Background
Daniel Clark was born on October 24, 1809 in Stratham, New Hampshire, United States, the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Clark. His father was a farmer and blacksmith.
Daniel Clark was born on October 24, 1809 in Stratham, New Hampshire, United States, the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Clark. His father was a farmer and blacksmith.
Clark was educated in the district school, Hampton Academy, and Dartmouth College, graduating from the latter in 1834. Like many other young men of that period, he was obliged to pay for his own education by teaching school during the winter months. After graduation he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1836.
About 1836 Clark began his law practise at Epping, and in 1839 moved to Manchester. This town was about to enjoy a prolonged period of industrial development, and he soon acquired a considerable practise. For the rest of his life he was active in Manchester affairs, holding several local offices and trusteeships and between 1842 and 1855 serving five times as representative in the legislature, being in charge of the bill for the incorporation of the city in 1846.
He was also active in various business enterprises and was for some years a director of the Amoskeag Corporation. In 1857 he was chosen to serve out the unexpired term of Senator James Bell and, being reelected for a full term, was for nine years one of the prominent figures in Washington affairs. He was an accomplished speaker and debater, ranked by S. S. Cox, a veteran member of the lower house, with Sumner, Fessenden, Seward, Trumbull, and other notables in “a galaxy of ability”. Early in his senatorial career, in the course of the Kansas debate, he declared, “We have had enough of bowing down, and the people in my region have got sick of it”. These words are the key to his subsequent course. In 1866 he failed to receive renomination, apparently largely because of New Hampshire’s adherence to the doctrine of rotation in office.
On July 27, 1866, President Johnson appointed him United States judge for the district of New Hampshire, although Gideon Welles remarked “On every Constitutional point that has been raised, Clark has opposed the President and has been as mischievously hostile as any man in the Senate”. Clark resigned from the Senate and spent the remainder of his life on the bench, declining at the age of seventy, because of excellent health, to take advantage of the provisions of the retirement act. He had an excellent standing as a jurist and frequently was called to sit in other courts on the New England circuit. His political activity was, of course, largely at an end but he served as president of the constitutional convention of 1876.
Politically, Clark was a Whig, and when that party disintegrated he was one of the active organizers of the Republican party.
Clark was an uncompromising foe of slavery and secession and his attitude in 1861 was criticized by many who believed that reconciliation was still possible.
Clark was married twice: on June 9, 1840, to Hannah W. Robbins, daughter of Maxcy Robbins of Stratham, who died in 1844; and on May 13, 1846, to Anne W. , daughter of Henry Salter of Portsmouth.