Clement Claiborne Clay, was one of six Southern senators who gave speeches on January 21, 1861 resigning from the U.S. Senate. Clay’s speech was delivered after his state, Alabama had held a convention that declared the state had seceded from the United States.
After he returned to Alabama, Clement Clay was selected to represent the state in the Confederate Senate. In 1864 he travelled to Canada to work with Confederate agents there on secret service operations against the United States, including the failed raid on St. Albans, Vermont. Clay’s portrait adorned the fourth Confederate dollar bill. After the war, the former senator was imprisoned because of suspicions that he had been involved in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination but he was later released.
In his speech he says that Alabama had entered the Union at a time when the country was divided because of the North’s hostility “to the domestic slavery of the South.” He told his Senate audience that the years following Alabama’s admission were “strongly marked by proofs of the growth and power of that anti-slavery spirit of the Northern people which seeks the overthrow of that domestic institution of the South. …It is to-day the master spirit of the Northern States…” (p. 202)
Those interested in reading Clay’s entire speech, and the speeches of all of the departing Southern senators, can find them here. I have reproduced all but the first paragraphs of Clay’s speech below. In those paragraphs, which you can read beginning on page 201 of the above linked source, he tells the Senate that his state has seceded and assigns guilt to “the North” for Alabama leaving. Here is the rest of the speech.
This concluded Sen. Clay’s speech.
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Amazing as it’s written the devil quotes scripture ! Northerners had slaves too ! Giving it up doesn’t make fools of our ancestors , it means that we have a different view of justice in our time !
Cl airborne is a prominent name ? Did he have northern ancestors ?
I’m wondering how property became their foremost concern. Yes, it is important in a state ruled by the people, but not as important as the power of all people in a democracy. A country is not owned by its wealthy. It is owned by us all.
Bull Shit! The owners still make the rules! The only thing the Civil War was empower Northern Industrial Oligarchs over a third of the nations millionaires owned Pittsburgh, Pa. And it was those Northern Oligarchs that cause the Civil war Between the States! Clay was absolutely accurate in blaming those people for causing the division of the nation, the secession and war! Nothing has changed, today those elected are the biggest liars and beggars of all, and they are actually elected by ignorant people to lead our government and tell everyone else what to do… It’s the most peculiar irrational thing to be honest. And people actually believe in this system of enslavement to a government run by other people they will never know who don’t really give a damn about them. They own you not the other way around….
I’ll stick to Santa Claus, Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, Tooth Fairies, Cupid, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster… At least they are reliable!