Virginia Clay-Clopton

Virginia Caroline Clay-Clopton (née Tunstall; January 1825 – June 23, 1915), also known as Virginia Tunstall, Virginia Clay, and Mrs. Clement Claiborne Clay, was an American political hostess, activist, and socialite. She assumed various responsibilities after the American Civil War. As the wife of U.S. Senator Clement Claiborne Clay from Alabama, she was part of a group of young southerners who boarded together in Washington, D.C. 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 Confederate States of America, 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 promoting the Lost Cause narrative. She worked to raise funds for Confederate cemeteries and memorials and campaigned 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.