George Rogers Clark: "I Glory in War"

by William R. Nester

George Rogers Clark (1752–1818) led four victorious campaigns against the Indians and British in the Ohio Valley during the American Revolution, but his most astonishing coup was recapturing Fort Sackville in 1779, when he was only twenty-six. For eighteen days, in the dead of winter, Clark and his troops marched through bone-chilling nights to reach the fort. With a deft mix of guile and violence, Clark led his men to triumph, without losing a single soldier. Although historians have ranked him among the greatest rebel commanders, Clark’s name is all but forgotten today. William R. Nester resurrects the story of Clark’s triumphs and his downfall in this, the first full biography of the man in more than fifty years.
Nester attributes Clark’s successes to his drive and daring, good luck, charisma, and intellect. Born of a distinguished Virginia family, Clark wielded an acute understanding of human nature, both as a commander and as a diplomat. His interest in the natural world was an inspiration to lifelong friend Thomas Jefferson, who asked him in 1784 to lead a cross-country expedition to the Pacific and back. Clark turned Jefferson down. Two decades later, his youngest brother, William, would become the Clark celebrated as a member of the Corps of Discovery.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, George Rogers Clark may not have been fit to command any expedition. After the revolution, he raged against the government and pledged fealty to other nations, leading to his arrest under the Sedition Act.
The inner demons that fueled Clark’s anger also drove him to excessive drinking. He died at the age of sixty-five, bitter, crippled, and alcoholic. He was, Nester shows, a self-destructive a volatile, multidimensional man whose glorying in war ultimately engaged him in conflicts far removed from the battlefield and against himself.

Genres: Biography, American History, History, American Revolution, Military Fiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2012

About the author

William Nester, PhD is a Professor of Government and Politics at St. John’s University. He is the author of twenty-five books that explore varying dimensions and subjects of international relations and power. He taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London from 1987 to 1989, and since then at St. John's University.He received a BA in international studies and history from Miami University of Ohio, and a MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Reviews

[Breck Baumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal biography on the life of one of the most daring and controversial rebel leaders during the Revolutionary War. Full of valuable source material, Clark’s life is chronicled patiently from childhood to death, focusing on his upbringing, surveying career, soldiering and tactics, his post-war dealings with the French, and his eventual debts and decline. His bold achievements are both admired and deconstructed, and Nester provides a marvelous retelling of Clark’s taking of Vincennes.

Faults and misjudgments are laid bare for the reader as well, warts and all. Indeed, his hard drinking and selfish demeanor portrays him as a careless, arrogant, semi-functioning alcoholic—leaving no surprise as to why he was left out of the most famous of Revolutionary War hero canon. And while Clark's genius on the battlefield overshadows most of his early life exploits, Nester provides intimate detail to his love life, temperament, and personality:

Most women may have been as much repelled by as attracted to Clark. He was certainly physically imposing, with a muscular body and a towering height. His reputation for courage and audacity along with his gifts of leadership and diplomacy were beguiling. At twenty-six, he would never be more filled with energy and exuberance. But there was a downside. His moon face and steadily receding and thinning strawberry red hair were not conventionally attractive. As for status, he was a lieutenant colonel, though in a rebel rabble of armed men rather than an established great power. Even worse, he was of common rather than noble stock. His quick temper and hard drinking would have troubled most women, even as he struggled to check both when he was with any lady.

Oddly, this is the most recent biography since 1957's Background to Glory from John Bakeless, and I Glory in War (being quite rare) deserves far more appeal and recognition than the many modern regurgitations of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, et al. that stock the shelves of bookstores. That being said, Nester’s work will prove timeless, having carefully studied and sorted through numerous primary sources to prove fact from the myths and legends gathered in prior Clark aggrandizements. A truly profound chronology of Clark's life—capturing all aspects of the frontier-fighter's strengths, struggles, relationships, character, and milestones.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up because of a recent genealogical discovery. My ancestor – by way of two intervening, closed adoptions – was John Jacob Kimberlin, the first white settler in Scott County, Indiana. Kimberlin purchased his land with his Revolutionary War pension, and he did so as part of something called “Clark’s Grant,” a chunk of southern Indiana granted to George Rogers Clark for his Revolutionary War service.

