Yale Abolitionists

Yale Abolitionists
Samuel Hopkins
James Hillhouse
Simeon Jocelyn
The Amistad Affair
James Pennington
Charles Torrey
Cassius Clay
1856 Kansas Meeting

Cassius Clay

The Yale class of 1832 included Henry Clay's nephew, Cassius Clay, who would live to be 93. Unlike his uncle, he fought against slavery. Unlike Charles Torrey, he used politics rather than direct action. Living in Kentucky, great personal risk accompanied Clay's advocacy:

[In 1845] he started in Lexington The True American, a paper favoring gradual emancipation. So violent were the threats against him that he fortified the office, but during his illness the press was seized and sent out of the State to Cincinnati. There he continued to print the paper every week, and distributed it throughout Kentucky ... In 1853 he bought a large tract of land in the Kentucky mountains with the intention of keeping it forever free from slavery, and on this land was afterward established Berea College. (141)

There is no building on the Yale campus that honors Cassius Clay.