George Rogers Clark

American military leader

• Born: November 19, 1752
• Birthplace: Near Charlottesville, Virginia
• Died: February 13, 1818
• Place of death: Louisville, Kentucky

Clark’s successful attack against British forts in 1778-1779 served as the basis for the American claim to the Northwest Territory during negotiation of the Treaty of Paris of 1783. His leadership of the Northwest campaign led in turn to the founding of Louisville, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Indiana.

Early Life

George Rogers Clark was the second of ten children born to John and Ann Rogers Clark. Both parents were of British stock whose roots went deep into Virginia’s past. In 1757, the family moved to an inherited plantation in Caroline County. Young George attended a school there conducted by a Scottish schoolmaster named Donald Robertson. Clark studied mathematics and surveying and showed a strong interest in history and geography. The Clark family was moderately prosperous, but John Clark believed in instilling in his children a sense of discipline and responsibility. Thus, when George was fifteen years old, his father gave him his own tobacco crop and then charged the youth’s clothing and other personal expenses against it.

The most important element of Clark’s education was his early frontier experience. In 1772, after receiving training in surveying from his grandfather, John Rogers, Clark made his first trip west with a party that descended the Ohio River and explored and surveyed land in the vicinity of the Kanawha River. Over the next two years, Clark spent much time surveying wilderness land, acquiring in the process a substantial knowledge of natural history and an understanding of American Indian ways.

No early portraits of Clark exist, but contemporary descriptions suggest that he was a tall, powerfully built man with reddish or sandy-colored hair. His strong physical appearance complemented a winning personality that inspired confidence in others and quickly marked him as a leader.

Life’s Work

George Rogers Clark’s military career began in 1774 when he was commissioned a captain in the Virginia colony during Lord Dunmore’s War, a conflict between the Shawnee and the settlers on the Kanawha River frontier. Clark missed the critical Battle of Point Pleasant and saw little or no fighting otherwise, but he displayed a gift for command and acquired a knowledge of American Indian fighting tactics and military organization.

With the end of Lord Dunmore’s War, Clark joined the Ohio Company and spent several months surveying in central Kentucky and aiding in the organization of Kentucky County. Meanwhile, fighting had erupted between American colonists and British troops in Massachusetts. As the rebellion intensified, Clark joined the Kentucky County militia. By 1777, he was a major and temporary ranking officer in Kentucky. He spent several months trying to defend scattered settlements against American Indian raids instigated by the British north of the Ohio. As the attacks increased, however, Clark sought ways to take the war to the enemy.

In June, 1777, he sent spies to obtain the intelligence necessary to plan a long-distance strike. Using their information, Clark formulated his strategy and presented it to Virginia governor Patrick Henry in December. Impressed with the boldness of Clark’s scheme, Henry persuaded the legislature to appropriate funds for the campaign, without revealing the purpose of the expenditure. The governor then promoted Clark to lieutenant colonel and gave him secret orders to raise the troops necessary to attack the British fort at Kaskaskia, located on the Kaskaskia River near the Mississippi.

On May 12, Clark and his regiment of 150 men, along with about one dozen civilian families, sailed for the Falls of the Ohio, located about 400 miles downriver from Pittsburgh. After picking up a few more recruits along the way, the flotilla landed at Corn Island near the falls on May 27. A month later, Clark and his regiment departed for the Illinois country, leaving behind the civilians.

By July 4, Clark was poised at the outskirts of Kaskaskia. During the night his troops broke into the fort and captured its garrison without firing a shot. The following day, one of Clark’s companies captured Cahokia, about 40 miles away, in a similar manner. In August, the British-controlled French garrison at Vincennes, 240 miles east on the Wabash River, surrendered to Clark after learning of the French-American alliance of 1778. Now Clark turned his attention to Detroit, headquarters of Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, the chief British official in the Northwest Territory. Before he could march, however, Clark had to deal with the expiring enlistments of many of his troops and to provide for the administration of the posts under his command. The funds appropriated by the Virginia legislature long since exhausted, he used his personal resources and borrowed heavily from friends to continue the campaign. Meanwhile, Hamilton counterattacked, recapturing the inadequately defended post at Vincennes in mid-December. With winter setting in, Hamilton decided to wait until spring to retake Kaskaskia and Cahokia. It was a fatal decision.

