USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Glimpses of historic Madison County, Kentucky > Part 13
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CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY II
Cassius Marcellus Clay II (1846-1913), the son of Brutus Junius Clay I and grandson of General Green Clay, was a graduate of Yale, who, like his father, became a distinguished agriculturist of Bourbon County. He wrote many articles on economic and poli- tical subjects. The Democrats elected him to the State Legislature in 1871 and again in 1873, where he did much to encourage wise legislation. His services were continued in the Senate, in 1885, where he promoted liberal legislation for the regulation of cor- porations. As a delegate from Bourbon County, Mr. Clay became the distinguished President of Kentucky's constitutional convention, which made the State's present constitution, under which Ken- tucky has prospered for the last sixty-five years.
BRUTUS JUNIUS CLAY II
Brutus Junius Clay II, the son of Cassius Marcellus Clay I, was born at White Hall in 1847. Some of his noted teachers in preparing for college were Jason Chenault in Richmond, B. B. Sayre in Frankfort, and instructors of Transylvania College in Lexington. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1868 with the degrees of Bachelor of Science and Civil Engineer. For sometime after graduation he engaged in the wholesale grocery, lumber, and stone quarrying businesses. He raised cotton in Mississippi, and had large farming interests in Kentucky and Illinois.
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In 1893 Mr. Clay made possible the first hospital in Richmond by giving property on Glyndon Avenue in memory of his first wife, Pattie A. Field. This institution is known as the Pattie A. Clay Infirmary. His second wife, Mrs. Lalla Rookh Fish Marsteller, whomhe married in 1895, was his devoted companion until his death in 1932.
Mr. Clay was appointed United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1900, and was presented by the French gov- ernment with a commemorative diploma and several gold and silver medals. On the return of the Commissioners from Paris, President Mckinley gave a dinner at the White House in their honor. The diplomatic corps, members of the Supreme Court and other distinguished persons were also guests.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him Minister to Switzer- land in 1905, where he remained until early in Taft's administra- tion. While in Switzerland he was elected a member of the Institute of Geneva. In 1912 he was a delegate to the Progressive Party convention which nominated Theodore Roosevelt for Presi- dent. He was also a delegate to the Progressive convention of 1916.
MISS LAURA CLAY
Miss Laura Clay had in her lineage blood that might be ex- pected to make of her a leader in whatever causes she might become interested. She was born in 1849 at White Hall, the Clay ancestrial home of elegance, built by her grandfather Green Clay. She was the daughter of Cassius M. Clay and Mary Jane Warfield.
After the return of Mrs. Clay and the children from Russia, where they had accompanied Mr. Clay when he went there as minister in 186%, the mother took over the education of the children and saw to it that Laura had more formal academic training than her father thought necessary for women. Few colleges were open to women in the sixties, but Laura continued to dream of the day when she might rank intellectually and otherwise as the equal of men who she felt were not her superior. After she was thirty years of age she spent more than a year at the University of Michigan and a year at the State College in Lexington.
Miss Clay's father was strongly opposed to woman suffrage. In 1894 he expressed his opposition in a ten thousand word article
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with the title "Icarus." As granting this mythological character's petition to fly had caused Icarus' fall and death, so Mr. Clay believed that giving women political privileges would bring about the fall of woman-kind and consequently a serious injury to society. The original copy of his paper is in the possession of the authors.
Above all, she was a devout Christian and was interested in the advancement of women. While living in Lexington one winter, she went to the jail two or three times a week in an effort to satisfy her desire for service. Her strong mind, after long de- liberation, concentrated on woman's suffrage. Unfortunately Ken- tucky with its southern traditions was not a fertile field for such ideas. Her laws were the most socially backward of all the states. For example, in the eighties a man might collect his wife's wages; she could not legally write a will; he controlled all her property; and inherited all her personal and a life time interest in her real estate, when there were children. However, rapid progress was made during the next decade. Miss Clay became president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1887 and continued in that official capacity for thirty-four years. Through the efforts of this organization in Madison County, women were permitted to enter Central University in 1893.
