Apparently Clay ended up as ambassador to Russian, not Spain. It turns out that the original Cassius Clay was quite a character - it’s worth a trip to Wikipedia to check him out. One of the highlights:
“His anti-slavery activism earned him violent enemies. During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gun. The scabbard of Clay’s Bowie knife was tipped with silver and, in jerking the Bowie knife out in retaliation pulled this scabbard up so that it was just over his heart. Brown’s bullet struck the scabbard and embedded itself in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown, and with his Bowie knife removed Brown’s nose and one eye and possibly an ear before he threw Brown over an embankment.”
Re: Cassius Marcellus Clay
Even better than the bit above, again from Wikipedia:
“In 1894, the 84-year-old Clay married Dora Richardson, the 15-year-old orphaned sister of one of his sharecropping tenants.”
and the very next sentence:
“Cassius Clay died at his home on July 22, 1903 of “general exhaustion.” “
Yeah, I can buy that.