Cassius Marcellus Clay, Kentucky's leading antislavery activist, was born here on October 19, 1810. Although his immediate family owned many slaves, Cassius argued that slavery hurt Kentucky's economic development by limiting competition. He believed in gradual emancipation and had freed most of his own slaves by 1845. While editing the antislavery newspaper The True American, a Lexington-based paper that called for gradual emancipation, Clay frequently spoke to Northern audiences about emancipation. Frustrated that many of his antislavery articles were not being published in Kentucky, he established the paper in 1845, but many Kentuckians condemned it, threatened his life, and forced him to fortify its office with iron-lined doors, small cannons, other weapons, a trap door, and hidden kegs of black powder. In August 1845, while Clay was sick in bed with typhoid fever, a group of Lexington citizens entered the office, seized his press, and shipped it to Cincinnati. Clay resumed editing the newspaper two months later, but it ceased publication after he left to fight in the Mexican War. In 1851, he ran for governor of Kentucky on an emancipation ticket but garnered few votes. He became a visible target in the argument over slavery and fought several duels because of his views. He helped create the Republican Party and was nearly nominated vice president in 1860. During that election he vigorously campaigned for Abraham Lincoln, who appointed Clay minister to Russia in 1861. Before that appointment, amid rumors that Confederate forces were going to strike government property in Washington, D.C., Clay organized volunteers for the Clay Battalion to protect the capital. After returning to the United States in 1862, he was appointed major general in the Union army, but his military career was unsatisfactory and he resigned a year later. Clay later took credit for Lincoln's stance against slavery and for the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1863, he returned to his Russian diplomatic post and served until 1869, helping facilitate the purchase of Alaska. Clay died at White Hall on July 22, 1903, and is buried in Richmond Cemetery in Richmond, Kentucky.