In January, 1882 and again in 1884 Miss Clay and other women who were interested in the Equal Rights program, appeared before the judiciary committee of the Senate, demanding reforms for women. Their efforts resulted in the incorporation of the Louisville School of Pharmacy for Women and the rights of its graduates to practice in the state.
Miss Clay felt that the liquor interests were solidly lined up in the Senate against women's suffrage because they feared the results of women's vote on the liquor business. For several years during her presidency of the Kentucky E.R.A., it worked jointly with the W.C.T.U. on the General Assembly and together they were able to secure the passage of a bill providing separate insti- tutions for boys and girls in the house of reform and for other re- forms for women and children in the state institutions.
According to the Kentucky laws, certain women could vote in the school elections. On August 21, 1913 Miss Clay went to a rural precinct in Madison County to cast her vote and four other
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ladies appeared at the polls in Richmond. No one of them was permitted to vote because no ballots had been provided for women. A suit ensued which resulted in an amendment to the primary law at the next session of the Legislature, thus another victory for women was achieved.
Miss Clay was active in the national organization with such women as Susan B. Anthony, who spent several days in Richmond organizing the local suffrage group in 1879, Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucy Stone, and Mrs. George W. Upton. Miss Clay gave much of her time and own means in lecturing and organizing the women of the southland with the hope that they might awaken to their responsibilities and possibilities in the cause of woman's rights. She spent a whole year organizing and working for the women of Oregon, but they were unable to convince the State Legislature of the validity of their cause. She did not let failures discourage her, but thought that in God's own good time her cause would prevail.
Her sentiments were strong for states' rights and consequently she was bitterly opposed to the amendment to the constitution granting woman's suffrage. She wanted the reform very much but even more she wanted it to come through the states. She classed it with the 14th and 15th amendments.
She broke with the national organization in 1918 and early in 1919 severed her relations with the Kentucky E.R.A. and organized the Citizen's Committee for a State Suffrage Amendment. After the Kentucky State Legislature voted the passage of the amend- ment by a large majority in January 1920, the new suffrage or- ganization changed its name to that of the League of Women Voters. Miss Clay still hoped that states' rights might be preserved by some action of the Supreme Court.
During her remaining years she took an active part in politics. She was one of the eight delegates from Kentucky to the Demo- cratic Convention in San Francisco in 1920. There she received the signal honor of having a vote cast for her for the presidential nomination. Three years later she ran for state senator, but was defeated by the Republican opponent.
Miss Clay gave ungrudgingly thirty-eight years of her life to woman's suffrage but its final achievement was a sore disappoint- ment to her because it meant the loss of those states' rights which
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she regarded so precious to the South. Having achieved much, but dissatisfied with the method used, she died in 1941 at the age of ninety-two a highly respected citizen of Lexington.
CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY III
The living Clay of distinction is Cassius Marcellus III, the son of Cassius M. II and the great-grandson of General Green Clay. He was born in 1895 in Bourbon County and graduated from Yale in 1918. After serving in various responsible military positions in World War I, he received a law degree from Yale in 1921.
Mr. Clay was voted by news reporters who covered the 1954 session of the Kentucky Legislature, as one of the two "most valuable members of the House from a public standpoint."
He was for nine years a lawyer with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation at Washington, D. C. In this capacity he was as- sistant general counsel for the RFC, and from 1941 to 1945 he was general solicitor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Balti- more, Md.
Since returning to Kentucky in 1945, Mr. Clay has been engaged in farming and the practice of his profession. He has been active in civic affairs and was chairman of the Bourbon County Citizens Committee which assisted in the investigation of the ballot stuffing case in Bourbon County in the 1948 general election. He was active in the Committee of One Thousand which successfully opposed calling of a State Constitutional Convention in 1947. He was chairman of the same Committee in 1951 when a proposed amend- ment to allow an unlimited number of amendments to be voted on in any election was defeated.
Mr. Clay is a former chairman of the Bourbon County Red Cross Chapter and the first Kentuckian to serve on the national Board of Governors of the Red Cross. He has served on several committees of the Bourbon County Farm Bureau, including one dealing with the present tobacco crisis. In the Legislature he voted for all legislation for the betterment of the school system, including the Minimum Foundation plan.
