Clayton, Henry De Lamar, 1827-1889

Henry De Lamar Clayton, Sr. was born in Pulaski County, Georgia, on March 7, 1827, the son of Nelson and Sarah Clayton. He graduated from Emory and Henry College, Virginia, after which he read law under John G. and Eli S. Shorter in Eufaula, Alabama. In 1848 he was licensed as an attorney and began the practice of law in Clayton, Alabama. In 1857 he was chosen to represent Barbour County in the Alabama Legislature, and he served as a member of the House of Representatives until 1861.

Upon the threat of war Clayton urged Governor Moore to accept the volunteer regiment of trained companies of which he was colonel. Two of the companies were accepted in February 1861, and he enlisted in one of them as a private but was ordered to go at once to Pensacola, Florida, and take command of Alabama troops as they arrived. On March 28, 1861, the First Alabama Regiment was organized with Clayton as colonel. He remained at Pensacola, in command of a brigade for a year, and then organized as a new regiment, the Thirty-Ninth Alabama Volunteers, which he led as colonel in the Kentucky campaign and in the battle of Murfreesboro.

In the battle of Murfreesboro he was severely wounded, and immediately afterward was promoted to brigadier-general. The brigade to which he was assigned at Tullahoma, in April 1863, consisted of the Eighteenth, Thirty-Sixth, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Second, and Fifty-Eight Regiments. Clayton's brigade bore a conspicuous part at Chickamauga, in the fighting around Dalton, Georgia, at New Hope Church, and in all the battles of the Atlanta and subsequent Tennessee campaigns and the final campaign in the Carolinas. General Clayton's conduct in the Atlanta campaign won for him the commission of major-general, July 7, 1864, and he became the successor of A.P. Stewart in division command, the brigades under his command being Gibson's, Stovall's, Baker's, and his own under Holtzclaw. He led this division during the battles around Atlanta, at Jonesboro, in the Nashville campaign, and up to the surrender in North Carolina.

At the close of the war General Clayton turned his attention to planting, until elected Judge of the Circuit Court in May 1866. He held this position until he was removed under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress in 1868. He then practiced law until he was reelected as Circuit Court Judge following the end of Reconstruction. He held that position for nearly twenty years until he resigned to accept the nomination for Governor. He was defeated but was elected President of the University of Alabama in the same year, 1886. He died on October 13, 1889, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

From the guide to the Henry De Lamar Clayton Sr. Papers MSS. 0313., 1840-1925, (W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama)