Kentucky. Governor (1836-1839 : Clark)

James Clark served as Kentucky's thirteenth governor. He was the first Whig candidate to be elected to the office.

Clark was born in 1779 in Bedford County, Virginia. The family settled near the Kentucky River in Clark County, Kentucky when Clark was still a child. He went to Virginia to study law under his older brother, returned to Kentucky and opened a practice in Winchester, and was admitted to the bar in 1797.

Clark soon became interested in politics and served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1807 and 1808. From 1810 to 1812, he served as a judge on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. In 1813 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and remained there until he resigned in 1816 to return to the bench as a judge of the circuit court. He left the bench in 1825 to return to the United States House of Representatives; in 1832, he was elected to the Kentucky Senate where he remained until he was elected governor in 1836.

For the first time since 1792, the governor and lieutenant governor came from the same political party as both Clark and Charles Anderson Wickliffe were Whigs. Clark had been influential in the organization of the Whig party and was quite partisan. Clark's administration emphasized four matters: amending the criminal code, dealing with fugitive slaves, establishing a public school system, and strengthening the auditor's office. While the General Assembly chose not to act on the first matter, they did enact two laws to try to restrict the flow of fugitive slaves, and they passed an act establishing the first common schools in the state, and a second auditor was added to the auditor's office also. In 1838, Clark called for a law giving the governor the right to restrict abolitionist views in the state, but the legislature saw this as an infringement upon freedom of speech and refused to pass the law.

Clark served as governor until his death on August 27, 1839. He was buried in Winchester, Kentucky. Charles Anderson Wickliffe served the remaining year of Clark's term.

From the description of Subunit history. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 145415783