James Brown Clay

James Brown Clay

James Brown Clay (born November 9, 1817 in Washington, DC , †  January 26, 1864 in Montreal , Canada ) was an American politician . Between 1857 and 1859 he represented the state of Kentucky in the US House of Representatives .

Career

James Clay was a son of US Senator Henry Clay . After primary school he attended Transylvania University in Lexington and then the Kenyon College in Gambier ( Ohio ). Between 1832 and 1834 he worked as an accountant in Boston . After a subsequent law degree at Lexington Law School and his admission to the bar, he began to work in Lexington with his father in this profession.

Like his father, James Clay was a member of the Whig Party . In 1849 and 1850 he was a diplomat at the American Embassy in Portugal . On his return he worked as a farmer in Missouri from 1851 to 1852 before returning to Lexington. After the Whigs dissolved, Clay joined the Democrats . In the congressional election of 1856 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in Washington in the eighth constituency of Kentucky, where he succeeded Alexander Keith Marshall on March 4, 1857 . Since he refused to run again in 1858, he was only able to complete one legislative period in Congress until March 3, 1859 . This was shaped by the discussions leading up to the civil war .

After his time in the US House of Representatives, Clay turned down an offer from President James Buchanan to send him on a diplomatic mission to Germany . In the spring of 1861 he was a member of a negotiating commission that unsuccessfully tried to prevent the civil war in the federal capital Washington. When the war broke out, Clay supported the Confederation . He was given the task of setting up a regiment. However, due to his poor health after suffering from tuberculosis , it never came back. Clay went to Montreal to recover, where he died in January 1864. He had been married to Susan Maria Jacob since 1843, with whom he had ten children.

Web links

• James Brown Clay in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• James Brown Clay in the database of Find a Grave (English)