Laura Clay and the Woman's Rights Movement

Paul E. Fuller

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813184203
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Laura Clay was the daughter of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay and an important and controversial figure in the woman's rights movement. Paul E. Fuller traces this remarkable woman's career, from her early successes in Kentucky to her emergence as the most prominent southern suffragist. He devotes particular attention to the problems encountered by the suffragists in organizing the South, to the strategy of their alliance with the Woman's Christian Temperence Union, and the to peculiar dilemma of southern suffragists and race. Clay's many important contributions to the struggle for women's rights have been overshadowed by her brief apostasy, when in the final months of the suffrage struggle, her states' rights convictions caused her to withdraw from NAWSA and support state rather than federal enfranchisement. Though she remained active in politics until her death in 1941, she is remembered most for her participation in the attempt to block ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. This new edition balances the record on Laura Clay and her accomplishments.

Notes

Chapter 1

1. See David L. Smiley, Lion of White Hall: The Life of Cassius M. Clay (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962), for a full account of this fascinating figure. Smiley gives little attention to Clay’s children and none to the feminist activities of the Clay women.

2. Ibid., pp. 152–53, 157, 217–18.

3. Laura was an infant during Clay’s long convalescence at White Hall after he had killed Cymer Turner at a political rally in Foxtown, Kentucky, and had suffered wounds which almost took his life; ibid., pp. 141–42; Cassius M. Clay, Memoirs (Cincinnati: J. Fletcher Brennan & Co., 1886), 1:64–66; Smiley, Lion of White Hall, pp. 31–32; Clavia Goodman, Bitter Harvest: Laura Clay’s Suffrage Work (Lexington, Ky.: Bur Press, 1949), p. xiii. This description of the Warfields is contained in the “Foreword” by Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, a Lexingtonian who knew the family well.

4. Mary Rogers Clay and Zachary F. Smith, The Clay Family (Louisville: John P. Morton and Company, 1889). For births and deaths of children who did not live into adulthood see a note in Laura Clay’s handwriting in October 1903, Laura Clay Papers, University of Kentucky Library, Lexington (hereafter cited as Laura Clay Papers).

5. Before the war, Mary Jane Clay wrote to two of her daughters who were away at school: “Poor Negroes, miserable creatures! They cannot be relied on, therefore I find if I want a thing done, I must see it done. I am compensated for my attention by having 1 and 1/2 gallons of milk from cows at milking, that gave a quart before.” She also reported that she had been able to double the amount of butter from a gallon of milk by “experimenting” with the churning process. To Mary Barr Clay and Sarah (“Sallie”) Lewis Clay, n.d., Clay Family Papers, Filson Club, Louisville, Ky. (hereafter cited as Clay Family Papers).

6. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 156; Mary Barr Clay, “Kentucky,” in History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Mathilda Gage (Rochester, N.Y.: Susan B. Anthony, 1886), 3:820.

7. See copy of an anonymous poem, “All But My Wife and Mother Advised Me to Yield,” which celebrates Clay’s bout with pro-slavery forces of Lexington in July 1845. The poem, written shortly after Clay’s True American newspaper was suppressed, was sent to Laura Clay by Letitia W. Brosius, 16 March 1872, Laura Clay Papers. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 93, mentions the courage and steadfastness of the Clay women.

8. Cassius M. Clay, Jr., to Slew [Tarleton], 14 March 1857, Laura Clay Papers.

9. Ibid.

10. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 175.

11. Ibid., pp. 175–77, 177–78; Andrew H. Campbell to Laura Clay, 3 May 1906, Laura Clay Papers.

12. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 180; James Rood Robertson, A Kentuckian at the Court of the Tzars (Berea, Ky.: Berea College Press, 1935), p. 110.

13. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 184. Laura Clay later said: “one of the girls could not stand the rigors of the bitter climate.” Louisville Courier-Journal, 4 February 1940.

14. Thomas D. Clark, A History of Kentucky (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937), pp. 457–64; J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Lexington during the Civil War (Lexington, Ky.: Commercial Printing Company, 1938).

15. Mary Jane Clay to Laura Clay, 17 February 1863, Clay Family Papers; J. Winston Coleman, Jr., A Centennial History of Sayre School, 1854–1954 (Lexington, Ky.: Winburn Press, 1954), pp. 9–11.

16. Louisville Courier-Journal, 4 February 1940; Diary of Laura Clay, 12 April, 10 June 1864, Laura Clay Papers (hereafter cited as Clay Diary).

17. Mary Jane Clay to Laura Clay, 23 May, 6 June 1864, Clay Family Papers.

18. Clay Diary, 29 July 1864; Clark, History of Kentucky, p. 464; Clay Diary, 29 July, 4 April 1864.

19. Cassius M. Clay to John G. Fee, 8 July 1855. Quoted in Robertson, A Kentuckian at the Court of the Tzars, p. 31. Mary Barr Clay to Laura Clay, 13 March 1865; Green Clay to Mary Jane Clay, n.d., Clay Family Papers.