So, I admit to less interest in the heart of this biography than in that particular part of his experience. And, as thorough as the book is, it’s less clear about how Clark received that grant, what it meant for lands within it to be sold (I can’t imagine Clark himself got all the money), and who in particular was eligible for those lands.

For those questions, I’ll probably have to find a more specialized academic study.

But, I can’t help but be let down by some of this book as a result. It is certainly thorough, but it’s a tough story to tell.

I can’t help but compare this to the excellent biography of Daniel Boone by John Mack Faragher. A Boone biography is naturally easier than one about Clark. Boone was a man unto himself, someone who spent much of his life on long hunts relying on his own wilderness skills. When he returned to “civilization,” he came with a distinct voice and as a distinct actor.

Clark, while also instrumental in settling the Kentucky frontier, was much more tied to others. He was a general and a politician, and he was intermittently very successful and very unsuccessful. His story is less his own and more the story of a nation of recent colonies trying to figure out its first, in effect, colonial project.

Nester gives us all the information we could ask for, but I think at times we could use more of a distant perspective as well. It might say more about me and my occasional loss of focus as I waited for the section on Clark’s Grant, but I sometimes lost track of which particular operation we were hearing about.

It says a lot about Clark that he is most famous for bringing the Revolutionary War to the future American Midwest but that that Midwest tended to reject him. He won a succession of impressive battles, but – according to some scholars – those victories had limited repercussions. Yes, he “took” three key Native/French cities in quick succession, but he didn’t hold them. And then the French ceded the territory before long.

It's also hard to like the man all that much. Nester describes him as charismatic – and he must have been to persuade his force or irregulars to the sustained military marches required for his operations – but we also learn that he was an alcoholic and, perhaps, jealous of the success of his younger brother: the “Clark” of Lewis and Clark.

All that makes for a tough story to tell. I sympathize with Nester; a Boone biography is an easier one to conceive and then an easier one to write. (That should not take anything away from Faragher’s great work, though. That really is a terrific accomplishment.)

I can’t imagine needing to know any more details about Clark’s life, but I can imagine a story that more clearly narrates the highs and lows of that life.

Still, there’s a lot to admire in this scholarly achievement, and it should help me as I work to unpack the questions that led me to it.

[Ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Rogers Clark led a military campaign that secured Indiana and Illinois for the Americans during their war with Britain. This made it possible, decades later, for the Louisiana purchase to be completed without threatening British territory. He had done that by the time he was 26. After that his accomplishments are minimal. The Benedict Arnold attack on Richmond caused a panic in which his financial records were misplaced, and he was severely in debt after the war. For this reason he refused to lead the Clark expedition to the northwest, which expedition did not happen, though decades later one of his brothers was the Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
He later explored the possibilities of working with the Spanish or the French, work which would have been treasonous and would have severed him from the ranks of American heroes. The Spanish always hated him, and by the time he approached the French, he was too deep into alcoholism to impress them. A stroke and a grisly drunken accident rendered him an invalid for the last nine years of his life.
The author obviously spends most of the book on the first 26 years, but does make a serious effort to understand the man through his whole life -- something we need to do to try to understand what sort of people our nation needed and used to become what it is today.

[Christopher Gould · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inspired to read this book after visiting the George Rogers Clark National Monument in Vincennes, Indiana. Clark is a complex character - clearly a brave hero of the American Revolution, he also had a lot of flaws, including some that are downright despicable (such as his treatment of Native Americans). The book is easy to read and kept me on the edge of my seat.

[Andrew Degruccio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read about a fallen American revolutionary. The history of Kentucky and the American frontier at the time of the American revolution is fascinating. This is a must read to add to that history.