Matthew Clay

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Immediately after the Revolutionary War, Clay worked in Richmond, as a clerk for the state solicitor general. His brothers Charles Clay and Green Clay both won election to and served in the Ratification Convention of 1788, where they opposed ratification of the federal constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added. Then Mathew Clay moved to Pittsylvania County to farm land he inherited from a brother. Clay would both farm and practice law there for the rest of his life. His home was near Chestnut Level.

Pittsylvania County voters first elected Clay to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1790, then re-elected him four times as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates (through 1794). In 1790, in addition to service on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, Clay became a member of a commission to improve the upper Roanoke River to permit commercial navigation. The next year, Clay headed a commission to determine whether to remove dams on the Bannister River to permit upstream fish migration (the harvest of shad, a large herring being important both as subsistence and for sale in the era). Also as a member of the Committee on Religion in 1791, Clay voted for a compromise (that failed to pass) which would have allowed the Episcopal Church to retain glebe lands (for the support of the minister and poor people of the parish, his brother Charles Green having been rector of St. Anne's Parish in Albemarle County before abandoning the ministry to farm in Bedford County). Clay also supported expanding suffrage to all white men who either owned property or could be forced to bear arms for the community, basing his argument on fairness. Clay had a combative debating style, and in one legislative argument in the 1791 session, accused Pittsylvania's other delegate of improprieties (but later apologized formally to the House for his conduct). After losing his first attempt to unseat incumbent Congressman Isaac Coles (in 1793), Clay succeeded in the 1796 election, in part by attacking Coles for marrying an Englishwoman rather than a Virginia girl. Clay won the post as a Democratic-Republican and was re-elected to the Fifth and to the seven succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1797, to March 3, 1813, despite redistricting, and some difficulties in arriving early enough to secure appointment to the most influential committees. Thus, Clay served on the Committee of revised and Unfinished Business, and on the Committee of Elections (becoming its ranking member in 1809), as well as on the Committee on Militia (becoming its chairman in the Tenth Congress). Although initially a Jeffersonian Republican who opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1803 and repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, clay later favored James Monroe over James Madison in 1808, only reluctantly agreeing that Monroe should not formally run and risk splitting the party. Clay also became known for his devotion to states' rights and strict interpretation of the Constitution, which sometimes allied him with Jefferson's opponents such as John Randolph of Roanoke and John Taylor of Caroline.

Clay lost his reelection campaign in a primary in 1813 (to fellow Republican John Kerr, who had raised an unsuccessful challenge in 1811), so Clay did not attend the Thirteenth Congress. His refusal to vote in favor of the Declaration of War against Great Britain in June 1812 (Clay abstained on the vote, one of only two Virginia Republicans who declined to vote for the Declaration) proved unpopular with his constituents and contributed to his defeat, as did local factionalism and personal differences. Clay won back his seat in the April 1815 (but was never sworn into the Fourteenth Congress), but died suddenly at Halifax Court House, while returning home from Richmond.

Matthew Clay was one of the original trustees (in 1793) of the then unincorporated town of Danville. The others were Thomas Tunstall, William Harrison, John Wilson, Thomas Fearne, George Adams, and Thomas Smith.

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