Background
John Clark was born on February 28, 1766 in Edgecomb County, North Carolina, United States. As a boy he came with his distinguished father, Elijah Clarke, to Wilkes County, where most of his life was spent.
John Clark was born on February 28, 1766 in Edgecomb County, North Carolina, United States. As a boy he came with his distinguished father, Elijah Clarke, to Wilkes County, where most of his life was spent.
Clark served under his father in campaigns against the Tories, was a lieutenant at fifteen and a captain at sixteen years of age. At twenty-one he was made major in the state militia, and fought in a battle against the Creek Indians, named in his honor the battle of Jack's Creek.
The main interest of posterity in the career of Clark centers in the long and bitter strife of the Clark and Troup parties in Georgia, in which Clark, almost unlettered, and followed by the democratic, small-farmer, frontier element of the population, maintained himself and his faction successfully against the redoubtable James Jackson, William H. Crawford, and George M. Troup, aristocratic and cultured champions of the wealthy planters of the coast and large farmers of the uplands. General Elijah Clarke—the son dropped the final “e, ” perhaps as an affectation of democratic sentiment—was more or less implicated in the Yazoo affair, and James Jackson’s scathing arraignment of all Yazooites drove them into a sort of defensive organization under Clark. This became more defined as time went on, and when Jackson won to his cause the adhesion of William H. Crawford, then a brilliant and prominent young lawyer of the uplands, the Clark faction hitherto supreme in that section began to fear for their laurels.
A deliberate plot seems to have been hatched to dispose of Crawford by a duel. Peter Lawrence Van Allen of Elberton, a young New Yorker, Federalist, and Yazooite, was put up to goad him into an encounter. The duel came off, but it was Van Allen who fell. In 1806, new ground of offense having arisen from a sarcastic speech of Crawford in the Georgia legislature, Clark challenged and met Crawford in a famous duel at High Shoals. At the first fire Clark was untouched, and Crawford’s left wrist, which should have been held in safety behind him, was painfully shattered. Clark insisted on proceeding, but the seconds objected. Before Crawford’s wound had healed, Clark sent him another challenge, but as no new casus belli had arisen Crawford, under the code, could without loss of honor decline.
In the following year Crawford was sent to the United States Senate, to enter upon his brilliant national career. The place left vacant in Georgia politics was filled by George M. Troup. The two factions soon became known as the Troup and Clark parties, violent antagonists contesting every election with varying success. The War of 1812 brought a lull, but on the return of peace the strife broke out with increased bitterness. It became intense in 1819, when Clark announced himself as a candidate for governor. Troup, now a United States senator, resigned his seat in order to oppose him. Clark won in the ballot of the legislature by thirteen votes. Two years later the Troup forces made a strenuous effort to defeat Clark for a second term. Clark won again, by a margin of only two votes.
The ensuing two years were made a continuous intensive campaign. The Clark party put up Matthew Talbot against Troup. On the day of election, amid breathless excitement, the ballots stood 81 to 81 with four still to be counted. These, one after another, proved to be for Troup. In 1825 Clark again in person became a candidate against Troup. In the meantime a constitutional amendment had transferred the election from the legislature to the people. The Clark faction claimed credit for this democratic change. The older centers in general voted for Troup; the newer and frontier settlements for Clark. After weeks of waiting, as the returns came slowly in to Milledgeville it was learned that Troup had received a majority of 683 votes. Curiously enough the newly elected legislature contained a majority of Clark men, indicating that Clark would have triumphed if the system had not been changed.
Although the two factions continued their antagonism for years to come, Clark ceased henceforth to take any active share in it. Clark accepted from the President an appointment as Indian Agent and in 1827 removed to Florida. He and his wife both died of yellow fever at St. Andrew’s Bay in 1832.
Originally John Clark was a member of the Clark party. Then his party assumed the name “Union Party” and later were absorbed in the Democrats, while the Troup party called themselves first the “States Rights” party and 'later, singularly enough, became Whigs.
Clark married Nancy Williamson, daughter of Micajah Williamson, a prominent man of some substance before the losses of the Revolution.