18 Facts About Jeremiah Clemens

Jeremiah Clemens was a United States senator and novelist from Alabama.

Jeremiah Clemens was the author of Tobias Wilson, one of the first novels set during the American Civil War.

Jeremiah Clemens's parents migrated from Kentucky to what was then the Mississippi Territory in 1812, settling in what later became Madison County.

Jeremiah Clemens was educated at LaGrange College and the University of Alabama, and later attended Transylvania University, where he studied law.

Jeremiah Clemens joined the Democratic Party and was appointed the United States Attorney for northern and middle Alabama by President Martin Van Buren in 1839.

Jeremiah Clemens served in the Texian Army following the Texas Revolution, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1843 to 1845.

Jeremiah Clemens was elected to the United States Senate in 1849 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Dixon Hall Lewis.

Jeremiah Clemens opposed the Compromise of 1850, but abruptly changed course following its passage and helped to organize the short-lived Union Party in Alabama.

The Unionists swept the 1851 elections in Alabama, carrying two-thirds of the state's counties; however, Jeremiah Clemens was not re-elected to the Senate when his term ended in 1853.

Jeremiah Clemens supported former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 United States presidential election, campaigning on his behalf across northern Alabama, but the state voted for Democrat James Buchanan.

Jeremiah Clemens began a literary career, publishing three novels between 1856 and 1860: Bernard Lile, Mustang Gray, and The Rivals.

Jeremiah Clemens denounced secession in the pages of the Montgommery Advertiser and as a delegate to the 1861 secession convention.

Jeremiah Clemens accepted a commission in the Alabama militia, but his ambivalence towards the Confederate cause led him to resign within the year.

Jeremiah Clemens strongly supported Lincoln's re-election in the 1864 presidential campaign and traveled to Washington, DC to write campaign literature in support of Lincoln's National Union Party.

Jeremiah Clemens was most famous outside of Alabama during his lifetime as a novelist.

Jeremiah Clemens's final novel, Tobias Wilson, published posthumously in 1865, was an account of Unionist partisans who fought during the Civil War in the mountains of Alabama near Clemens' hometown of Huntsville.

Jeremiah Clemens was engaged in the preparation of a history of the war, giving an insight into the character, causes, and conduct of the war in northern Alabama, but it was left unfinished at his death.

Jeremiah Clemens was a distant cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.