George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was an American military officer and surveyor from Virginia who became the highest-ranking Patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Virginia militia in Kentucky (then part of Virginia) throughout much of the war, and is credited for founding Louisville, Kentucky in 1778. He is best known for his captures of Kaskaskia, Illinois, in 1778 and Vincennes, Indiana, in 1779 during the Illinois campaign, which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory (then part of the British Province of Quebec) and earned Clark the nickname "Conqueror of the Old Northwest". The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
Clark's major military achievements occurred before his thirtieth birthday. Afterward, he led militia forces in the opening engagements of the Northwest Indian War, but was accused of being drunk on duty. He was disgraced and forced to resign, despite his demand for a formal investigation into the accusations. Clark left Kentucky to live in the Indiana Territory but was never fully reimbursed by the Virginian government for his wartime expenditures. During the final decades of his life, he worked to evade creditors and suffered living in increasing poverty and obscurity. He was involved in two failed attempts to open the Spanish-controlled Mississippi River to American traffic. Following a stroke and the amputation of his right leg, he became disabled. Clark was aided in his final years by family members, including his younger brother William, one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He died of a stroke on February 13, 1818.
Early life George Rogers Clark was born on November 19, 1752, in Albemarle County, Virginia, near Charlottesville, the hometown of Thomas Jefferson. He was the second of ten children borne by John and Ann Rogers Clark, who were Anglicans of English and possibly Scottish descent. Five of their six sons became officers during the American Revolutionary War. Their youngest son William, was too young to fight in the war, but he later became famous as a leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The family moved from the frontier to Caroline County, Virginia, in 1756 after the outbreak of the French and Indian War. They lived on a plantation that they later developed to a total of more than .
Clark had little formal education. He lived with his grandfather so that he could receive a common education at Donald Robertson's school, where fellow students included James Madison and John Taylor of Caroline. He was also tutored at home, as was usual for the children of Virginia planters in this period. There was no public education. His grandfather trained him to be a surveyor.
In 1771, at age 19, Clark left his home on his first surveying trip into western Virginia. In 1772, he made his first foray into Kentucky via the Ohio River at Pittsburgh and spent the next two years surveying the Kanawha River region, as well as learning about the area's natural history and customs of the various tribes of Indians who lived there. In the meantime, thousands of settlers were entering the area as a result of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, by which some of the tribes had agreed to peace.
Clark's military career began in 1774, when he served as a captain in the Virginia militia. He was preparing to lead an expedition of 90 men down the Ohio River when hostilities broke out between the Shawnee and settlers on the Kanawha frontier; this conflict eventually culminated in Lord Dunmore's War. Most of Kentucky was not inhabited by Indians, although such tribes as the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Seneca (of the Iroquois Confederacy) used the area for hunting. Tribes in the Ohio Country who had not been party to the treaty signed with the Cherokee were angry, because the Kentucky hunting grounds had been ceded without their approval. As a result, they tried to resist encroachment by the American settlers, but were unsuccessful. Clark spent a few months surveying in Kentucky, as well as assisting in organizing Kentucky as a county for Virginia prior to the American Revolutionary War.
Revolutionary War As the American Revolutionary War began in the East, Kentucky's settlers became involved in a dispute about the region's sovereignty. Richard Henderson, a judge and land speculator from North Carolina, had purchased much of Kentucky from the Cherokee by an illegal treaty. Henderson intended to create a proprietary colony known as Transylvania, but many Kentucky settlers did not recognize Transylvania's authority over them. In June 1776, these settlers selected Clark and John Gabriel Jones to deliver a petition to the Virginia General Assembly, asking Virginia to formally extend its boundaries to include Kentucky.
Clark and Jones traveled the Wilderness Road to Williamsburg, where they convinced Governor Patrick Henry to create Kentucky County, Virginia. Clark was given of gunpowder to help defend the settlements and was appointed a major in the Kentucky County militia. Although he was only 24 years old, he led older but lesser ranked settlers such as Daniel Boone, James Harrod and Benjamin Logan.
Illinois campaign
In 1777, the Revolutionary War intensified in Kentucky. Lieutenant-governor Henry Hamilton, based at Fort Detroit, provided weapons to his Indian allies, supporting their raids on settlers in hope of reclaiming their lands. The Continental Army could spare no men for an invasion in the northwest or for the defense of Kentucky, which was left entirely to the local population. Clark spent several months defending settlements against the Indian raiders as a leader in the Kentucky County militia, while developing his plan for a long-distance strike against the British. His strategy involved seizing British outposts north of the Ohio River to destroy British influence among their Indian allies.