He is the author of Regulation of Public Utilities (1932), The Mainstay of American Individualism (1934), A Survey of the Farm Question (1934).
Mr. Clay is the father of four sons and one daughter.
CHAPTER XI The Slavery Controversy
SLAVERY IN THE CHURCH
T THE APPARENT AVOIDANCE of the use of the word slave in Old Cane Springs is interesting. The absence of the term in the minutes of the Republican Baptist Church on the upper Boones- borough pike and the Cane Spring Church is unique. No cases involving slavery appear in these minutes, but this was not the condition among the Methodists of the county.
The minute book of the Quarterly Conference of Madison County, Kentucky, Methodists, from 1811 to 1845 gives much information concerning controversies of the sale and purchase of slaves by members of the churches of that conference. On February 27, 1813, the Quarterly Conference, meeting at New Providence, Madison County, adopted the Ohio Rule to regulate the sale and purchase of slaves. Thereafter many cases involving the application of this rule came before the county unit of the church for adjudication.
The provisions of the Ohio Annual Conference Rule were:
"No member of our Society shall purchase a slave except in cases of mercy or humanity to the slave purchased. And if he purchase a slave he shall state to the next ensuing Quarterly Meet- ing Conference the number of years he thinks the slave should serve as a Compensation for the price paid, and if the Quarterly Meeting Conference think the time too long they shall proceed and fix the time, and the member who has purchased shall im- mediately after the determination execute a Legal Instrument of manumission of such slave at the expiration of the time determined by the Quarterly Meeting Conference, as the Laws of the State will admit. And in default of his executing such instrument of manumission or on his refusing to submit his case to the judgment of the Quarterly Meeting Conference he shall be excluded [from] the Society provided also that in case of a female slave it shall be inserted in the Instrument of manumission (if the Laws of the State will admit) that all her Children born during the time of her servitude shall be free at the age of twenty-one, if the Laws will admit so early a manumission and if not at such times as the
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law will admit. And if any member of Society shall sell a slave except at the request of the slave to prevent a separation in families he shall be excluded [from] the Society. Provided nevertheless that if any member of our Society shall think it necessary on any other occasion to sell a slave he shall apply to the preacher who has the Charge of the Circuit whose duty it shall be to appoint a Committee of three members of our Society not slave holders to judge whether such sale be proper and the person applying shall abide by their determination or be excluded [from] the Society."
Two cases from the minutes concerning the application of these rules will suffice:
"January 14, 1815.
"The Committee that enquired into the case of Bro. John Ben- nett respecting a slave are of opinion that it was a purchase and have reported the same to the Q. M. Conference and the Con- sideration of the said report is referred as unfinished business to the next Q. M. Conference."
"Again the report of the Committee ... referred from the last to the present Q. M. Conference in the case of Bro. J. Bennett and the s[ai]d Committee report that he has purchased a Negro girl & the Conf. has confirmed the report of the Committee. And in consequence of his refusing to comply with the Rule on slavery is expelled from the society. Bro. J. Pace in behalf of J. Bennett means to appeal his case to the annual Conference."
"November 4, 1815.
"Question are there any Complaints or appeals.
"Answer Bro. Bennett who was expelled from Society for refusing to comply with the Rule on slavery submitted his case to the Q. M. Conference a Negro girl named Sarah of 18 years of age for which he gave 370 dollars he proposed that the said girl should serve 20 years and the Conference thinks the proposal reasonable, and in consequence of this compliance the Conference agrees to restore him his former privileges in the Church."
"February 1, 1817.
"This conference have concluded to readopt the Rules of the Ohio Conference respecting slavery until further directed by the Tennessee Conference.
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"The case of Philip Prather's purchasing a Negro man came before the Conference, and the Bro. Prather stated to the Con- ference that he was to give five hundred dollars for a Negro man named George aged 40 years and proposed keeping him for life and the Conference are of opinion that 15 years Service will remunerate Bro. Prather."
Such cases involving slavery are not mentioned in the minutes after 1826.
