Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Angela C Erickson
“In June 1845, Cassius Marcellus Clay launched an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky, one block from one of the largest slave markets in the United States. He called it The True American. Published by William L. Neale and edited by Clay, the paper openly challenged Kentucky’s slaveholding establishment. Its editor was a son of a Kentucky aristocrat; a cousin of the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay; and a man who understood that publishing against slavery in a slave state was not merely controversial. It was dangerous. … The office of The True American was not just a newspaper office. According to historian Herndon J. Evans, it was ‘armed with two brass cannons, iron barred windows, and an arsenal of Mexican lances and pikes.’ … Clay later said he had filled the four-pounder cannons with shot and nails.” (10/06/26)
https://www.bluegrassinstitute.org/cassius-marcellus-clay-brought-cannons-to-a-free-press-fight/