Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

506 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
prestige of his gallant record as a soldier, became a dominant figure
in the politics of Upper Georgia. When only fourteen years of age, he
had fought by his father's side at Kettle Creek and later had won mili
tary renown by his campaigns and forays against the Indians. The
battle of Jack's Creek was so called in honor of John Clark, whose
nickname among his intimate friends and comrades of the army was
'' Jack.'' Trained in the exercise of arms, it is not strange that he should
have carried his characteristics as .a fighter into the arena of politics;
nor is it strange that the veterans who followed his distinguished father
and who knew John Clark himself in the perilous days of battle should
have remained his loyal supporters to the very last.
Though not an educated man, at least in the academic sense, he was
a man of strong intellect, rugged in character, somewhat blunt of ex
pression, full of bold initiative, and with a rare capacity for leadership.
According to Governor Gilmer, he possessed the temper of the clansman
and was domineering and dictatorial; but Governor Gilmer was identi
fied with the Crawford faction, few of whom could discover any virtue
in John Clark. General Jackson, in the lower part of the state, was for
years a stumbling block in the way of Clark's ambition, for the old
governor did not approve of the latter's land speculations.
But in the politics of Upper Georgia, John Clark was an imperious
figure. Here he was on his native heath; and here the frontiersmen
flocked to his standard like the Highland Clans to the horn of Roderick
Dim. Here as a leader whose word was law and gospel, he exercised an
unopposed sway until a new star began to loom upon the horizon just
north of Augusta and a new political Warwick arose to divide with
him the honors of public life, in the person of his future hated rival,
William H. Crawford.
Mr. Crawford was a man of titanic proportions. At the Court of
France, in after years, his majestic figure caught the admiration of the
great Napoleon, who impulsively declared that Mr. Crawford was the
only man to whom he ever felt constrained to bow. Better educated than
John Clark, he was a man of unusual culture for the times, a most
effective public speaker, and a born leader of men. These qualities
eventually made him United States senator, minister to France, secretary
of the treasury, and, except for an unfortunate stroke of paralysis, might
have placed him in the presidential chair of the nation.
The settlers of Upper Georgia were at this time, in the main, either
from Virginia or from North Carolina; and, according to ancestral bias,
took sides in the political wrangles of this early period. As a rule, the
North Carolinians attached themselves to Clark, while the Virginians
allied themselves with Crawford, who likewise derived strong support
from the aristocratic families of the Georgia coast. The elimination
of Crawford became naturally the first strategic move of the Clark fac
tion ; and to accomplish this end a duel offered the most convenient
instrument and promised the most effective results.
Mr. Crawford, unlike General Clark, possessed little knowledge of
the use of arms. He was not a child of the camp. For this reason, his
opponents argued that he would, in all likelihood, decline a challenge to