The last quarterly meeting recorded in this minute book was held at Providence Church in Madison County, January 18, 19, 1845. This very significant entry appears for this date:
"There was a motion made and seconded that the stewards and class leaders bring the subject of division of the Methodist Episcopal Church before the different Classes between this and next Quarterly meeting that the minds of the members of the Church be known on the Subject."
Just what was done at this meeting is not known, since the record appears not to be extant.
The controversy over slavery that divided the Methodist Church in 1844 is clearly described in Methodism and the Home Church (Chapter III) published by the authors in 1952.
The occasion for the book was the observance by the First Methodist Church of Richmond of twenty-five years of services in its new edifice on West Main Street. The division in the Presby- terian Church did not occur until after the Civil War began in 1861. An account of the separation in Kentucky and the establish- ment of Central University in Richmond is given in the chapter on "Colleges."
Apparently the Methodists of the County quarreled among themselves over slavery, the issues of the Civil War and Reconstruc- tion, andthe division in 1844 until far into the twentieth century. There seems to have been no building for the Northern sympa- thizers in Madison until 1866. After the close of the war the Southern sympathizers in the College Hill community (see map) refused to allow the Northern sympathisers to worship with them. Consequently the latter built a handsome brick edifice in which to worship. This building was on the same side of the road and about two or three hundred feet from the Southern church. Only
Methodist Episcopal Church, built before the Civil War. Occupied by Southern sympathizers, who refused to admit Northern sympathizers, who built the brick church below. A more commodious building was constructed in 1906.
Methodist Church, built soon after the Civil War, by Union sympathizers, about 100-200 yards from the church above. Note the cemetery between the two buildings. This church was removed after the Methodist union in 1939.
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the community cemetery separated the two places of worship. (See illustrations.) This separation continued until 1939, when the schism in the Methodist Church at large was healed. About 1940, the brick building was removed and the people united to worship in the more commodious edifice which the Southerners had erected in 1906. All this occurred in the Old Cane Springs com- munity about which the authors published a book in 1936 and again in 1937, as is told elsewhere.
As indicated in the chapter on "Colleges," Northern and Southern Presbyterians in Richmond came to worship in separate buildings, and continue to do so today. The Northern group occupied a brick church for many years where Kroger's store now is (1955), near the corner of East Main and Madison Street. A stone church on North Estill Street, in the eastern part of Richmond now accom- modates those who do not care to worship with Presbyterians who meet in a beautiful brick church on West Main Street.
The schism in the Presbyterian Church that occurred in the country at large in 1861 and in Kentucky in 1866 fortunately, ap- pears to be nearing an end. There are brick churches for Negroes in Richmond, and segregation in its various aspects appears to be nearing the end, according to laws, constitutions, court de- cisions, and public sentiment. What a changing world! Surely the changes are for the better.
CLAY VS. FEE
Cassius M. Clay had made clear his disagreement with the course pursued by Mr. Fee and his followers at a Fourth of July celebration in 1856, at Slate Lick Springs on the west branch of Brushy Fork, a little above Berea in Madison County. Fee, who spoke first and who accepted the doctrine of the "higher law" with regard to the legality of slavery, concluded his speech by saying, "'A law confessedly contrary to the will of God ought not by the human courts to be enforced,'" and then, referring to the Fugitive Slave Law, said that he "'would refuse to obey [it and] then suffer the penalty.'"
Mr. Clay spoke next and warned his hearers that "'Mr. Fee's position is revolutionary, insurrectionary, and dangerous.' He con- tinued by saying, 'As long as a law is on the statute book, it is to be respected and obeyed until repealed by the Republican
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majority.'" Though Fee charged Clay with inconsistency for saying, "When he [Clay] came to the Fugitive Slave Law .. . , 'So far as this is concerned, I would not obey it myself; it is con- trary to natural right, and I would not degrade myself by obeying it,'" Clay maintained always thereafter that Fee and his followers taught disobedience to law and were, therefore, radicals and revolutionaries, while he advocated opposition to slavery through regular constituted channels, which meant repeal by "Republican" (representative ) legislation. Thus Clay was an emancipationist and Fee an abolitionist, just as were Lincoln and Garrison, respec- tively.
