Born in Kentucky to a wealthy planter family, Clay entered politics during the 1830s and grew to support the abolitionist cause in the U.S., drawing ire from fellow Southerners.

A founding member of the Republican Party in Kentucky, he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the U.S. minister to Russia.

Cassius's sister Elizabeth Lewis Clay (1798–1887) married John Speed Smith, who also became a state and US politician.

While at Yale, he heard abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison speak, and his lecture inspired Clay to join the anti-slavery movement.

[4] They had ten children, six of whom lived to adulthood: Later, he adopted Henry Launey Clay, believed to be his son by an extra-marital relationship while in Russia.

Her age varies in the few extant records; the 1900 US Census indicates that she was born in May 1882, suggesting that she may have been as young as 12 when she married Cassius M. Clay.

The cannon had been long mounted on a high crow's nest on the stately home's roof, and was used to deter mobs that would attack the Clay home for Clay's opposition to slavery (and later support of a fully integrated college in the area) in his political activities and newspaper.

Clay worked toward emancipation, both as a Kentucky state representative and as an early member of the Republican Party.

[3] Clay was elected to three terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives,[7] but he lost support among Kentuckian voters as he promoted abolition.

Jerking his Bowie knife out for retaliation, Clay happened to pull its silver-tipped scabbard up over his heart.

Within a month, he received death threats, had to arm himself, and regularly barricaded the armored doors of his newspaper office for protection, besides setting up two four-pounder cannons inside.

Clay was briefly a candidate for the vice presidency at the 1860 Republican National Convention,[3] but lost the nomination to Hannibal Hamlin.

President Lincoln appointed Clay to the post of Minister to the Russian court at St. Petersburg on March 28, 1861.

The Civil War started before he departed and, as there were no federal troops in Washington at the time, Clay organized a group of 300 volunteers to protect the White House and U.S.

[12] Emperor Alexander II of Russia gave sealed orders to the commanders of both his Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and sent them to the East and West coasts of the United States.

[13] When the Russian Atlantic fleet entered New York harbor, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary: In sending these ships to this country, there is something significant.

God bless the Russians.The action of Alexander II was confirmed in 1904 by Wharton Barker of Pennsylvania, who in 1878 was the financial agent in the United States of the Russian government.

Following Clay's return to Washington, D.C., Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in late 1862, to take effect in January 1863.

This led Ali to conclude: "Why should I keep my white slavemaster's name visible and my black ancestors invisible, unknown, unhonored?