Dear Reader,

There once lived a man called Cassius Marcellus Clay, whose life-story reads like something straight out of a Guy Ritchie film. No; we are not talking about Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, who was later known as Muhammad Ali; nor his billboard-painting, piano-playing, hard-drinking father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. We are talking about Cassius Marcellus Clay, the 19th-century white abolitionist gentleman from the American South, who carved out his name in history with a bowie knife, an unyielding temperament, and an unwavering will. A politician, a military general, a diplomat, a planter, an emancipationist, a newspaper publisher, and a quintessential tough guy, equally adept with gun and knife, Clay remains one of the most fascinating and controversial characters in American history.

Born in Madison County, Kentucky, on October 19, 1810, to one of the richest families in the country, Clay grew up in a household that happened to be among the biggest slave-owning families of the state. From childhood, he was troubled by the injustice and cruelty of the slave system and, in his own way, rebelled against it. Certain scenes and incidents witnessed in his boyhood haunted him throughout his life, and kept him going on the political path he had chosen. The imploring gaze of Mary—“a handsome mulatto girl, of about eighteen years of age, who had been engaged years ago as one of the flower-gardeners” in his family estate—being led away in chains, unfairly banished to a faraway land; the forlorn look of helplessness on his eldest brother Sidney Payne Clay’s face, as he was forced to hand out the sentence of banishment, even though he knew it was unfair; the inhuman torture and death that Joe, a neighbour’s slave, had to suffer for no fault of his own; and the image of his childhood playmate George, “a fine fellow, as straight as an Indian, and as black as a crow, with large dark eyes, and large whites around them,” stayed with him till his dying breath (The Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay: Memoirs, Writing, and Speeches, 1886). “Now, the most astonishing feature of the slave-system was the delusion that, as it was legal, it was morally right; whilst all the sentiments of the soul and the force of the mind proclaimed it wrong,” he later observed.

Young Cassius was an excellent student, had mastered Latin early in his academic career, and subsequently went to Yale to pursue further studies. It was at the university where he first heard the famous abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) speak, which settled for him the direction of his life. Though the young man had “felt all the horrors of slavery”, he was nevertheless a scion of an old and rich family of slave-holders; and everyone in his native Kentucky—family and friends—were all slave-holders; and as a result, he regarded the evil of slavery as he regarded “other evils of humanity, as the fixed law of Nature or of God.” But Garrison, he recalled, “dragged out the monster from all his citadels, and left him stabbed to the vitals, and dying at the feet of every logical and honest mind.” The speech was often interrupted by loud hisses and boisterous boos, but amidst the cacophony, there stood silent a young man “thoughtful in the depths of my new thought.”

Subsequently, he studied law at the Transylvania Law School and went into politics, where he quickly established himself as one of the most outspoken and committed abolitionists of the time. It was not easy being an abolitionist from an elite slave-holding family in the land of slave-owners; and it is no surprise that he made as many enemies in his own state and in the South as he found admirers in the North. Yet he still managed to get elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives from Madison County three times.

Built like a tank, with massive shoulders, Clay cut a formidable presence; however, that did not deter his political enemies from trying to physically harm or even kill him. There would be fistfights with opposing legislators; even a duel in which both contestants missed their mark; and a few assassination attempts. But Clay could give a good account of himself with fists, guns, and his ever-faithful bowie knife. On one occasion, a political bully and gun-for-hire, Samuel L. Brown—a man “who had 40 fights and never lost a battle”—tried to shoot him in the heart, but failed as the bullet got lodged in the handle of Clay’s knife. In the end, “Brown had his skull cut to the brain in several places, one ear cut nearly off, his nose slit, and one eye cut out and many other wounds” (ibid).

On another occasion, he fought off several attackers and managed to kill his main assailant in a confrontation that grew out of a political rivalry. Once again, he used his old bowie knife to lethal effectiveness. “I wanted to show those who lived by force, that it would be met, at all times, and in all places, with force,” he had written in his autobiography. But he always maintained that he “never gloried in” his reputation as a “fighting man.” “On the contrary, it has always been a source of annoyance to me,” he said. It was not always that Clay could give as good as he got. Sometimes the odds were overwhelmingly against him; like the time in Lexington in 1845, when an angry mob attacked the office from where he published his anti-slavery newspaper, True American. Clay managed to escape with his life, but he was forced to shift the newspaper office to another state.

