Clark, George Rogers

Clark, George Rogers

(1752–1818) surveyor, soldier; born near Charlottesville, Va. A surveyor by profession, he had explored the Ohio River region. At the outset of the American Revolution, he was commander of the Kentucky militia; taking the offensive with a small force, he conducted an epic campaign, which involved incredible overland marches and the capture of several British outposts, climaxing in the "Night of the Long Knives" at Fort Sackville, Vincennes, Ind. (1779). He continued to fight the British and their Indian allies, and by the end of the Revolution he had secured the old Northwest (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois) for the new United States—a military reality the politicians recognized in the Treaty of Paris (1783). After the war he participated in a military expedition against the Wabash Indians, and because he took some goods, he lost favor with the government in Virginia and with George Washington. After two failures with French military expeditions, from 1803 he was engaged mainly in supervising land allotments in the new territory he had secured.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.