Though a Democrat Clemens was a staunch Unionist in his political views who argued that talk of secession should be postponed until such time as Abraham Lincoln mentioned emancipating the slaves (a position whose practitioners were known as "wait and seers" in the pre-war South). Clemens served as the representative from Madison County, Alabama to the Alabama Secession Convention where he and his like minded "wait and seers" were outvoted in a landslide by advocates of secession. Because of his military experience and rank he was commissioned Major General of the Army of Alabama soon after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, a position replaced by a generalship in the Confederate Army upon its creation, but in 1862 he resigned his commission altogether due to his political opposition to the war for secession. He did not serve in the Union Army against Alabama, but he made no secret of his pro-Union views and wrote to various members of the Lincoln administration and the United States War Department advising them on how best to mollify the South peaceably and how to deal with Reconstruction upon the Confederacy's inevitable defeat. His death from natural causes on May 21, 1865, came too soon for him to take an active role in the reconciliation of the nation.