While Hamilton waited, Clark plotted a surprise attack against Vincennes. In early February, 1779, he crossed the Kaskaskia River with about 170 men. The troops marched for two weeks through rain-swollen swamps and rivers. On February 23, they arrived at Vincennes, and Clark delivered a surrender ultimatum. Hamilton proposed a truce, but Clark, having deployed his forces in a manner that made their number appear much larger, rejected the proposal and returned surrender conditions that he demanded Hamilton to accept. Realizing that Clark would not be moved, Hamilton capitulated.

Clark began planning immediately to attack Detroit. His plans collapsed, however, because of a lack of troops, and he returned to the Falls of the Ohio in August, 1779. His destination was not Corn Island but the tiny village of Louisville, which had been established a few months earlier when the settlers on the island heeded Clark’s message to move to the Kentucky shore. Using Louisville as his base, Clark spent most of the remainder of the war conducting defensive operations along the Ohio. In 1779-1780, he supervised construction of Fort Jefferson on the Mississippi near the mouth of the Ohio. During mid-1780, he coordinated the defense of the Ohio Valley against a British counterattack from Detroit. Later that year Clark began anew planning a campaign against Detroit, but the effort was thwarted again when he became temporarily involved in defending the James River valley in Virginia and when Virginia and continental officials refused the necessary financial assistance. The objective of taking Detroit was achieved finally through the Treaty of Paris in 1783, during whose negotiations American diplomats used Clark’s capture of the Northwest forts as the basis for claiming the entire territory.

Many of Clark’s postwar activities were extensions of his wartime service. A skilled negotiator with American Indians, he worked out the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785 and the Treaty of Fort Finney in early 1786. Later in 1786, he joined Benjamin Logan in an expedition against the Wabash Confederacy in southwestern Indiana. Victimized by inadequate supplies and poor discipline, the campaign was a fiasco. Nevertheless, the pressure prompted the tribes to ask for a council, and peace was arranged in the spring of 1787.

Meanwhile, Clark had become involved in a second venture in town development. In 1783, the Virginia legislature awarded Clark and his regiment a grant of 150,000 acres on the Indiana shore at the Falls of the Ohio. One thousand acres was designated as Clarksville, which ranks as the oldest Anglo-American municipality in the old Northwest. A board of trustees was appointed to govern the town, and a board of commissioners was created to survey the land. Clark chaired both bodies for more than two decades.

Despite his accomplishments, Clark’s star sank quickly after 1787. Pressured by creditors for repayment of loans he had obtained for the Illinois campaign, Clark sought assistance from the Virginia legislature. Rebuffed again and again, he became increasingly addicted to alcohol. His intense bitterness and dire financial straits led to participation in schemes that caused many to question his loyalty. In 1789, Clark became involved in an abortive plot to establish American colonies on Spanish soil west of the Mississippi. In 1793, he accepted a commission to command a French revolutionary legion that would descend the Mississippi River and seize Spanish possessions. The U.S. government, however, thwarted the operation before it began.

Clark spent the remainder of the century on his parents’ Louisville estate, supervising farmwork and attempting to untangle his finances. In 1803, he built a cabin on his Clarksville land overlooking the Falls of the Ohio. There he received numerous visitors and accomplished some competent studies in natural history, but his heavy drinking steadily eroded his health. In February, 1809, he suffered a stroke and fell into his fireplace, causing burns that necessitated the amputation of his right leg. Disabled, Clark moved to Locust Grove, the Louisville home of his sister and brother-in-law, Lucy and William Croghan. In 1812, the Virginia legislature awarded him a sword and an annual pension of $400 in recognition of his wartime service. He died at Locust Grove on February 13, 1818.

