Book Review: Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform

Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform. By Anne E. Marshall. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2025. Hardcover, 303 pp. $39.95.

Reviewed by Greg Romaneck

Born in 1810, Cassius Marcellus Clay entered the world a part of a well-to-do Kentucky family that largely maintained its prosperity through the work and value of dozens of enslaved people. From boyhood on, Cassius Clay was very familiar with owning people, selling slaves, and protecting his family’s property both human and material. Yet, as readers of Anne E, Marshall’s comprehensive biography, Cassius Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform will discover, he was also an opponent of slavery. Unlike moral abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Clay opposed slavery from a far different perspective and one that does not resonate as sincerely through the ages as those of more committed opponents of slavery

As Marshall ably points out in this scholarly and very entertaining book, “Clay’s own thinking shows, however, that there was seldom a neat distinction between moral and pragmatic antislavery views. In his writings and speeches, Clay consistently argued that slavery’s worst feature was that it restricted economic and social opportunities for common white laborers, yet he often adopted rhetoric declaring it a moral liability for the country.” (5) This odd combination of White supremacy, moral indecisiveness, economic versus moral opposition, and inherent racism led Cassius Clay to describe himself as an “antislavery enslaver.” (35)

Time and again, Clay rang out at public meetings about the seemingly contradictory position that African Americans were inferior to Whites, but should be liberated for the economic well-being of his perceived master race. In Clay’s own words, “Every slave imported drives out a free and independent Kentuckian…Still, I am no emancipationist, far less an abolitionist… but like nine-tenths of the slave-holders in all the world, rest now where I was in the beginning…My sympathies are for the white man—bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh—his industry, independence, and comfort are the strength, the wealth, and the glory of the State.” (35)

Although Clay generally failed to articulate just what privileges African Americans were entitled to, he did acknowledge elements of their humanity, “Slaves, then, are not mere things, but persons; the foundation of representation: possessing all the feelings of humanity, and some of the privileges of the free white citizen.” (36) For such acknowledgements, and his lukewarm anti-slavery attitudes, Clay faced many threats and overt attacks when he spoke out against the “peculiar institution.” Time and again Clay was verbally and physically attacked by supporters of slavery who often were enraged by what they perceived as Clay’s betrayal of the South.

On one occasion, a man attacked Clay while he was speaking to a large audience. After the assailant fired a shot which ricocheted off Clay’s chest-high metallic Bowie knife scabbard, the aggrieved slave-owning emancipationist drew his weapon and brutally hacked at his attacker. During the melee, one newspaper reported that Clay, “cut his left eye out, his left ear entirely off, and inflicted a severe wound in his shoulder near the corner of his collar-bone.” (45)

In a similar event, Clay was once assaulted by a group of enemies and stabbed in his side. Once he rallied with the aid of several of his supporters, Clay charged one of his attackers, Cyrus Turner, “with his knife out, ready to strike. Turner fell back into a throng of people, which gave way beneath him, leaving him to tumble to the ground. As he lay sprawled on the grass, Cassius plunged the knife into his adversary’s abdomen, slicing away until Turner’s bowels lay in a bloody heap, exposed to the open air.” (93) Cyrus Turner did not survive while Cassius Clay faced no legal repercussions.

An ambitious man, Clay was greatly disappointed when he failed to receive a cabinet post in the Lincoln administration. Eventually, Clay grudgingly agreed to serve as the ambassador to Czarist Russia, where he labored for eight years. In that post, Clay’s supervisor described him as “a man who made the legation a laughing stock, whose incredible vanity and astonishing blunders are still the talk of St. Petersburg, and whose dispatches disgrace the State Department that allows them to be printed.” (177)

During the Reconstruction era, Clay gradually shifted away from the Republican Party until he eventually joined the Democrats where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the creators of the Jim Crow system. Looking at Cassius Clay’s career, William Lloyd Garrison praised him for his stand against slavery, but also bemoaned the fact that he owned slaves, “Mr. Clay, not withstanding his vivid perceptions of the crime of slaveholding, is himself a slaveholder. Lamentable inconsistency!” (51)

These inconsistencies and the pugnacious personality Cassius Clay possessed all leap from the pages of this biography and serve to make it both historically relevant and highly entertaining. Marshall brings to life a man who, as the author of Clay’s 1903 obituary wrote, “even to the last he burned at a white heat.” (225)

Greg M. Romaneck is retired after working for 34 years as a professional educator and consultant. During those years he held positions such as special education teacher, assistant principal, elementary principal, adjunct professor, director of special education, student teaching supervisor, and associate superintendent. Mr. Romaneck has also trained as a counselor and worked in areas such as crisis intervention, mediation, problem solving, and conflict resolution.  Greg has had several books and numerous articles published on a variety of subjects such as Education, Psychology, Self-Improvement, Backpacking, Eastern Philosophy, Civil War history, Poetry, and Bible studies. Greg has also had nearly 3,500 book reviews published by Childrenslit.com, a popular source of information for educators, librarians, and parents regarding books for younger readers and has reviewed Civil War books for four decades for a variety of publications and magazines. Most recently Greg was the featured book reviewer for more than a decade with the Civil War Courier. Greg resides in DeKalb, Illinois and enjoys spending time with his family & friends, hiking, kayaking, backpacking, reading, and writing.