Emancipationist, Newspaper editor/publisher, soldier, politician and friend of Abraham Lincoln, Cassius M. Clay was a wealthy plantation land owner in Kentucky who freed his own slaves long before the Civil War began and at great personal risk, took up the cause of ending slavery throughout his life. He published an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington, KY, called The True American; He donated land and money in 1885 to open the first interracial college in the south (Berea College) and he lobbied for and helped draft the Emancipation Proclamation during the greatest struggle for change in our nation’s history.
Emancipationists sought to end slavery by gradual, legal and peaceful means, while abolitionists sought to end slavery by any means possible, which sometimes included a disregard for the law, the US Constitution and sometimes included violence. Cassius Clay strived to be an emancipationist but when his non-violent approach was met with violence, he fought back, sometimes with deadly force.
Cassius Clay was a talented speaker and true grassroots political activist but the content of his anti-slavery speeches made many enemies. During a political debate in 1843 Clay was shot in the chest by a paid assassin named Samuel Brown. Lucky for Clay, he kept a Bowie knife strapped to his chest, which stopped the bullet. Clay pulled his knife and seriously injured the assassin.
In 1845 Cassius Clay published an anti-slavery newspaper called The True American in Lexington, KY where he appealed to rank and file whites who didn’t own slaves. He made the practical argument that both black and white were enslaved by the few wealthy slave owners who forced labor from blacks while denying paid labor from whites. He fortified his newspaper building with iron doors and a cannon but was legally forced to relocate to Cincinnati, OH, and eventually moved back to Louisville, KY and changed the name of the paper to the Examiner.
In 1846, Clay volunteered to serve in the Mexican-American War, serving as a Captain where he distinguished himself by preventing the mass execution of his men after being captured. As Mexican soldiers were ordered to execute his men, Clay ordered his troop to lie down as he successfully convinced the Mexican soldiers that their actions were a breach of the terms of surrender. He and his men were imprisoned for more than a year in Mexico City.
Three years later at another Kentucky political debate in 1849, Clay was disarmed, beaten and stabbed in the chest by an angry mob. Clay grabbed his own Bowie knife, by the blade, took it back from one of the mob and stabbed Cyrus Turner, who had started the disturbance. A relative of Turner’s tried to shoot Clay in the head, but the gun misfired. Clay eventually recovered, Cyrus Turner did not.
In 1854 Cassius Clay gave an anti-slavery speech in Springfield, IL which impressed his 45 year old friend Abraham Lincoln, who four months later distinguished himself and first stood out strongly against slavery in his famous "Peoria Speech" where he spoke out against the Kansas-Nebraska Act saying: "I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself." During Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign, Clay drew record crowds to speak on Lincoln's behalf and gave Lincoln critical financial support.
In 1855 Cassius Clay donated land and money to open the first interracial college in the south with the goal of educating teachers from Appalachia to return and teach the children all over Appalachia with the hope of ending the ignorance from which slavery was tolerated.
The school became Berea College and is still among the top academic schools in the south. They have very high academic admission requirements and yet charge no tuition. They required each student to learn a trade such as tailoring, furniture making, ceramics, fabric weaving, basket making, broom making, and wrought iron works. The made goods were sold in the North to help finance the school and the graduates were taught how to provide a valuable service to the Appalachian community they would teach in. This helped them blend in better in the community and made it more difficult for them to be run off by angry farmers who used their children as free labor. The teachers who came out of Berea college, educated successive generations of people all over Appalachia in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina.
At the outset of the Civil War, Cassius Clay was commissioned to command the "Clay Battalion" which protected Washington DC until regular Federal troops could be trained. Later in 1861 he was sent to Russia as minister to the court of Czar Alexander II, where he witnessed the Emancipation Edict of 1861, which freed Russian peasants from feudal servitude. Upon his return in 1862 Clay was commissioned as a major general in the Union Army. He continued his anti-slavery speeches and began to lobby for and helped draft an Emancipation Proclamation that would free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring all slaves in territories still at war with the Union to be free. Clay considered the event to be "the culminating act of my life's aspirations."
Cassius Clay returned to Russia and was influential in the negotiations to purchase Alaska. He fought for legislation that created nearly a thousand new elementary schools and predominantly African-American Universities like Howard, Clark Atlanta, Hampton and Fisk. Clay was hounded and hated all through reconstruction for his efforts to end slavery and educate the entire nation. At the age of ninety-two, three men broke into Clay's home to rob and kill him but only one of the attackers escaped alive by horseback. Clay lived another year to the ripe old age of ninety-three.
Cassius Clay was someone who understood CHANGE only happens from the bottom up. He had HOPE, took ACTION and made great CHANGE happen in his lifetime. It was by no means easy, although he could have lived an easy life. He left a legacy of equality and justice that helped America continue on the path to fulfill its promise. Two of my grandparents graduated from Berea College during the Great Depression and I am proud to be a product of this great legacy.
Barack Obama has inspired and effectively managed the biggest bottom up, grassroots movement in American political history around the concept of HOPE, ACTION and CHANGE and these are some of the many reasons I believe Barack Obama can bring about the HOPE, ACTION and CHANGE we need to restore the promise of America.
Excerpts from the following sources:
Cassius Clay: Biography - KET
http://www.ket.org/...
Cassius Clay (1810-1903) - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The Kentucky Lion, Cassius Clay – Richard Kiel
http://www.richardkiel.com/...
Berea College
http://www.berea.edu/
Berea College Crafts
http://bereacc.stores.yahoo.net/...