In December 1777, Clark presented his plan to Virginia's Governor Patrick Henry, and he asked for permission to lead a secret expedition to capture the British-held villages at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes in the Illinois Country. Governor Henry commissioned him as a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Regiment of the Virginia State Forces and authorized him to raise troops for the expedition. The unit originally was raised as a special Virginia militia regiment for defense of the Western Department. Clark and his officers recruited volunteers from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Clark arrived at Redstone, a settlement on the Monongahela River south of Fort Pitt on February 1, where he made preparations for the expedition over the next several months. The men gathered at Redstone and the regiment departed from there on May 12, proceeding on boats down the Monongahela to Fort Pitt to take on supplies and then down the Ohio to Fort Henry and on to Fort Randolph at the mouth of the Kanawha. They reached the Falls of the Ohio on May 27 where they spent about a month along the Ohio River preparing for their secret mission. The settlement they left behind at Corn Island led to the founding of Louisville, Kentucky, for which Clark came to be credited.
In July 1778, Clark led about 175 men of the Illinois Regiment and crossed the Ohio River at Fort Massac and marched to Kaskaskia, capturing it on the night of July 4 without firing their weapons. The next day, Captain Joseph Bowman and his company captured Cahokia in a similar fashion without firing a shot. The garrison at Vincennes along the Wabash River surrendered to Clark in August. Several other villages and British forts were subsequently captured, after British hopes of local support failed to materialize. To counter Clark's advance, Hamilton recaptured the garrison at Vincennes, which the British called Fort Sackville, with a small force in December 1778.
Prior to initiating a march on Fort Detroit, Clark used his own resources and borrowed from his friends to continue his campaign after the initial appropriation from the Virginia legislature had been depleted. He re-enlisted some of his troops and recruited additional men to join him. Hamilton waited for spring to begin a campaign to retake the forts at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but Clark planned another surprise attack on Fort Sackville at Vincennes. He left Kaskaskia on February 6, 1779, with about 170 men, beginning an arduous overland trek, encountering melting snow, ice, and cold rain along the journey. They arrived at Vincennes on February 23 and besieged Fort Sackville. After a siege which included the killing of 5 captive Indians on Clark's orders to intimidate the British, Hamilton surrendered the garrison on February 25 and was captured in the process. The winter expedition was Clark's most significant military achievement and became the basis of his reputation as an early American military hero.For a description of the surprise attack on Fort Sackville, see
News of Clark's victory reached General George Washington, and his success was celebrated and was used to encourage the alliance with France. General Washington recognized that Clark's achievement had been gained without support from the regular army, either in men or funds. Virginia also capitalized on Clark's success, laying claim to the Old Northwest by calling it Illinois County, Virginia.
Final years of the war Clark's ultimate goal during the Revolutionary War was to seize the British-held fort at Detroit, but he could never recruit enough men and acquire sufficient munitions to make the attempt. Kentucky militiamen generally preferred to defend their own territory and stay closer to home, rather than make the long and potentially perilous expedition to Detroit. Clark returned to the Falls of the Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky, where he continued to defend the Ohio River valley until the end of the war.
In June 1780, a mixed British-Indian force, including Shawnee, Lenape and Wyandot warriors, set out from Fort Detroit and invaded Kentucky. They captured two fortified settlements and seized hundreds of prisoners. In August 1780, Clark led a retaliatory force that defeated the Shawnee at the village of Peckuwe. It has been commemorated as George Rogers Clark Park near Springfield, Ohio.
In 1781, Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson promoted Clark to brigadier general and gave him command of all the militia in the Kentucky and Illinois counties. As Clark prepared to lead another expedition against the British and their allies in Detroit, General Washington transferred a small group of regulars to assist, but the detachment was disastrously defeated in August 1781 before they could meet up with Clark. This ended the western campaign.
In August 1782, another British-Indian force defeated the Kentucky militia at the Battle of Blue Licks. Clark was the militia's senior military officer, but he had not been present at the battle and was severely criticized in the Virginia Council for the disaster. In response, during November 1782, Clark led another expedition into the Ohio Country, destroying several Indian villages along the Great Miami River, including the Shawnee village of Piqua, Miami County, Ohio.Clark reported the Indians had ten killed and seven captured, while of his forces, one was killed and another wounded. This was the last major expedition of the war.