Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Clark received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of North Carolina in 1826 and 1832.
Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Clark received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of North Carolina in 1826 and 1832.
farmer governor lawyer planter politician
Henry Clark was born in 1808 in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, United States. His father, James West Clark, served as a United States Congressman and later as a Navy Department official in the Andrew Jackson administration. His mother was Arabella Toole Clark.
Clark received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of North Carolina in 1826 and 1832.
From 1858 to 1861, Henry Toole Clark served in the North Carolina Senate, where he was also a speaker.
As speaker of the Senate, he succeeded to the office of governor upon the death of John W. Ellis on July 7, 1861. During his term in office, Clark was unjustly criticized for not doing more to protect the North Carolina coastline, and the Confederate Congress investigated him after the loss of Roanoke Island. In turn, Clark felt that Richmond did not send sufficient troops to North Carolina, and he personally worked to recruit state troops and tried to protect the railroads in the eastern part of the state.
He also opposed William Ashe's attempts to seize arms in North Carolina. In 1862, his policies in the state were attacked by William W. Holden. Holden attempted to remove Clark from the office but failed.
Although a strong supporter of states' rights, the moderate forces of the state did not consider Clark to be effective. He was not a candidate for reelection and was replaced in 1863 by Zebulon Vance. Clark had no further duties during the Civil War.
After the war, Clark was elected to the state legislature of 1865 but was unable to serve because Governor Holden refused to pardon him. He was a man without means, but he repaid all of his debts after the war.
Henry Toole Clark devoted over twenty years to the service of the Democratic Party at the local, state, and national levels, and over ten years as a state senator.
As the leader of the state, he mobilized thousands of soldiers for the Southern cause, established the only Confederate prison in North Carolina, arranged the production of salt for the war effort, created European purchasing connections, and built a successful and important gunpowder mill.
Henry Clark spent his last years working on genealogical projects and collecting artifacts and memorabilia from North Carolina's history.
Henry was a life-long and devout Episcopalian.
As a "strict constructionist," Clark was committed to small government, low taxes, and debt avoidance. He voted against ad valorem taxation of slaves and opposed federal subsidies for public projects. On national issues he supported the Mexican War and "southern rights" and he considered slaves to be private property protected by the United States Constitution. Thus he supported slavery’s expansion to the territories. He advocated state-funded colonization of free blacks to Africa. He thought secession was a legal right held by the states, but he was never a fire-eater. During the critical decade of the 1850s, he warmed to the thought that separation from the Union would be the only way to protect slavery but took a cautious approach to the winter secession crisis of 1860-1861. He believed Lincoln’s election an inadequate excuse for leaving the Union and publicly supported secession only after the firing on Fort Sumter.
Clark believed in a southern slaveholding confederacy - a confederacy of strong states governed by a "virtuous white male democracy” with members of the planter “master class" at its head.
Contemporaries praised him for his "honesty, high character, and Christian fortitude."
In 1850 Henry Clark married Mary Weeks Parker. They had six children.
1782-1860
1813-1859
1816-1864
1850-1933
1852-1857
1855-1939
1857-1930
1859-1907
1862-1943
