This is the first in-depth, comprehensive biography of Henry Toole Clark, North Carolina’s second Civil War governor. In addition to his actions as a war leader, it explores Clark’s role as a member of the Old South’s planter elite and his change in status after the war, his slaveholding business, the constitutional crisis that made him governor, and his career during the years of Reconstruction.

R. Matthew Poteat is an assistant professor of history at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has written articles and reviews for a variety of scholarly journals and online publications, including The North Carolina Historical Review, Shenandoah: the Washington and Lee University Review, and H-Net Civil War.

R. Matthew Poteat

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 217
Bibliographic Info: 36 photos, maps, chronology, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3728-3
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      ix
Foreword by Joe A. Mobley      1
Chronology      3
Introduction      5

1. Frontier Aristocrats      15
2. Coming Into His Own      38
3. “We rely upon his honesty”      70
4. “North Carolina has been neglected”      90
5. “With no man to protect us”      104
6. “That Odious Constitution”      119

Epilogue      145
Appendix A. The James West Clark Letters (1822–1827)      153
Appendix B. “On the English Character,” Clark’s University Oration      166
Appendix C. A Poem Describing Members of the North Carolina Senate, 1861      169
Appendix D. Maps      172
Chapter Notes      177
Bibliography      193
Index      203

• “a well-written book that will appeal to the general history-lover as well as the scholar”—News & Observer
• “a useful biography of a neglected Civil War governor…a commendable job”—The Journal of Southern History