Iowa: Its History and Its Foremost Citizens
Revised, Home and School Edition by Brigham Johnson.
2 Vols. Des Moines,
IA: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1918.
C
Unless otherwise noted, biographies submitted by Tamara Jorstad.
Alexander
Chambers, Wounded at Iuka
This soldier was born in New York about 1832; was graduated from the Military
Academy in 1853, and was made second lieutenant of infantry. He served in
garrison and frontier duty and in the Seminole War. On the 24th of
March, 1862, he was transferred from captain in the Eighteenth United States
Infantry to colonel of the Sixteenth Iowa Volunteers. He served in the Tennessee
and Mississippi campaigns, and was twice wounded at Shiloh. He was in at the
siege of Corinth; was severely wounded at Iuka; took part in the Vicksburg
campaign, and on the 14th of February, 1864, was brevetted
brigadier-general. He was judge advocate of the District of Nebraska from
January to June, 1866, and, for a year thereafter, in the Department of the
Platte. He was then transferred to the Twenty-seventh United States Infantry,
and in March 1867, became a major in the Twenty-second United States Infantry.
George Washington
Clark, Combination of Courage and Caution
The first man to enlist in the first company raised in Indianola – Company G,
Third Iowa Infantry – was George Washington Clark, then twenty-eight years old. Young
Clark was a native of Johnson county, Indiana, and was educated at Wabash College. At the
age of twenty-one, he located at Indianola, Iowa, where later he practiced law.
Commissioned first lieutenant, he was appointed quartermaster of his regiment. In
September, 1862, he was appointed colonel of the Thirty-fourth Iowa Infantry. He was one
of four brothers in the new regiment. He participated in the battle of Chickasaw Bayou, in
the capture of Arkansas Post, and in the siege of Vicksburg. In the Red River campaign he
commanded a brigade. Before Mobile he played a conspicuous part. With the beginning of the
year 1865 his regiment, decimated by disease and battle, was formed into a battalion and
consolidated with the battalion of the Thirty-eighth Iowa, with Colonel Clark in command.
For gallantry at Fort Blakely, before Mobile, he was brevetted brigadier-general.
After the war General Clark resided in Des Moines until 1868, when he moved to
Washington, where he died, May 22, 1898, aged sixty-five years. His death was a sorrow to
many. Stuart describes him as "of medium height, a brave soldier and an honest,
unpretending man." As a soldier he was possessed of that rare combination, courage
and caution. He "enjoyed the love of his regiment and the confidence of his superior
officers."
William Tecumseh Clarke, Iowa General and Texas Congressman
William Tecumseh Clarke was born in Norwalk, Conn., June 29, 1834 . He attended school in his native state and in New York City . He studied law in New York and in 1855 migrated to Davenport, Iowa, where he engaged in the practice of his profession. He also acquired a local reputation as a campaign speaker. At the age of twenty-six, he became interested in the "irrepressible conflict." We find him one of a committee on resolutions at a famous war meeting held in Davenport, April 17, 1861, the day following the news of the fall of Sumter .
In the organization of the Thirteenth Iowa Infantry, Clarke was a first lieutenant. On November 2, 1861, he was appointed captain and assistant adjutant-general; March 6, 1862, major and adjutant-general; November 24, 1862, lieutenant-colonel and adjutant-general; assigned, February 10, 1863; brevet brigadier-general, July 22, 1864, "for gallant and distinguished service at the battle of Atlanta;" brevet major-general, November 24, 1865, "for gallant and meritorious services during the war;" mustered out February 1, 1866. [1]
Returning to civil life, he first went back to Davenport, and later located in Galveston, Texas, engaging in business there. During Grant's first term, he was postmaster of Galveston . He was a Texas member of Congress from March 4, 1869, to May 13, 1872, when he was retired in a contest made on the validity of his second election.
In October, 1900, General Clarke visited Iowa on official business. He was then a government inspector. The Davenport Democrat then referred to him as “the ranking Iowa general, excepting General Doge,” and as “the last surviving field officer of Crocker's famous brigade” as having served “with Grant and Sherman all the way from Belmont to Bentonville,” and as “Grant's last surviving chief-of-staff and adjutant-general of the Army of the Tennessee .”
The Democrat gives this additional information relative to a career little known in Iowa : “General Clarke came back to Davenport for residence after the war. In 1865 General Grant sent him down to drive Maximillian out of Mexico . Later he settled in Galveston, Texas, a district from which he was elected to Congress. During the years he was in Congress he put forth all his efforts for the establishment and improvement of the harbor of Galveston . . .' The harbor Galveston is my monument,' he said.”
General Clarke died in New York City, October 12, 1905, aged seventy-one years.
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[1] This record, differing from that of the Iowa Roster, is taken from the Biographical Congressional Directory, Senate Doc. 654, Sixty-first Congress, Second Session, p. 549.
Datus E. Coon, Journalist and Soldier
Datus E. Coon, one of the pioneer newspaper publishers of northeastern Iowa,
founded a local democratic paper at each of the following places: Osage, Mason
City and Ellington. His staunch support of the Union so gratified Governor
Kirkwood that he early received from the governor a commission to form a company
for the Second Iowa Cavalry. In September, 1861, he was made major of his
regiment; May 4, 1864, he became its colonel, and March 8, 1865, he was
brevetted brigadier-general. His career as a soldier closed September 19, 1865,
at Selma, Alabama, where his regiment was mustered out. During most of his
career as colonel, he commanded the Second Brigade under General Hatch. He was a
gallant and efficient officer and saw much service.
On returning from the army, he became a resident of Alabama, and during the
reconstruction period was a member of the Alabama Legislature. President Hayes
recognized his fidelity to principles under trying circumstances by appointing
him to a Cuban consulship. In 1878, he went to San Diego, California, as
superintendent of the Chinese exclusion law. There, on the 17th of
December, 1893, at the age of sixty-two the general was killed by the accidental
discharge of a revolver.
Datus E. Coon was born in New York in 1831. When the war broke out he was a
resident of Mason City, Iowa.
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