Understanding Mid-Nineteenth Century Southern Thought Through the Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay

Cassius Marcellus Clay was a prominent Kentucky planter, politician, and statesman, as well as cousin to the more famous Henry Clay, during the nineteenth century. Not only did Cassius Clay lead an interesting life, attested to by the numerous biographies written about what would otherwise be a middling political figure at best, he also held attitudes about the larger issues of the day that seem to be contradictory – he published an abolitionist newspaper and donated money for the establishment of a school geared toward educating African Americans at the same time that he continued to prosper economically through the use of slave labor. This suggests that Clay did not fit the mold with regard to typical southern ideology. I, however, believe that this might be because there was not one monolithic ideology of nineteenth-century southerners.

Since the 1970s, there have been a number of major works on southern intellectual life and thought beginning with Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (and, later with his wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class) and George Fredrickson’s The Black Image in the White Mind. Newer works like John Boles’ The South Through Time and Mark M. Smith’s Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South highlight the significance of slavery and race within southern thought.

I have not read deeply enough with regard to nineteenth-century southern ideology but the general impression I get is of a monolithic ideology dominated by race and slavery. Plantation-owning elites dominated the South in many ways (economically, politically, and socially) and, as such, their efforts to preserve slavery (and white racial superiority) pervaded southern thought. My suspicion is that nineteenth-century southern thought was more complex and diverse than the broader perception that dominates the way the South has been viewed by scholars and, even more so, the public.

Based on what I know of Cassius Clay, he did not fit that broader perception of a monolithic southern ideology. Deeper study of Clay and southern thought will likely show one of three things – I was wrong about Clay not fitting the stereotypical mold of southern elites; Clay was an anomaly among southern elites; or, as I suspect, that southern ideology was much more complex than the standard perception allows.

If my initial assumptions are correct, this would alter the way I teach the sectional crisis in my classes. It would also provide the basis for a project that would combine standard biography with monograph – answering larger questions through the study of an individual. In this case, that would be a study of the complex nature of nineteenth-century southern thought through the lens of one man, Cassius Marcellus Clay.

Plan of study:

Week 1:

I plan to begin my study by reading two long and relatively dense works that should provide a good basis for understanding ideological thought of southern elites and intellectuals. Michael O’Brien’s Conjectures of Order (two volumes) is a recent and widely-acclaimed work on intellectual thought in the nineteenth-century South. Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought does not look specifically at the South (or specifically at intellectuals) but should help me put southern thought within a national perspective. Time permitting, I will also take a look at Beyond the Revolution: A history of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism by William Goetzmann.

Week 2:

My second week of reading will focus on race and slavery as key ingredients in southern ideology. I will begin with two seminal works from the 1970s – Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made and George Fredrickson’s The Black Image in the White Mind. I will supplement those with other works like Clement Eaton’s The Mind of the Old South, Shearer Davis Bowman’s Masters and Lords, and Mark M. Smith’s Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the Antebellum South. I will finish this week’s study with a newer work by Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class.

Week 3:

Plantation-owning elites made up a small percentage of southerners. While they dominated southern politics, society, and economy (and, by extension, had a great influence on wider southern thought), it is important to look at average southerners and their world to see what influence their experiences may have had on southern ideology. Week 3 will focus on this aspect of southern thought. Samuel Hyde’s edited volume Plain Folk of the South Revisited and the edited volume by Mary Beth Pudup, et al, Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century will expose me to a wide range of scholars exploring those issues. I also expect that my reading from the first two weeks may expose me to some other works that may be useful and I will explore those during this week. Finally, since I plan to look at southern thought through the lens of Cassius Clay, I will conclude the week with Craig Friend’s Along the Maysville Road and Robert Weise’s Grasping at Independence as both works focus on Kentucky.

Week 4:

In week 4 I will shift my focus. America was changing rapidly during the mid-nineteenth century. The Market Revolution changed the economy and the way of life for many Americans, especially in the North. The dramatic social change was a major reason for the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, bringing with it a wide-range of morally-based social reforms. While the South, with its roots in agriculture, did not experience the same level of economic and social change as the North, southerners were not immune to the religious impulses of the Second Great Awakening. Mark Noll’s America’s God and Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith will provide a broad understanding of the Second Great Awakening. For its impact in the South I will look to Southern Cross by Christine Heyrman and Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord edited by John Boles.

Week 5:

The final week will focus on Cassius Clay. I will look at many of the biographies of Clay, including David Smiley’s Lion of White Hall, H. Edward Richardson’s Cassius Marcellus Clay, Firebrand of Freedom, Keven McQueen’s Cassius M. Clay: Freedom’s Champion, Betty Ellison’s A Man Seen but Once, and William Townsend’s The Lion of Whitehall. I will also look at some other books that should put Clay in a broader light, such as Richard Sears’ The Kentucky Abolitionists in the Midst of Slavery and William Townsend’s Lincoln and the Bluegrass.

Tentative Reading List

Boles, John B., ed. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1990).

Bowman, Shearer Davis. Masters and Lords: Mid-19th Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Eaton, Clement. The Mind of the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976).

Ellison, Betty. A Man Seen but Once: Cassius Marcellus Clay (Bloomington, In: AuthorHourse, 2005).

Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York: Harper, 1971).

Friend, Craig T. Along the Maysville Road: The Early Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005).

Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).

Genovese, Eugene and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Goetzmann, William. Beyond the Revolution: A history of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism (New York: Basic Books, 2009).

Heyrman, Christine. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Hyde, Samuel, ed. Plain Folk of the South Revisited (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997).

Kiel, Richard and Pamela Wallace. Kentucky Lion: The True Story of Cassius Clay (Morrison McNae Publishing, 2007).

McQueen, Keven. Cassius M. Clay: Freedom’s Champion (Turner Publishing Co., 2001).

Noll, Mark. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

O’Brien, Michael. Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Pudup, Mary Beth, et al, eds. Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

Richardson, H. Edward. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Firebrand of Freedom (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996).

Sears, Richard D. The Kentucky Abolitionists in the Midst of Slavery, 1854-1864: Exiles for Freedom (Edwin Mellen Press, 1993).

Smiley, David L. Lion of White Hall: The Life of Cassius M. Clay (Literary Licensing, 2011).

Smith, Mark M. Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Townsend, William H. Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky (Literary Licensing, 2011).

Weise, Robert S. Grasping at Independence: Debt, Male Authority, and Mineral Rights in Appalachian Kentucky, 1850-1915 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001).