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Senate Years of Service: 1853-1861 Party: Democrat
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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, until his withdrawal on January 21,
1861; seat declared vacant by Senate resolution on March 14, 1861; 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.
BibliographyAmerican 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.
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