A week of festivity followed the ceremony, and then my husband took me to my future home, among his people, in the northern part of the State. There being no railroad connection between Tuscaloosa and Huntsville in those days (the early forties), we made the journey from the capital in a big four-wheeled stage-coach. The stretch of country now comprised in the active city of Birmingham, the southern Pittsburg, was then a rugged place of rocks and boulders over which our vehicle pitched perilously. Stone Mountain reached, we were obliged to descend and pick our way on foot, the roughness of the road making the passage of the coach a very dangerous one. But these difficulties only lent a charm to us, for the whole world was enwrapped in the glamour of our youthful joys. The sunsets, blazing crimson on the horizon, seemed gloriously to proclaim the sunrise of our life.
We arrived in Huntsville on the evening of the second day of our journey. Our driver, enthusiastically proud of his part in the home-bringing of the bride, touched up the spirited horses as we crossed the Public Square and blew a bugle blast as we wheeled round the corner; when, fairly dashing down Clinton Street, he pulled up in masterly style in front of “Clay Castle.” It was wide and low and spacious, as were all the affluent homes of that day, and now was ablaze with candles to welcome the travellers. All along the streets friendly hands and kerchiefs had waved a welcome to us. Here, within, awaited a great gathering of family and friends eager to see the chosen bride of a well-loved son. This was my home-coming to Huntsville, thereafter to be my haven for all time, though called in a few years by my husband’s growing reputation to take my place beside him in Congressional circles at Washington.
CHAPTER II
Washington Personages in the Fifties
When my husband’s parents were members of the Congressional circle in Washington—1829–’35—the journey to the capital from their home in northern Alabama was no light undertaking. In those early days Congressman (afterward Governor, and United States Senator) and Mrs. C. C. Clay, Sr., travelled by coach to the Federal City, accompanied by their coloured coachman, Toney (who, because of his expert driving, soon became notable in Washington), and a maid-servant, Milly, who were necessary to their comfort and station. Many days were consumed in these journeys, that lay through Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia, during which the travellers were exposed to all the dangers common to a young and often unsettled forest country. The tangled woods of the South land, odorous with the cedar or blossoming with dogwood, mimosa or magnolias, were often Arcadias of beauty. The land of the sky, now the object of pilgrimages for the wealthy and become the site of palaces built by kings of commerce, was then still more beautiful with primeval freshness. Far as the eye could see, as hills were scaled and valleys crossed, were verdured slopes and wooded mountain crests. The Palisades of the Tennessee, as yet scarcely penetrated by Northern tourists, were then the wonder as they still are the pride of the traveller from the South.
In 1853, my husband was elected a United States Senator, to take the seat of a former college friend, Jere Clemens, whose term had just expired, and succeeding his father C. C. Clay, Sr., after eleven years. In December of the same year, we began our trip to the capital under comparatively modern conditions. My several visits to Vermont and New Jersey Hydropathic Cures, then the fashionable sanitariums, had already inured me to long journeys. By this time steam railways had been established, and, though not so systematically connected as to make possible the taking of long trips over great distances without devious and tiresome changes, they had lessened the time spent upon the road between Alabama and Washington very appreciably; but, while in comparison with those in common use to-day, the cars were primitive, nevertheless they were marvels of comfort and speed to the travellers of the fifties. Sleeping cars were not yet invented, but the double-action seatbacks of the regular coaches, not then, as now, screwed down inexorably, made it a simple matter to convert two seats into a kind of couch, on which, with the aid of a pillow, one managed very well to secure a half repose as the cars moved soberly along.
Our train on that first official journey to Washington proved to be a kind of inchoative “Congressional Limited.” We found many of our fellow-passengers to be native Alabamians, the majority being on government business bent. Among them were my husband’s confrère from southern Alabama, Senator Fitzpatrick and his wife, and a friendship was then and there begun among us, which lasted uninterruptedly until death detached some of the parties to it; also Congressman Dowdell, “dear old Dowdell,” as my husband and everyone in the House shortly learned to call him, and James L. Orr of South Carolina, who afterward became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Minister to Russia under President Grant. Mr. Orr, late in 1860, was one of the three commissioners sent by South Carolina to President Buchanan to arbitrate on the question of the withdrawal of United States troops from Forts Sumter and Moultrie, in Charleston Harbour.
Nor should I omit to name the most conspicuous man on that memorable north-bound train, Congressman W. R. W. Cobb, who called himself the “maker of Senators,” and whom people called the most successful vote-poller in the State of Alabama. Mr. Cobb resorted to all sorts of tricks to catch the popular votes, such as the rattling of tinware and crockery—he had introduced bills to secure indigent whites from a seizure for debt that would engulf all their possessions, and in them had minutely defined all articles that were to be thus exempt, not scorning to enumerate the smallest items of the kitchen—, and he delighted in the singing of homely songs composed for stump purposes. One of these which he was wont to introduce at the end of a speech, and which always seemed to be especially his own, was called “The Homestead Bill.” Of this remarkable composition there were a score of verses, at least, that covered every possible possession which the heart of the poor man might crave, ranging from land and mules to household furniture. The song began,
“Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm!”
and Mr. Cobb would sing it in stentorian tones, winking, as he did so, to first one and then another of his admiring listeners, and punctuating his phrases by chewing, with great gusto, a piece of onion and the coarsest of corn “pone.” These evidences of his democracy gave huge delight to the masses, though it aroused in me, a young wife, great indignation, that, in the exigencies of a public career my husband should be compelled to enter a contest with such a man. To me it was the meeting of a Damascus blade and a meat-axe, and in my soul I resented it.
In 1849 this stump-favourite had defeated the brilliant Jere Clemens, then a candidate for Congress, but immediately thereafter Mr. Clemens was named for the higher office of U. S. Senator and elected. In 1853 an exactly similar conjunction of circumstances resulted in the election of Mr. Clay. I accompanied my husband during the canvass in which he was defeated, and thereby became, though altogether innocently, the one obstacle to Mr. Cobb’s usually unanimous election.