Clark, George Rogers

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Clark, George Rogers

CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS. (1752–1818). Officer in the Virginia militia. Born near Charlottesville, Virginia, on 19 November 1752, George Rogers Clark had little formal education when he started studying surveying at the age of 19. He read widely in history and geography, however, and his letters indicate a sharp intellectual curiosity. Starting in June 1772, Clark made several journeys by flatboat from Pittsburgh, traveling down the Ohio River and finally staking claim to some land at the new community of Fish Creek, 130 miles below Pittsburgh. Clark took part in Dunmore's War in 1774 as a militia captain, and then surveyed land on the Kentucky River for the Ohio Company.

With the beginning of the Revolution, Clark returned to Virginia to raise arms and ammunition for the western settlers. He anticipated a war against the Indians, whose land the settlers were in the process of stealing. It took Clark a year to acquire the munitions and to transport them west. During that time several Indian nations, including the Miami, Wyandot, and Shawnee, were themselves negotiating with the British for military support in an effort to reclaim their lands from the white settlers. Governor Patrick Henry commissioned Clark as a major and placed him in charge of the defense of the Kentucky settlements. Clark developed a bold plan of attack against the British military bases in the region. In 1777, Clark again traveled to Virginia to request aid. Governor Henry enthusiastically supported Clark's plan, covering its expenses and promoting Clark to lieutenant colonel.

In 1778 Clark recruited 175 men in the Pittsburgh area, without bothering to inform them of their mission. In June this small force took flatboats down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Tennessee River and then struck overland for Vincennes, where he planned to capture a British outpost. The surprise was complete, for both parties. When Clark roused the astonished outpost's commander from his bed, he discovered, to his chagrin, that his prisoner was French, and that there were no British at the outpost. Though the French were allies to the Patriot cause, Clark left a company under the command of Captain Leonard Helm at Vincennes and headed for Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi River. Clark found no British troops there, either.

Meanwhile, in the fall of 1778, the lieutenant governor of Canada, Henry Hamilton, led a small group of Canadian militia, British regular army forces, and Indians against Vincennes, taking the post by surprise and without loss of life. Hamilton sent his regular army troops back to Detroit and settled in for the winter. In January 1779, Clark recruited the French militia at Kaskaskia to join him at Vincennes. He attacked on the night of 25 February, opening fire on the garrison as they came running out of the blockhouse. Hamilton surrendered and was sent as a prisoner to Virginia. With this quick victory, Clark claimed control of the northwest territory for the United States.

In 1781 Clark went to Richmond, Virginia, to garner Governor Thomas Jefferson's support for an attack on Detroit. Their conversations were interrupted by General Benedict Arnold's raid, which sent them both fleeing for safety. Arnold burned several buildings, one of which contained Clark's vouchers for his military campaigns. Virginia never made good on these debts.

After the war, Clark served for a number of years on the board that supervised the allocation of the 150,000 acres north of the Ohio River across from Louisville that Virginia had granted for Clark's veterans. He also served with Richard Butler and Samuel Holden Parsons on the commission that concluded the treaty at Fort McIntosh in January 1786. In this treaty, the Indians acknowledged U.S. sovereignty over some of the western territory ceded by Great Britain. In 1786 Virginia and Kentucky charged the Indians living along the Wabash (Piankashaw, Shawnee, and others) with breaking various treaty promises and asked Clark to lead a punitive expedition. This mission failed when the Kentucky troops mutinied, charging Clark with ineptness. Clark returned to Vincennes with his Virginia troops and established a garrison there. Back in Kentucky he found it necessary to defend himself from both creditors and political enemies intent on ruining his public standing. Clark then entered onto a number of ambitious schemes, including a plan to establish a colony in Spain's Louisiana Territory and an expedition to take possession of disputed lands between the Yazoo River and Natchez, which President George Washington stopped.

More or less desperate, Clark accepted a commission as general in the French army, and set out to attack the Spanish territories west of the Mississippi River. The United States government demanded that he surrender this commission, and he was forced to take refuge in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1803 he built a cabin at Clarksville, on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, near the falls. Here he ran a grist mill until a stroke and the amputation of his right leg forced him to move to his sister's home near Louisville in 1809. He died and was buried there nine years later. His younger brother, William Clark, would gain fame as one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.