Thomas Lanier Clingman was an American politician and army officer. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845 and from 1847 to 1858, and the United States senator from the state of North Carolina between 1858 and 1861.
Background
Thomas Lanier Clingman was born on July 27, 1812 in Huntersville, North Carolina, United States. His ancestry represents various racial strains. His father, Jacob Clingman, was of German stock; his mother, Jane, was the daughter of Captain Francis Poindexter, of French descent, and Jane Patillo Lanier, daughter of Henry Patillo, Scotch Presbyterian clergyman of North Carolina and widow of Colonel Robert Lanier. There was also Indian blood in the Poindexter family, Thomas Poindexter, father of Captain Francis Poindexter, having married Elizabeth Pledge, daughter of a Cherokee chieftain.
When Thomas Clingman was four years old his father died, and his early training was directed by his mother and uncle, Francis Alexander Poindexter.
Education
Thomas was educated by private tutors and in the public schools in Iredell County, North Carolina. Clingman graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1832, where he was a member of the Dialectic Senate of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.
Career
Thomas Clingman represented Surry in the legislature of 1835, but soon after removed to Asheville, Buncombe County, where he resided for sixty years. He devoted his life to politics and the development of the mountain region of North Carolina. In 1840 he was a member of the state Senate from Buncombe and in 1843 was a member of the Twenty-eighth Congress from the mountain district. In the following Congress, he did not appear but from the Thirtieth to the Thirty-fifth (1847-1858) he continuously represented his district and from 1858 until the opening of the Civil War was in the Senate.
At various times he denounced the Democratic party and John C. Calhoun in strong language. As a result of one of these outbursts, he fought a duel with William L. Yancey in 1845, Yancey missing fire and Clingman firing over his opponent’s head. In the discussion on the Wilmot Proviso, Clingman upheld the theoretical right of Congress to regulate slave property in the territories and also the practical necessity of making half the new territories slave and half free. In 1848 he began to distrust the attitude of the Northern Whigs toward the slavery question and his distrust was confirmed on a visit to the Northern states in the autumn of 1849. On his return to Washington in December of that year, he undertook to arouse Southern sentiment by a letter to Senator Foote of Mississippi, a Democrat, urging preparation for resistance "in a manner commensurate with the violence of the attack." He did not, however, support Calhoun in the effort to form a Southern bloc in Congress.
In the next election, his failure to vote for the compromise measures of 1850 and his inclination to support the right of secession cost him many votes, and he was reelected by a reduced majority. In 1861 he was a delegate from North Carolina to the Confederate States convention at Montgomery, Alabama. In August 1861 he was appointed colonel of the 25th North Carolina Volunteers, and in 1862 he became a brigadier-general. After the close of the Civil War, Thomas attempted to resume his seat in the Senate, from which he had been expelled after the opening of hostilities, but he was not allowed to do so. Thereafter he served in no political capacity save as a member of the North Carolina constitutional convention of 1875. He devoted much of his energy in his later years to exploiting the resources of western North Carolina.
Religion
Thomas was a member of Presbyterian church.
Politics
In the earlier part of his career, Clingman was a staunch Whig, inclined to independent action. Clingman was one of the few Southern Whigs who voted against the exclusion of abolition petitions. He favored the extension of the northern boundary of Missouri to the Pacific as the dividing line between free and slave territories and did not support any of the compromise measures of 1850, except the fugitive-slave law. In 1852 he left the Whig party, carrying his district with him into the ranks of the Democracy.
Personality
Thomas was a man of enormous intellect and intense ambition whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the presidency.