George Rogers Clark

George Rogers Clark 1752-1818, American Revolutionary general, conqueror of the Old Northwest, b. near Charlottesville, Va.; brother of William Clark . A surveyor, he was interested in Western lands, served (1774) in Lord Dunmore's War (see Dunmore, John Murray, 4th earl of ), and later went to what is now Kentucky for the Ohio Company . In 1776 he secured the Virginia legislature's assertion of sovereignty over the Kentucky region, thereby obtaining military and financial support. He returned in time to repel British and Native American attacks on Harrodsburg, Ky., and other posts.

In 1778, Clark made plans for aggressive action against the British in the Old Northwest and, going to Virginia, persuaded Gov. Patrick Henry and his council to send an expedition. At its head, he swept into the Illinois country and took the British-held settlements of Kaskaskia , Cahokia , and Vincennes . The British under Gen. Henry Hamilton advanced from Detroit and retook Vincennes after Clark had left. Winter and Ohio floods halted Hamilton there, but Clark and his men, defying cruel conditions of cold and hardship, braved the flooded bottom lands to return to Vincennes. With the heroic aid of Francis Vigo , François Bosseron, and Father Gibault , he struck at the British fort and surprised and captured Hamilton and the garrison in Feb., 1779. After this, the greatest of his exploits, Clark hoped to capture Detroit, but adequate supplies never came from Virginia to the fort he had built (Fort Nelson, where Louisville now stands), and he remained inactive.

In 1782 the British and Native Americans disastrously defeated the Kentuckians in the battle of Blue Licks. The ensuing unrest led Clark, who had not taken part in the battle, to lead another expedition northward against the Native Americans and again establish control of the region. His services had been rewarded by the rank of brigadier general in the Virginia militia, and he was made an Indian commissioner. In 1786 he led another expedition against the Native Americans in Ohio. His own narrative of the capture of Vincennes is in Milo M. Quaife, ed., The Capture of Old Vincennes (1927).

Bibliography: See biographies by J. A. James (1928, repr. 1970) and J. Bakeless (1957); A. W. Derleth, Vincennes: Portal to the West (1968).

Clark, George Rogers (1752–1818), frontiersman, Revolutionary War military leader in the Ohio River Valley.Born on a farm in piedmont Virginia, Clark came to Kentucky as a surveyor. An aggressive, charismatic young man, he soon led Kentucky settlers unhappy with their proprietors into Virginia's political orbit. Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were among his allies. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Clark as Virginia's local commander defended the small, vulnerable Kentucky settlements by boldly attacking. In 1777, his small force captured the French‐speaking towns of southern Illinois and Indiana. When a British force recaptured Vincennes on the Wabash River in 1778, Clark led a heroic winter march to retake it in 1779. His strategic vision—strike westward to defend against an Indian threat from north of the Ohio—never wavered, but his ultimate goal of seizing the British base at Detroit was beyond his resources. As help waned from Virginia—itself under direct British attack in 1781—Clark's gains slipped away, and Kentucky lapsed into a more passive defense.

By age thirty, Clark had lost his health and some of his influence and was drinking too much. A classic Indian‐hater, he nevertheless consciously imitated what he saw as the Indian leadership style—bluff mixed with terrorism and calibrated kindness, undergirded by absolute fearlessness. Postwar flirtations with Spanish and French ventures in the Mississippi Valley further sullied his reputation, and even before his death his significance for regional and American history was being debated.
See also Burr, Aaron; French Settlements in North America; Indian History and Culture: 1500 to 1800; Indian Wars; Middle West, The; Revolution and Constitution, Era of.

Bibliography

John Bakeless , Background to Glory: The Life of George Rogers Clark, 1957; reprint 1992.

John Shy