20. Clay Diary, 25 April 1864.

21. Ibid., 17, 18 April, 17 May 1864.

22. To Mary Barr Clay, 21 December 1865, Clay Family Papers; Clay Diary, 7 May 1864.

23. See Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 59–68. While Scott’s comments are not very specific about what was taught at Southern female schools, she states that “not much could be said for the rigors of their curriculums or the qualifications of the teachers,” p. 68. This is a decided contrast to Sayre Institute, where, aside from piano and voice lessons, the curriculum was almost identical to that of Transylvania University, a male college located nearby. It is possible that the two schools shared other faculty members, as was the case with Dr. Peter. (Interview with John D. Wright, Jr., who has a history of the college in manuscript, Lexington, Ky., 26 September 1971.) Coleman, History of Sayre School, pp. 8, 10.

24. Clay Diary, 3 April 1864, 19 July 1865, 15 May 1864.

25. Mary Jane Clay to Laura Clay, 17 April 1864, Laura Clay Papers; Cassius M. Clay to Mary Jane Clay, 26 December 1863, Clay Family Papers; Clay Diary, 30 May 1864; Church Record of Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages, and Burials at Christ Church, Lexington, Ky., 20 November 1864.

26. Clay Diary, 4, 13 April 1864.

27. Coleman, History of Sayre School, pp. 12, 39. Sayre has no records of Laura Clay’s grades nor the courses she took to fulfill the graduation requirement. Interview with Donn D. Hollingsworth, Headmaster, Sayre School, Lexington, Ky., 29 June 1970. Scott, The Southern Lady, p. 59.

28. Mary Jane Clay to Laura Clay, 18 October 1864, Cassius M. Clay to Mary Jane Clay, 26 December 1863, Clay Family Papers.

29. 9 December 1865, ibid.

30. Cassius M. Clay to S. Bowles, 11 February 1869; to Laura Clay, 20 December 1865, ibid.

31. Laura Clay to Mary Barr Clay, 21 April 1866, ibid.

32. J. Winston Coleman reports that White Hall as it now stands was built while Clay was in Russia from a design by Major Thomas Lewinski, a noted Lexington architect, and that John McMurtry was in charge of the construction. Lexington Sunday Herald-Leader, 21 August 1960. Letters from the period make it clear that Mary Jane Clay was overseeing the work. Clay wrote his wife that his only concerns were permanency and fireproofing. Cassius M. Clay to Mary Jane Clay, 26 December 1863, Clay Family Papers. Mary Jane Clay wrote Laura, “I keep three men and three vehicles, four horses, four mules and eight oxen all the time engaged hauling and at night you can see but little accomplished; and three Irishmen are waiting continually on the stone masons besides, so in all there are eight men engaged and sometimes nine.” 27 April 1864, ibid.

33. 5 May 1866, ibid.

34. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, pp. 202–3.

35. Laura Clay to Mary Barr Clay, 21 December 1865, Clay Family Papers.

36. Goodman, Bitter Harvest, p. 18.

37. Aileen S. Kraditor, ed., Up from the Pedestal (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), p. 6.

Chapter 2

1. Clay, Memoirs, 1:540; Laura Clay to Mary Barr Clay, 31 January 1866, Clay Family Papers.

2. Cassius M. Clay to Mary Jane Clay, 2 October 1866, 21 January 1867, Clay Family Papers; Lexington Herald, 1 March 1935.

3. Cassius M. Clay to Mary Jane Clay, 21 January 1867; to Mary Barr Clay Herrick, 28 February 1868, Clay Family Papers.

4. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, pp. 205–8; Clay, Memoirs, 1:220; Robertson, A Kentuckian at the Court of the Tzars, p. 265.

5. Clay, Memoirs, 1:540.

6. Robertson, A Kentuckian at the Court of the Tzars, p. 267; Smiley, Lion of White Hall, pp. 218–20; Clay, Memoirs, 1:548.

7. Smiley, Lion of White Hall, p. 234. Cincinnati Enquirer, 29 March 1879. Quoted in Thomas D. Clark, The Kentucky (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942), p. 292.

8. Clay, Memoirs, 1:541, 549; Smiley, Lion of White Hall, pp. 220–21, misreads Clay’s rambling account of the marital rupture, writing that his wife had made two efforts to save the marriage when Clay is actually writing about the same incident in two different places. Order Book No. 58, Fayette County Circuit Court, Lexington, Ky., p. 87; Cassius M. Clay vs. Mary Jane Clay, Fayette Circuit Court, File 1732, 7 February 1878.

9. Clay, Memoirs, 1:548, 540 (italics added).

10. Ibid., pp. 541–43, 543–44; Mary Barr Clay, “Kentucky,” History of Woman Suffrage, 3:820.

11. Interview with Esther Bennett of Richmond, Ky., great granddaughter of Cassius M. and Mary Jane Clay, 26 June 1968. Box 1889, Fayette County Court of Common Pleas,...