Abraham Clark

Abraham Clark (February 15, 1726 – September 15, 1794) was an American Founding Father, politician, and Revolutionary War figure. A delegate for New Jersey to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence and later served in the United States House of Representatives in both the Second and Third United States Congress, from March 4, 1791, until his death in 1794. His congressional service occurred during a significant period in the early republic, as he participated in the legislative process and represented the interests of his New Jersey constituents.

Clark was born on February 15, 1726, in Elizabethtown in the Province of New Jersey, the son of Thomas Clark. Recognizing his son’s aptitude for mathematics, Thomas Clark hired a tutor to teach Abraham surveying. While working as a surveyor, Abraham Clark taught himself law and entered legal practice. He became widely known as “the poor man’s councilor,” offering legal assistance and defense to poor men who could not afford a lawyer. Like many landholders of his era, he was a slaveholder. Around 1749 he married Sarah Hatfield; the couple had ten children. While Sarah Hatfield Clark managed the family farm and raised their children, Clark increasingly turned his attention to public affairs and politics.

Clark’s early public career developed within New Jersey’s colonial and revolutionary institutions. He first served as clerk of the Provincial Assembly and later was appointed high sheriff of Essex County, New Jersey. With the rising tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain, he became active in the patriot cause. In 1775 he was elected to the New Jersey Provincial Congress, the revolutionary body that replaced the royal government, and he served as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, which oversaw security and enforcement of revolutionary measures within the province.

Early in 1776, the existing New Jersey delegation to the Continental Congress opposed independence from Great Britain. As sentiment for separation intensified, the New Jersey state convention replaced those delegates with men who favored independence. Because Clark was outspoken in his belief that the colonies should become independent, on June 21, 1776, he was appointed, along with John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon, as a new delegate to the Continental Congress. The new delegation arrived in Philadelphia on June 28, 1776, and in early July Clark voted for the Declaration of Independence. On the day of the vote, he wrote that “It is gone so far, that we must now be a free independent State, or a conquered country,” and he expressed his personal resolve by remarking privately, “We can die here but once.” During the Revolutionary War he remained in the Continental Congress through 1778. His family also bore the burdens of the conflict: two of his sons, serving as enlisted soldiers, were captured by the British and incarcerated on the prison ship HMS Jersey.

After leaving the Continental Congress in 1778, Clark continued to play a prominent role in New Jersey politics. That year he was elected Essex County’s member of the New Jersey Legislative Council, the upper house of the state legislature. New Jersey returned him to the Continental Congress twice more, from 1780 to 1783 and again from 1786 to 1788, reflecting his continued influence in both state and national affairs. In 1786 he was one of New Jersey’s three representatives to the Annapolis Convention, alongside William C. Houston and James Schureman. Although the convention itself was sparsely attended and adjourned without extensive business, it issued the call for a broader constitutional convention. In an October 12, 1804, letter to Noah Webster, James Madison recalled that Clark was the delegate who formally moved for the Constitutional Convention, taking advantage of New Jersey’s relatively broad instructions that allowed consideration of non-commercial matters.

Throughout the 1780s Clark emerged as a strong proponent of democratic principles and the interests of ordinary citizens, particularly farmers and mechanics. He regarded these productive occupations as the foundation of a virtuous republican society and viewed the growing power of creditors and certain professional elites—especially lawyers, ministers, physicians, and merchants—as an aristocratic threat to the future of republican government. Unlike many of his contemporaries who emphasized deference to elected officials, Clark encouraged his constituents to petition their representatives whenever they believed change was necessary. In May 1786, supported by thousands of petitions gathered in preceding months, he successfully pushed a pro-debtor paper money bill through the New Jersey legislature. To promote this measure and articulate his broader populist vision for New Jersey’s future, he wrote a forty-page pamphlet under the pseudonym “A Fellow Citizen,” titled The True Policy of New-Jersey, Defined; or, Our Great Strength led to Exertion, in the Improvement of Agriculture and Manufactures, by Altering the Mode of Taxation, and by the Emission of Money on Loan, in IX Sections, published in February 1786. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 1788 but remained an influential figure in state and national politics.

Clark entered federal legislative service with the establishment of the new constitutional government. Elected as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey, he took his seat in the Second United States Congress on March 4, 1791. He served as a member of the Unknown Party representing New Jersey and was reelected to the Third Congress, continuing in office until his death in 1794. During his two terms in the House of Representatives, he participated in shaping the early legislative framework of the United States, contributing to debates over the powers of the federal government, fiscal policy, and the implementation of the new Constitution, while representing the interests and concerns of his New Jersey constituents during a formative period in American political development.

In his final years, Clark gradually withdrew from some state-level responsibilities. He retired before New Jersey’s state constitutional convention in 1794. On September 15, 1794, he died from sunstroke at his home in New Jersey while still serving in the United States House of Representatives, making him one of the early members of Congress to die in office. Clark Township in Union County, New Jersey, and Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, New Jersey, are named in his honor. He is buried in Rahway Cemetery in Rahway, New Jersey, where his grave remains a site of historical interest as that of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a long-serving public figure of the Revolutionary and early national eras.