If in 1832 his chance encounter with William Lloyd Garrison had helped change the course of his life’s journey, his meeting with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, in 1856 brought about a new turn in his political career. Clay was quite enamoured of his fellow Kentuckian, who was still relatively unknown, practising law with his associate O.H. Browning. “I shall never forget his long, ungainly form, and his ever sad and homely face… At all events, he was ever kind and confidential with me; and to the day of his death there never was an unfriendly word or thought between us… We all know Mr. Lincoln was not learned in books but he had a higher education in actual life than most of his compeers. I have always placed him first of all the men of the times in common sense,” remembered Clay of the man whom he helped become President of the United States.

Even though Clay had served in the Mexican War (1846–48), Lincoln had other plans for him, which kept him away from the American Civil War (1861–65). Just before the outbreak of the war, Lincoln requested Clay to go to Russia as the US’s minister. In Russia, Clay displayed his diplomatic prowess by securing the Czar’s support for Lincoln and the North. He also played the role of a key mediator in the US-Russian deal over Alaska.

Later in life, Clay grew disillusioned with the manner in which he was being treated by both whites and Blacks. He felt his contribution to the abolition of slavery was being overlooked, as were his diplomatic accomplishments in Russia. He was plagued by personal tragedies, and felt he did not get the respect he deserved. Unlike the legendary John Brown—“whose body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but whose soul goes marching on”—Clay did not go down the extremist path with guns blazing; and thus may not have attained the heroic martyrdom Brown did when he was hanged on December 2, 1859, following his failed attempt at raiding a federal armoury in Harpers Ferry in October of that year. The puritanical Christian, who believed that he was sent by God to rid the world of the evil of slavery, had attained a cult following in his life, which grew far more upon his execution, and in the stories—both fact and fiction—that were spread around his persona. Soon after his death, the American painter Thomas Hovenden painted his famous work, The Last Moments of John Brown, in which the condemned Brown is seen kissing a black baby in her mother’s arms as he is being led away to his execution. The painting hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. That, for all his efforts, Clay was not looked upon with the same kind of awe rankled in him. “When John Brown went down into Virginia and foolishly lost his life, he became a hero with the long-haired Abolitionists; but when I fell in the defense of freedom of speech and the liberties of all men, these fellows shed tears, not because I triumphed, but because I used arms and was not killed,” he wrote rather petulantly later.

After a lifetime of being targeted politically and attacked physically, Clay died on July 22, 1903, at the ripe old age of 92. He was a noble character whose intentions were always honourable and altruistic, but he was also very humanly flawed. It is true he had manumitted many slaves, but he had also retained a few. He was committed to his cause, but he was also impractical and impetuous, and quick to move to violence. In his later life, he courted more controversy when he took the law into his own hands and killed a Black man on the suspicion of the latter murdering his infant son. But in the final analysis, “No one can doubt the purity of his purpose, or the honesty of his convictions for he cheerfully endured social ostracism, and fearlessly risked his life for the sake of what he believed to be the truth. He was not a feather-bed philanthropist, but one always ready to work and equally ready to fight,” as the St Louis Republican wrote of him in 1877.

Thirty-nine years after Clay’s death, another Cassius Marcellus Clay came along, who also fought against injustice and oppression, and emerged as one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. Muhammad Ali dropped the name he had inherited from his father, even though he was well aware of the legacy and contribution of the man he and his father were named after. There were even rumours that they were descendants of Henry Clay (1777–1852), the second cousin of Cassius Marcellus Clay. Ali, however, was also aware of the abolitionist’s writings, particularly those edited by Horace Greeley, where Cassius Marcellus Clay held forth the opinion that “the Caucasian or the White is the superior race; they have larger and better formed brain.” Whatever may have been Clay’s contribution to the abolition of slavery, Ali did not want to have anything to do with a man who held such opinions, and in 1964, at the height of his fame as the world heavyweight boxing champion, he converted to Islam and took the name the world remembers him by.

This month, ten years ago, on June 3, Ali—“the Greatest”—passed away. The original Cassius Marcellus Clay has over the years been reduced to a footnote in the pages of history, but the man named after him occupies an entire section of the book.

Till I see you again, Keep swinging

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

Associate Editor, Frontline