(Originally published in 1864. 16 pages. This volume is pr...)
Originally published in 1864. 16 pages. This volume is produced from digital images from the Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Remarks of Messrs. Clemens, Butler, and Jefferson Davis: The Vermont Resolutions Relating to Slavery; Delivered in Senate of the United States, January 10, 1850 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Remarks of Messrs. Clemens, Butler, and Jeff...)
Excerpt from Remarks of Messrs. Clemens, Butler, and Jefferson Davis: The Vermont Resolutions Relating to Slavery; Delivered in Senate of the United States, January 10, 1850
Resolved, That our Senators and Representatives in Con gress be requested to resist by all and every constitutional means the extension of slavery in any manner, whether by the annexation to slaveholding Texas of territory now free, or by the admission to the Union of territory already ao quired, or which may be hereafter acquired, without an express prohibition of slavery, either in the constitution of each new State asking admission, or in the act of Congress providing for such admission.
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Jeremiah Clemens was an American soldier and novelist. He was a Member of the Alabama House of Representatives. He served as a United States Senator from Alabama for 1849 to 1853.
Background
Jeremiah Clemens was born on December 28, 1814 at Huntsville, Alabama, United States. He was the son of a Kentuckian, James Clemens, who had migrated to the Tennessee Valley in 1812 while it was yet a part of the Mississippi Territory, and had married a sister of Archie E. Mills.
Education
Clemens received excellent educational advantages for the times, studying at La Grange College, in the Valley, and being among the first students matriculated at the University of Alabama on its opening in 1831 at Tuscaloosa. His first choice was the law, and, on account of family connections, he completed a law course in Transylvania College, Lexington, Kentucky, and returned to Alabama to practise his profession.
Career
Before Clemens was well established at the bar, but not before his promise as a lawyer had been recognized, he was appointed a federal district attorney, served for a short time in a volunteer company engaged against the Cherokees, and represented his county in the state legislature from 1839 to 1844, with the exception of one term. These circumstances seem to have shaped his life. Thereafter his law practise was seriously interfered with by his penchant for politics and his desire for a military career.
When the war for Texan independence started, he left Alabama in 1842, in command of a company of volunteers, and won promotion to a lieutenant-colonelcy. A few years later, on the outbreak of the war with Mexico, he entered the regular army on March 3, 1847 as major of the 13th United States Infantry, served effectively in Mexico as chief of the depot of supplies, and retired to civil life with the rank of colonel in 1848.
On his return to Alabama, he aspired to high political honors, and, though he suffered a rebuff at the hands of the people of his own district when he attempted to displace an Alabama war-horse, Cobb, as representative in Washington, he was successful later in the same year (1849) in winning, as a Democrat, election to the seat in the United States Senate vacated by the death of Dixon H. Lewis, defeating Benjamin Fitzpatrick, an ex-governor and one of the strongest men in the state.
In the Senate, Clemens earned a reputation as an able and eloquent debater, though his name was not connected with any legislation of national moment. He lost favor with the people of Alabama by his ardent support of the candidacy of Fillmore for the presidency in 1856 and did not again seek public office for several years. In the meanwhile, his interests changing, he turned eagerly to the writing of historical novels. In rapid succession he published: Bernard Lile: an Historical Romance of the Texan Revolution and the Mexican War (1856); Mustang Gray: a Romance (1858) anfd others. The year of his death (1865), Tobias Wilson: a Tale of the Great Rebellion, appeared, and it was generally understood that in the last months of his life he was engaged in preparing a history of the war in northern Alabama, a book which was never completed. For a brief time during 1859 he lived in Memphis, where he edited the Memphis Eagle and Enquirer, with no great success.
When he returned to Alabama, the people were seriously divided on the question of immediate secession or delay and cooperation with sister states of the South. Elected to the convention called to decide the question, Clemens, with Robert Jemison, Jr. , assumed leadership of the cooperationists. At the organization of the convention he controlled 46 of the 100 delegates, but as other states acted his strength ebbed, and, when the secession ordinance was put on its passage, he could muster only 39 in opposition. Having lost the fight, Clemens then signed the ordinance, and, because of his military prestige and in an effort to heal the breach in the state, he was appointed major-general of the “Republic of Alabama, ” a position in which he never rendered any active service. His Unionist tendencies brought him increasing unpopularity as the war progressed, and, an avowed Unionist in 1862, he moved to Philadelphia where he conducted a pamphlet campaign against his state and advocated the reelection of Lincoln in 1864. He returned to Huntsville toward the close of the war and died a few weeks after peace was declared.