrs. Bnztus J. Clay's brother, Dr. Edmund Irvine Field, who died without issue in 1894. Stopping over on his return from the war to visit his brother, Christopher Irvine Field, at the latter's plantation in Bolivar Co., Mississippi, he later made his home in Bolivar County. ** Green Clay Smith was a member of Congress from Kentucky during the Civil War and later first Governor of Montana Territory. m Lieut. J rnes J. Jackson, of the 3rd Co. Ist Reg. See supra, note 27. u "Clay," presumably Green Clay Smith (supra, note 32) a first cousin of the writer of this letter. The reference in this letter to Col." Marshall is evidently a slip for Ca t. Thos. F. Marshall. James C. Stone, of Madison County, Kentucky, was a colonel of one of the regiments of Kentucky Volunteers. He was also a first cousin of the writer of this letter, being a nephew of her father, Col. Win. Rodes. He was the father of Samuel H. Stone, State Auditor of Kentucky in the Bradley Administration and a candidate for the Republican nomlnat/on for Governor in 1899. See Miller History and Genealogies, p. 273 (Transylvania Co. Press 1907). '* Sal y Redes Watson, the writer of this letter, a daughter of Col. Win. Rodes, and Brutus J. Clay's sister, Pauline Green Clay Rodas, who had married John Watson of Frankfort, Ky., where they lived, as did Brutus J. Clay's mother, Mrs. Sally Dudley. **These details are given in full in 1Vritings, pp. 480-482, 493-495. After the surrender at Encarnacion, Capt. Clay gained the "golden opinion" of the enlisted men in the captured detachment, interceding successfully that they not be massacred; and, on the long march to Mexico City letting the ragged, barefoot soldiers . . take turns riding his own mule," etc. See Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass, p. 139 (Univ. of Ky. Press, 1955). ** Martha Green Rodes, a daughter of Col. Win. Rodes and his wife, Pauline Green Clay Rodes, married Rev. Robert L. Breck. For account of his father, Judge Danie Breck, whose wife was n aunt of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, and who, in November, 1860, urged upon Lincoln the appointment of "conservative" men and told him that the appointment of Cassius M. Clay as Secretary of War would be "a declaration of war upon the state [of Ky.]." See Collins History o[ Kentucky, Vol. II, pp. 533-534 and The Lincoln' Herald, Smiley, Abraham Lincoln, etc., Winter, 1953, issue, pp. 17-18. See also Memoirs, pp. 215-216. ** In Capt. Clay's absence, this was agreed to by his wife and brother See supra, note 30. In Memo:rs, pp. 143-144, Capt. Clay cntlczzes Malor Borland of the Arkansas Volunteers, who outranked Gaines, for not setting out pickets on the leading roads to Encarnacion, prior to the surprise attack on the hacienda. Clay's stepfather, Jeptha Dudley a resident of Frankfort. "Santa Anna was "a man without a spark of honor." In 1845, he was living in Cuba, serving a term of 10 years banishment from Mexico. According to one account, president Polk offered him a large sum of money, while he was still in Cuba, to betray his own country. That he would have accepted it, but for the indiscretion of the American agent, sent to close the treasonable deal, see Ellis, supra, pp. 786-787 Clay s co.a ,ents colored .as they me by party feehng, need to be compared w*th me orthe things later said m Congress by political opponents of the Polk administratzon. It was in the Congress that convened in December, 1847, that Lincoln, as a new Congressman from Illinois moved his famous "spot" resolution in which the question was sharply pressed upon President Polk to name the spot to which he had sent American soldiers and where the first blood had been shed was within the established boundaries of the United States. For speech of Lincoln in support of his resolutions, speech of Alexander H. Stephens and the politics of the period, see Sandberg The Prairie Years, Vol. I, pp. 354-392. Lincoln's stand was not popular with his Illinois constituents, for though he was not a candidate for re-election, the Whig candidate was beaten in the next election by a Democrat who was a Mexican War veteran, Ibid., p. 402. Green, Wadleld, Cassius, and Brutus. Of the four sons, only Brutus left issue. Warfield and Cassius both died in childhood. OAs shown by his letter of December 10, 1846, to the New York Tribune, where he stated that it had never been his original design to limit himself to the editorship of The True American, since he thought "he could be more efficient in 'exerting' my influence as heretufore for the establishment of freedom' in other ways" [i.e. by direct political action]. **Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass, p. 139 (Univ. of Ky. Press, 1955). **Ibid., p. 139. **See Memoirs, pp. 230-231.
146 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 31 °Van Deusen The Life of Henry Clay, p. 391 (Little, Brown & Co., 1937). Ibld., p. 392. * For particulars as to this, see Memoirs, pp. 103-104 and 168-173, where the author acknowledges himself at fault for the wrong done Henry. Clay .and makes handsome amends. "As a popular leader, Henry Clay had no equal m his ttmes; and of all our public men, he began life in the front, and there he stayed till death gathered hma to hzs fathers . . . Whilst, opposed, in judgment, to slavery, and in general aspiration for .the liberty of all men Mr. Clay did not avow or conceive a war upon slavery; preferring, as most statesmen entrusted with the eadersh p in public affairs, to follow where he could not lead, and still maintain the leadership." See Memoirs, pp. 87-88, 95-101. The coolness between the two arose after the campaign of 1844, in the course of which Henry Clay had felt it necessary to disassociate himselffrom Cassius, because of the pronounced anti-slavery position the latter was taking in his speeches in the North while stumping for Henry. It had been further aggravated by the active part taken by James B. Clay (son of the statesman of Ashland) in the raid on Cassius s press in Augnst, 1845. *The Writings (with Preface and Memoir by Horace Greeley) had been accepted for publication by Harper & Brothers, prior to the Philadelphia convention which nominated Taylor, and the book was to come out in the course of the campaign. '*My book will be out in a few weeks. It is in the hands of the Harpers, the largest publisher in the Union, who will have sole disposal of it." C. M. Clay to B. J. Clay, letter of May 29 1848, in the Brutus J. Clay papers. U lt is of some significance that in the Centra Bluegrass indignation at Clay for publishing The True American was strongest in Woodford, County, the home of Thos. F. Marshall, eloquent Whig orator, and in Scott, home of Richard M. Johnson, leader of Democratic party, and others of the same family. See Memoirs, pp. 139-140, 230-231. 6, On a ticket with George D. Blakey for Lieut.-Governor. Blake'/, like Cassius M. Clay, had liberated atl his slaves. Memoirs, p. 212. While receiving less than 5,000 votes, this was greater than the margin of victory of Powell (Democrat) over Dixon (Whig), so that if Clay's vote had gone to Dixon the Whigs would have won the governorship. Though in 1855, Morehead was elected Governor on the Amer can (Know- Nothing) ticket with Whig support, the Whig party, long dominant in the state, never again was able to win the governorship. The party soon was also to disappear on the national scene. u Cf. The ,Filsou Club History Quarterly, Smiley, "Cassius M. Clay and Southern Industrialism, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 315-327 (Oct. 1954).
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