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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, 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.
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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