Clement Comer Clay

Clement Comer Clay (December 17, 1789 – September 6, 1866) was the eighth governor of Alabama from 1835 to 1837. An attorney, judge, and politician, he was elected to the state legislature as well as the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

He and his son, who also served as a U.S. senator, were among the Alabama’s most prominent enslavers, according to the Washington Post. Together the two men enslaved 87 people on four Alabama plantations as recorded in the 1860 census.

Clay was born in Halifax County, Virginia, the son of Rebecca (Comer) and William Clay, an officer in the American Revolutionary War, who moved to Grainger County, Tennessee. Clay attended the local schools and graduated from East Tennessee College in 1807.

Admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1809, he soon moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he participated in wars with the Creek Native Americans, then began a law practice in 1811.

Clay served in the Alabama Territorial Legislature from 1817 to 1818. He was a state court judge and served in the Alabama House of Representatives.

In 1828, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from March 4, 1829, and through re-elections until March 3, 1835, when he started as governor of Alabama.

In 1835 Clay was elected governor. Clay's term as governor ended early when the state legislature appointed him to the United States Senate in 1837 (this was before the popular election of senators).

In 1836, Governor Clay signed a legislative act that chartered Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, the third oldest Jesuit college in the United States. The charter gave it "full power to grant or confer such degree or degrees in the arts and sciences, or in any art or science as are usually granted or conferred by other seminaries of learning in the United States." The college resulted from the strong French Catholic traditions in the city, founded as a French colony.