Significance

George Rogers Clark’s achievements were among the most remarkable and least understood of the American Revolution. Barely thirty years old when the war ended, he had captured a major portion of the Northwest region and commanded the successful defense of the Ohio Valley. These accomplishments resulted from a unique combination of strategic vision, personal courage, and persuasive ability. Yet he was not, as some have claimed, the “conqueror of the Northwest,” nor did his victories alone guarantee American control of that area through the peace negotiations. Because Clark was unable to capture Detroit, the British maintained a foothold in the Northwest. Moreover, the American peace commissioners—John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams—were under instructions from Congress to follow the lead of the French, who had no desire to see the American domain expand to the Mississippi. When Jay and Adams learned that their ally was negotiating secretly with the British, they convinced Franklin that the Americans should deal directly with the British, in violation of their congressional orders. The British, wanting to reestablish trade and avert future conflict with the Americans, agreed to provisions in the Treaty of Paris that extended the western boundary of the United States to the Mississippi.

The significance of Clark’s accomplishments, however, cannot be diminished if placed in their proper perspective. Without his victories the American diplomats would have had difficulty mustering the bargaining power to secure the Northwest. By the middle of the nineteenth century, this territory had been carved into the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Clark’s exploits also contributed to the creation of a bistate urban region, which by 1980 numbered nearly one million people. Louisville is Kentucky’s largest city. Clarksville, Indiana, grew slowly during the nineteenth century, overshadowed by neighboring Jeffersonville and New Albany, both of which are within Clark’s Grant. Clarksville mushroomed after World War II, though, and became the second largest incorporated town in Indiana and a major commercial center. Certainly, the long-term consequences of Clark’s achievements outweigh the tragic circumstances of his postwar years.

Bibliography

Bakeless, John. Background to Glory: The Life of George Rogers Clark. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1957. This detailed biography provides an accurate account of Clark’s Northwest campaign.

Carstens, Kenneth C., and Nancy Son Carstens, eds. The Life of George Rogers Clark, 1752-1818: Triumphs and Tragedies. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. A collection of essays about various aspects of Clark’s life and military career, including his relationship with his wife, his role in the settlement of Kentucky, and his control of the Northwest Territories. Includes a bibliography.

English, William Hayden. Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778-1783. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bowen-Merrill, 1896. This two-volume work is the classic heroic account depicting Clark as the “conqueror of the Northwest.” Although dated in interpretation, it is useful for its abundant illustrations, biographical sketches, lengthy quotations from original documents, and detailed roster of Clark’s regiment.

Harrison, Lowell H. George Rogers Clark and the War in the West. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976. This brief, synthetic essay pictures Clark as one of the few revolutionary figures who understood the strategic significance of the frontier and as the person most responsible for saving Kentucky from the British.

James, James Alton. Life of George Rogers Clark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928. Based upon extensive research in primary sources, this is still the most accurate and most complete biography of Clark. Very readable and sympathetic to Clark, it includes a detailed discussion of his financial problems and participation in the Spanish and French conspiracies.

Jones, Landon Y. William Clark and the Shaping of the West. New York: Hill & Wang, 2004. This biography of George Roger Clark’s brother, William, includes a chapter about George’s life between 1772 and 1789 and his Northwest campaign.

Quaife, Milo M., ed. The Capture of Old Vincennes. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1927. Essentially a firsthand account of the capture of Vincennes, based upon Clark’s and Hamilton’s memoirs of the event. Clark’s peculiar syntax and spelling have been recast for easy reading.

Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763-1783. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967. Contextualizing Clark’s exploits, this volume explores the roles of land speculation, settlement patterns, Anglo-American politics, development of local government, and American Indian affairs on the frontier during the revolutionary period.

Waller, George Macgregor. The American Revolution in the West. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976. Based upon secondary sources, this brief narrative is especially useful in establishing the relationship between Clark’s victories in the Northwest and the decision of the American peace commissioners to seek a separate peace with the British.