He was a self-taught scholar on the scriptural justification of universal salvation and frequently debated this theological topic with clergy of other denominations.

[3] In 1844, he moved from South Carolina to Red Banks in Marshall County in northern Mississippi on land recently occupied by the Chickasaw Nation.

At the end of his formal schooling, Clayton continued his education through self-study, allowing him to earn a living as a traveling teacher.

That union resulted in seven children: Virgil Pingree (1849–1920), Calhoun (1852–1857), Mary Newport (1854–1902), Sallie (1855–1856), twins Rose Taylor (1860–1950), and Albert William (1860–1905) and Carrie Lee (1867–1899).

The repeated preaching in this church of Adam's fall from grace and the Creator's subsequent threat of eternal damnation shaped the young Clayton.

When a religious awakening swept his church in 1832,[7] Clayton recollected that he "did not hesitate to regard the work then in progress as being due solely to the operation of God's unerring spirit of truth.

Those Calvinistic teachings taught God's sovereignty and the predestination of the elect to eternal happiness and the un-elected to endless torment.

Eight years earlier, Fuller had moved to South Carolina in response to a call from the state's fledgling Universalist community to support their cause.

After his teaching position ended at Van Patton's Mill, he continued with secular employment as a clerk in Columbia, South Carolina.

This sermon was a spontaneous oration, a characteristic style that would come to define Clayton's ministerial career as a staunch advocate of Universalism.

Drummond was preaching at the Antioch Baptist Church near Mountain Shoals, South Carolina, while the 23-year-old Clayton taught at a nearby schoolhouse.

Seizing the opportunity of his proximity to Drummond, Clayton mounted a tree stump midway between the church and schoolhouse, boldly declaring, "My friends, if any three men of this congregation will listen to me .

[14] However, when Clayton's wife fell ill, he postponed his move to Mississippi and accepted the convention's circuit rider position.

During his journey from South Carolina, Clayton attended the Georgia State Universalist Convention in Marietta, about 25 miles northwest of Atlanta.

On his father's plantation in Marshall County in northern Mississippi, Clayton no longer had access to a ministerial support system of a Universalist state convention.

George Rogers, traveled to Mississippi and delivered sermons in Salem, Spring Hill, and Ripley in neighboring Tippah County.

[18] Although eight years had passed since Rogers' last visit, Clayton began a once-a-month preaching circuit in Salem and Spring Hill.

Although Clayton reprised his South Carolina circuit-riding preaching style in Salem and Spring Hill, there were no formally organized Universalist societies in those towns that could raise subscriptions to pay for his services.

[20] During his stop in Notasulga, Alabama, Clayton preached a sermon “replete with the life and energy of the Gospel” for the dedication of the new Universalist society in that town.

Three years later, the General Universalist Convention accelerated the denomination's campaign against slavery by issuing official resolutions condemning the institution.

Rather Clayton observed that the convention’s one decision of “incalculable benefit” was to raise twenty-five thousand dollars to fund a Denominational High School in Georgia.

Clayton[35] and his son Daniel Emmett[36] enlisted as privates in the Jeff Davis Rifles and the Confederate Home Guard in February 1861.

The burdens of the society's ministry and publication of the periodical soon fell to Clayton when Bowman resigned in October 1880 both as the pastor and editor of The Atlanta Universalist.

[49] A Universalist society had been founded around 1846 near Louisville in Winston County by members of the Coleman family who had migrated west from South Carolina.

It is not coincidental that the societies in Louisville, Mississippi and Feasterville, South Carolina are both named Liberty Universalist Church, as they are connected to the Coleman family and Clayton.

The newspaper had undergone several ownership changes and the county's Democrats were publicly feuding over which candidate to put forward to fill a newly opened House of Representative seat made possible by Mississippi's population growth as recorded in the 1850 U.S. Census.

[57] Within a year, Bradley was gone and the paper repositioned itself as an organ for an “open and free discussion of all subjects in which mankind are interested.”[58] Clayton departed Aberdeen in 1856 and it appears that both newspapers, The Monroe Democrat and The Independent Miscellany, then ceased publication.

[61] As noted earlier, after the Civil War, Clayton briefly returned to publishing the short-lived Atlanta Universalist newspaper.

He supplied his hotel customers with ice and generated additional demand by advertising to the townspeople to come to his icehouse around dinner time and buy an ice-chilled watermelon for dessert.

Originally published in Germany in 1705 under the pseudonym of Paul Siegvolck, Klein-Nicolai reasoned that errors in biblical scholarship incorrectly condemned souls to perpetual damnation.