Lincoln Clark

Lincoln Clark (August 9, 1800 – September 16, 1886) was a lawyer and one-term Democratic U.S. Representative from Iowa’s 2nd congressional district. His life began and ended in Conway, a small town in western Massachusetts, but included service in every branch of Alabama state government, the U.S. Congress, and the Iowa General Assembly. Born in Conway, Massachusetts, he attended the local district and private schools before pursuing higher education. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1825, a formative experience that prepared him for a professional career in the law and public service.

After completing his collegiate studies, Clark read law and, following the customary period of legal apprenticeship of the era, was admitted to the bar in 1831. He then moved south and commenced the practice of law in Pickensville, Alabama. Establishing himself as an attorney in a growing frontier region, he quickly became involved in state politics and public affairs, laying the groundwork for a long career in government. His early legal practice in Alabama coincided with a period of rapid expansion and political realignment in the state, and he became part of the Democratic political establishment there.

Clark’s public career in Alabama advanced steadily. He served as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1834, 1835, and again in 1845, participating in the legislative process during a period of intense debate over economic development and states’ rights. In 1836 he moved to Tuscaloosa, then the state capital, further embedding himself in Alabama’s political life. The Alabama Legislature elected him Attorney General of the state in 1839, placing him at the head of the state’s legal affairs. In 1845 he delivered a notable oration in Tuscaloosa commemorating former President Andrew Jackson, reflecting his alignment with Jacksonian Democratic principles. The following year, in 1846, Governor Benjamin Fitzpatrick appointed him as a circuit judge, giving him experience on the bench and completing his service in all three branches of Alabama’s state government. During his years in Alabama, Clark owned slaves, a fact that situated him within the social and economic order of the antebellum South.

In 1848, Clark left the South and moved to Dubuque, Iowa, where he resumed the practice of law and entered the political life of a rapidly developing free state in the Upper Midwest. Two years after his arrival, in 1850, he was elected as a Democrat to represent Iowa’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a closely contested race, he defeated Whig candidate John Parsons Cook by only about 150 votes out of more than 15,000 cast. Clark served in the Thirty-second Congress from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1853, representing a district that encompassed much of northeastern Iowa during a time when national politics were increasingly dominated by sectional tensions over slavery and westward expansion.

Clark’s tenure in Congress lasted one term. In a rematch in 1852, John Parsons Cook unseated him, returning the district to Whig control. Undeterred, Clark sought to regain his seat two years later, but was again defeated, marking the end of his service in the U.S. House of Representatives. He remained active in Iowa politics, however, and in 1857 he was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives. In that capacity he played an important role in adapting the state’s statutory laws to conform to the provisions of the new Iowa Constitution adopted in the 1850s, contributing to the legal and institutional consolidation of the young state.

As national tensions escalated in the late 1850s, Clark continued to participate in Democratic Party affairs. In the 1860 presidential election, he took part in the Iowa state Democratic convention. When a breakaway faction supported the candidacy of Vice President John C. Breckinridge, Clark declined to follow that group, instead remaining with the wing of the party that backed U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas. He was chosen as a potential presidential elector for Douglas, underscoring his prominence within the Iowa Democratic organization. During the Civil War, Clark aligned himself with the “War Democrat” faction in Iowa, supporting the Union war effort and opposing the pro-secession “Mahoneyite” faction that followed jailed newspaper editor D. A. Mahoney.

After the war, Clark eventually left Iowa and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he resumed the practice of law in a major commercial and legal center of the Midwest. In 1866 he was appointed United States Register in Bankruptcy, a federal position created under the nation’s evolving bankruptcy laws in the postwar era, and he served in that capacity while residing in Chicago. His appointment reflected both his long legal experience and his continued engagement with public service at the federal level.

In 1869, Clark retired from active business and returned to his native Conway, Massachusetts, closing a career that had taken him from New England to the Deep South, the Midwest, and back again. He spent his remaining years in the town where he had been born nearly seven decades earlier. Lincoln Clark died in Conway on September 16, 1886, and was interred in Howland Cemetery, bringing to a close a life that had encompassed service in multiple states, in every branch of Alabama’s state government, in the U.S. Congress, and in the Iowa General Assembly.