The Opposition: George Rogers Clark

Americans called him the Washington of the West and the Conqueror of the Old Northwest.  To his Native opponents, he was the one American commander they both feared and respected, with good reason.

George Rogers Clark (1752-1818), the older half-brother of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, was born in Albemarle County, near Charlottesville.  His family would have been on a social par with the Jeffersons, Randolphs, Lees and others.  George was the oldest son of the family.  When he was about four years old, the family moved to a large plantation in Caroline County, Virginia.  George received some formal schooling and was tutored at home.  His grandfather taught him to be a surveyor.  As such, he became familiar with the backcountry and the Natives who inhabited it, lessons he would put to use in a later career.  He was named a captain in the Virginia militia and served in Lord Dunmore's War, then went back to surveying.

The Revolutionary War gave him the first of several big breaks.  While major battles were being fought in the Northeast, settlers in the Virginia back country found themselves embroiled in a dispute between North Carolina and Virginia as to which colony/state owned the land that would become Kentucky.  The settlers in that region wanted Virginia to claim the land and George Rogers Clark was one of the delegation to petition Governor Patrick Henry to press Virginia's claim to the land.  Henry named Clark a major in the Kentucky County militia and gave him a supply of powder to use in defending the area against Natives and Loyalists alike.  Clark was only twenty-four, but older men such as Daniel Boone already respected his qualities as a leader.

In 1777, British officials turned their attention to the backcountry.  The Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Henry Hamilton, was based at Fort Detroit and supplied Natives in the Ohio Valley with arms and ammunition in return for their aid in attacking frontier settlements.  The Continental Army was spread thin in the East and could spare no men to protect the Ohio Valley or Kentucky.  Clark developed a plan to capture the British-allied Native villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia in what is now Illinois, and Vincennes, in present-day Indiana considered Illinois country at the time.  Patrick Henry agreed and allied Clark to recruit men from Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.  From their staging area near what is now Pittsburgh, Clark's force set out, capturing Kaskaskia without firing a shot.  He also captured Vincennes, where many French-speaking and Native inhabitants refused to fight on behalf of the British.  Not to be outdone, Hamilton retook Vincennes and Fort Sackville in December, 1778, but Clark wasn't through with him yet.

In February, 1779, marching unexpectedly in a frigid winter, Clark and his men showed up back in Vincennes, this time permanently capturing the village and Fort Sackville.  They also captured Henry Hamilton, who became a prisoner of war.  Washington praised Clark's accomplishment, using it as another argument toward a French alliance.  Virginia claimed all of the Illinois country, naming it Illinois County, Virginia.  Clark had his eyes on Fort Detroit, where the British continued to supply arms and ammo to the Natives, but could never gather enough men or materiel to make the attempt.  He remained closer to Kentucky, defending it against native attacks and strikes by Loyalist forces.  He fended off a British-sponsored and led invasion of Kentucky that included Shawnee, Delaware and Wyandot auxiliaries.  We'll get to Byrd's invasion of Kentucky in an upcoming post.  Clark led a retaliatory strike against the Shawnee village of Pekowi, near Springfield, Ohio. 

Thomas Jefferson succeeded Henry as Governor of Virginia and gave Clark the rank of Brigadier General and command of all the militia in Kentucky and Illinois counties.  Washington transferred a force of regulars to assist in a planned invasion of Fort Detroit, but it was ambushed before it could arrive, once again killing Clark's chances at a big prize.  Meanwhile, disaster struck.  In August, 1782, months after the Yorktown surrender, a British Loyalist force with Native auxiliaries defeated a detached unit of Kentucky militia at Blue Licks.  Though Clark wasn't present at the battle, and things might have been different had he been there, the Virginia government began to blame him for the disaster.  Clark promptly led a punitive expedition, destroying several Native villages and gaining a victory in the Battle of Piqua, but his fortunes were beginning to unravel, though he was still only thirty years old and had accomplished so much.

After the War, Clark served as a surveyor, assisting Continental veterans with settling their land grants.  He also helped negotiate two treaties with the Natives, the Treaty of Fort McIntosh and the Treaty of Fort Finney, in 1786.  However, the British were still in the area and Native raids on backcountry settlements continued, resulting in the loss of hundreds of American lives.  In 1786, Clark led 1200 men against Natives along the Wabash River in one of the opening campaigns of the Northwest Indian War.  On that expedition, everything that could go wrong, did.  Supplies were deficient, causing a mutiny among some of the men.  The Natives, preferring to retreat rather than face Clark, burned their own villages and fled, denying him a clear-cut victory.  And Clark had an ambitious and vicious enemy among his own ranks, James Wilkinson, more on him later.  Wilkinson insisted the Clark had a drinking problem, which led to lapses of judgment during the campaign.  Clark demanded a formal court martial to clear his honor but was ignored.  The Virginia Legislature formally condemned him and he resigned his commanded, going to live in Indiana where present-day Clarksville is named in his honor.

Clark had spent much of his own money in outfitting his various campaigns.  He was not successful in petitioning either the Virginia Legislature or the Continental Congress to repay these expenses.  He had to be constantly fearful of creditors, who in that day and age had the authority to have people jailed for debt.  Eventually, Virginia granted him land in Indiana, in what is now Clark County, but he had no resources to develop it.  Desperate, Clark became embroiled in schemes to help either France or Spain reclaim territory in the backcountry, further blackening his reputation.  He also wrote his memoirs, which were never published during his lifetime.  Clark tried to deed his land to relatives and friends to save it until he could develop it, but creditors seized it, leaving him with a small cabin and gristmill to make a daily living.  He was able to trade on his knowledge of the backcountry, becoming an informal behind-the-scenes consultant to his brother William as he and Meriwether Lewis planned their expedition.  Things went further downhill when Indian Territory chartered a company to construct a canal around the Falls of the Ohio.  Clark was named to the board of directors and did most of the surveying work, but the following year, two other board members, including former Vice-President Aaron Burr, were charged with treason and the company was investigated for misappropriating funds. 

And it wouldn't stop.  In 1809, Clark suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  Still trying to get around and help himself on his own, he fell into a fireplace and suffered a burn so severe his leg had to be amputated.  Unable to live on his own, he moved with his sister Lucy and her family to Locust Grove, near Louisville.  Finally, Virginia awarded him a pension and repaid his services with a ceremonial sword.  He suffered another stroke in 1818 and was buried on the grounds of Locust Grove, but later reinterred in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.  A memorial to Clark was erected in Vincennes, Indiana in 1933.  It includes a bronze statue of Clark in uniform and murals of his campaigns.  Other statues also commemorate him, including Indianapolis, Massac County, Illinois, Louisville, KY, and Springfield, Ohio.