| International Standard Book Number |
9781469684734 electronic book
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| International Standard Book Number |
9781469691008 electronic book
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| International Standard Book Number |
9781469691015 electronic book
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| International Standard Book Number |
9781469691022 electronic book
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| International Standard Book Number |
9781469690995 hardcover
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| International Standard Book Number |
1469690993 hardcover
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| Personal Name |
Marshall, Anne E. (Anne Elizabeth), 1975- author.
|
| Title Statement |
Cassius Marcellus Clay : the life of an antislavery slaveholder and the paradox of American reform / Anne E. Marshall.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2025.
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| Physical Description |
303 pages : black and white illustrations ; 25 cm.
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| Series Statement |
Civil War America
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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| Formatted Contents Note |
Inheritance -- Uneradicable disease -- Lamentable inconsistencies -- The True American -- Fight like a man -- The name of republican -- Shot and shell -- Unrewarded sacrifice -- Undiplomatic diplomatist -- The constitution and the union -- Restoring the autonomy of the states -- Lion of Whitehall -- The legend of Cassius Clay.
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| Summary, Etc. |
"The nineteenth-century Kentucky antislavery reformer Cassius Marcellus Clay is generally remembered as a knife-wielding rabble-rouser who both inspired and enraged his contemporaries. Clay brawled with opponents while stumping for state constitutional changes to curtail the slave trade. He famously deployed cannons to protect the office of the antislavery newspaper he founded in Lexington. Despite attempts on his life, he helped found the national Republican Party and positioned himself as a staunch border state ally of Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he served as US minister to Russia, working to ensure that European allies would not recognize the Confederacy. And yet he was a slave owner until the end of the Civil War. Though often misremembered as an abolitionist, Clay was like many Americans of his time: interested in a gradual end to the institution of slavery but largely on grounds that it limited whites' ability to profit from free labor and the South's opportunity for economic advancement. In the end, Clay's political positions were far more about protecting members of his own class than advancing the cause of Black freedom. This vivid and insightful biography reveals Cassius Clay as he was: colorful, yes, but in many ways typical of white Americans who disliked slavery in principle but remained comfortable accommodating it. Reconsidering Clay as emblematic rather than exceptional, Anne E. Marshall shows today's readers why it took a violent war to finally abolish slavery and why African Americans' demands for equality struggled to gain white support after the Civil War"-- Provided by publisher.
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| Subject-Personal Name |
Clay, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Antislavery movements History 19th century. United States
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Politicians Kentucky Biography.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Slaveholders Kentucky Biography.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Biographies.
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