The Brindles attempted to challenge the seating of Clayton in the Senate. After a series of hearings, he was eventually allowed to assume the office. The attempt by the Brindles to discredit him with the party's national leadership backfired. Clayton's exoneration at his hearing won him the sympathy of the Grant administration. Following Clayton's advice, Grant removed W. G. Whipple as U. S. Prosecuting Attorney and R. F. Catterson as U. S. Marshall and replaced them with Minstrels.
Grant also made Clayton a member of the Republican National Committee in 1872, a position he would hold for the next forty years. One of Clayton's first acts in this capacity was to get William Grey, one of his chief black supporters in Arkansas, chosen to deliver one of Grant's nomination speeches at the 1872 Republican National Convention, making Grey the first African American to address such a gathering.
Though Clayton would not gain re-election to the Senate in 1878, his position on the National Committee made him a power broker within the national party. For 32 of the 40 years that Clayton served on the Republican National Committee, his party maintained control of the White House and Clayton controlled the dispensing of political patronage within Arkansas. Throughout this period he continued to reward his black supporters, even in the face of the Lilly White movement that sought to purge blacks as a political liability.
From 1897 to 1905 Clayton served as ambassador to Mexico. In 1912, with the election of Woodrow Wilson, Clayton resigned from the National Committee and retired from politics. He died in Washington on August 25, 1914.
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