Thomas Lanier Clingman: Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains

Abstract

Thomas Lanier Clingman: Eater from Carolina Mountains. By Thomas E. Jeffrey. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 450. Illustrations. $50.00.) At minimum, Thomas E. Jeffrey deserves commendation for devoting a decade to compose a biography of such unlikable person. Egotistical, eccentric, and thin-skinned, Fire Eater From Carolina Mountains emerges from this book as at heart arrogant, self-serving politician. Never married, Clingman deliberately made his choice of ambition for his mistress, and fame for his reward (3) while his niece recalled that the prizes for which strove in every act of his political (2) were to be a senator then president. Clingman did become a force in antebellum era and remained a presence in North Carolina politics later into nineteenth century, and in this solid biography his career presents an interesting and useful window into political culture of that period in American history (319). Historians know Clingman as nonslaveholding congressman representing North Carolina's district who, notwithstanding slavery's minimal presence in highlands, led his constituents out of party into a Democratic organization committed to a strong defense of southern rights. As much as any other individual, Jeffrey notes, he was responsible for transformation of North Carolina from a bastion into a Democratic (2). Ironically, despite book's subtitle, Clingman actually was no eater. An intelligent, inquisitive, and opportunistic young man, Clingman first rose to prominence advocating policies, especially government-sponsored internal improvements, that believed would bring prosperity to mountains. In North Carolina legislature and in his first congressional term, Clingman persistently supported ultra Whig measures. Belying his later fire eater label, voted against reimposition of that prevented Congress from reading or debating antislavery petitions. Previous scholars, most notably John C. Inscoe and Mark W. Kruman, have pointed to Clingman's vote against gag rule as reason for his defeat for reelection in 1845, a defeat, they argue, that produced his later southern radicalism. Jeffrey instead demonstrates persuasively that important lesson Clingman learned from this loss was not southern loyalties of mountain voters but importance of Democrats as swing voters in his predominantly district. Remaining in party, Clingman regained and held his congressional seat by balancing his appeal as champion of western North Carolina's interests with his image as independent who refused to follow dictates of a Raleigh Clique at head of state party. He realized, too, that election to Senate depended upon Democratic votes in legislature. Thus, in 1850s intoned rhetoric of Southern Rights to curry favor (69) with opposing party. Yet Clingman never advocated secession, insisting that a strong defense of South provided best way to preserve Union. Even after formally switching parties in 1856, Clingman's initial support for Stephen A. Douglas's presidential aspirations and his advocacy of Young America movement's calls for further territorial expansion show that, as a Democrat, is better understood as nationalist than as a southern partisan. …