Biography
Clement C. Clay Jr. was a former U.S. senator from Alabama and Confederate agent in Canada. Clement C. Clay Jr. surrendered in May 1865 after the government accused him of involvement in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy and of organizing terrorist bands. He was imprisoned at Fort Monroe for about eleven months without any completed prosecution and released on April 18, 1866 on an oath and parole requiring him to appear if charges were ever prepared — they never were. A postwar political and state-security detention resting on unproved conspiracy allegations.
Virginia Clay-Clopton’s memoir reproduces the conditional release order dated April 17, 1866, then describes receiving it close to midnight, sending telegrams to Fort Monroe and her husband being given his freedom the next day. The narrative therefore distinguishes the order from actual April 18 release, which is already recorded in his case. His transport in custody preceded his May 22, 1865 arrival at Fort Monroe; neither transfer creates a separate imprisonment or added days.
The memoir also reproduces Clay’s prison correspondence describing interrupted sleep and constant observation, the removal of the adjoining guard on September 12, and his October 16 report that he was about to move to Carroll Hall within the fort. These are attributed accounts of conditions within the existing detention, not an independently imposed sentence or additional custody period.
Virginia Clay-Clopton and Ada Sterling, A Belle of the Fifties, chapters XX, XXIII, XXVIII and XXX (1905 edition).