This difference of procedure against slavery caused Clay not to defend Fee's course of action, which precipitated mob violence in Madison County and finally, late in December, 1859, caused Fee and other Bereans to be expelled from the county. In this wise, Clay ceased to champion the cause of Berea College and consequently he might be denied the honor, in the truest sense, of being one of its founders, even though he gave land and money to start the institution and invited Mr. Fee to come to Madison to continue his program against slavery .- John G. Fee, Auto- biography, pp. 101-105. Also Cassius Marcellus Clay's Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches, pp. 241-247.
THE MOBBING OF JOHN G. FEE
John G. Fee (1816-1901), a native of Bracken County, Ken- tucky, attended college at Augusta, Kentucky, and Oxford, Ohio, and studied theology "at Lane Seminary, Ohio, where he became convinced of the great evil and sinfulness of American slavery." After failing to persuade his father to emancipate his slaves he "carried the gospel [of freedom] to others," for which his father "disowned and disinherited him, giving him one dollar in his will."
Mr. Fee had been mobbed in Lewis, Mason, and Bracken coun- ties before coming to Madison. The most formable mob, apparently, that he ever encountered was at Lewis' Chapel in the Big Bend of the Kentucky River. He gives a good account of this unfortunate affair in his Autobiography, pp. 112-122.
"In the years 1857-8 I had appointments for preaching at Lewis Chapel in this county, in the region known as Big Bend of the Kentucky River. In this region Bro. Robert Jones had also
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traveled as a colporteur, selling the publications of the American Tract Society, and also distributing anti-slavery documents-tracts written by myself and others.
"In the month of February, 1858, I went to the house of a Mr. Fields, an excellent man, a substantial farmer; and on Friday evening preached at his house.
"I had been warned not to come again into that region; but my covenant was upon me to preach the Gospel of Christ in this my native State. . . .
"Saturday morning was one of comparative comfort for that month of the year. After breakfast I retired to an adjacent forest for prayer and reflection. On returning to the house, Mr. Fields said to me, 'Mr. C. . ., an ex-member of the Legislature, has been here, and advises me not to go to the chapel; "for," said he, "there will be trouble there today.' . . .
"When we arrived, Mr. Marsh, a friend who was outside waiting for us, advancing, said, in a very subdued tone, 'We shall have trouble here today.' I replied, 'Let us do our duty, and leave the results with God;' and passed on into the house; for when duty is clear, it is not wise to counsel with fears. Mr. Marsh followed in, and seated himself near to the desk where I stood. He seemed to desire to be near to me. Exactly on time, eleven o'clock, we commenced the service of the morning. I had advanced about half way in my sermon when I noticed restiveness in the congre- gation, and some young men left the house.
"In a moment the house was surrounded with armed men. I said to the congregation, 'Sit still;' and I preached on. Soon Mr. C. came in, and seated himself by Mr. Marsh. C. commenced whispering to Marsh. Marsh shook his head, and C_ got up and retired from the house. I continued preach- ing as though all was right. Soon C. ___ came in, and ad- vancing to me said, 'Mr. Fee, there are men here who want you to stop and come out.' I said, 'Mr. Covington, I am engaged in a religious duty and in the exercise of a constitutional right; please sit down and do not interrupt.' He turned on his heel, and went out. Soon three men entered the doorway, with guns in their hands, and with horrible oaths cried out, 'Stop, G_d D_n you, and come out here.' I preached on. Marsh, Fields, and others-men and women-remained, still apparently listening. Soon the men re-
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ferred to rushed forward, and, seizing me by the collar of my coat and by my arms, dragged me to the door. There a stout man, S. _ stepped up, and pulling a new rope from his pocket, swore he would hang me to the first limb if I did not then promise to leave the county and never come back again. ... With violence they pulled me out into the highway-the county road. ...
"They then went back into the chapel and brought out Bro. Jones; and the captain of the company took him behind him on his horse, and they started with us for the Kentucky River, . . .
"The mob took us near to the bank of the river. There the leaders left me in the care of others, and turned off to counsel with men who were for some reason already on the ground.
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