Virginia Clay-Clopton

Virginia Clay-Clopton (1825–1915) was a political hostess and activist in Alabama and Washington, D.C. She was also known as Virginia Tunstall, Virginia Clay, and Mrs. Clement Claiborne Clay. She assumed various responsibilities after the Civil War. As the wife of US Senator Clement Claiborne Clay from Alabama, she was part of a group of young southerners who boarded together in the capital in particular hotels. In the immediate postwar period, she worked to gain her husband's freedom from imprisonment at Fort Monroe, where Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, was also held. In the late 19th century, Clay-Clopton (who remarried after her first husband died) became an activist in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group established after the Civil War that was instrumental in shaping public discussions about the war and the role of the South. She worked to raise funds for Confederate cemeteries and memorials. She also worked for women's suffrage. Clay-Copton was one of several Southern women to publish her memoir at the turn of the 20th century; these women's accounts became part of the public discourse about the war. The United Daughters of the Confederacy specifically recommended her book as one of three for serious discussion by the membership. Such works helped shape memories of the antebellum years and the Lost Cause.