Clingman, was born in Huntsville, a small community in present-day Yadkin County, North Carolina. His parents were Jacob and Jane Poindexter Clingman and he was named for Dr. Thomas Lanier, his half uncle.[1] He was educated by private tutors and in the public schools in Iredell County, NC. Clingman graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1832, where he was a member of the Dialectic Senate of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1834 and began practice in Huntsville.
Political career
Clingman in uniform.
Clingman was elected to the North Carolina State House of Commons in 1835. In 1836 he moved to Asheville, North Carolina. He was a member of the North Carolina State Senate in 1840. In 1843 Clingman ran as a Whig and was elected to the 28th United States Congress, however he was defeated in his reelection bid in 1845.[2] In 1845 he fought a duel with a fellow congressman William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama. In Yancey's maiden speech on the House floor, he had impugned his opponent's integrity. Both duelists had missed. In 1847 he regained the seat and won reelection in 1849, 1851, 1853, 1855 and 1857. On May 7, 1858, he resigned after becoming a United States senator as a Democrat the previous day,[2] replacing the resigning Asa Biggs. He was reelected but was expelled from the Senate for support of the Confederacy.
After the Civil War, Clingman explored and measured mountains in western North Carolina and Tennessee. Kuwohi, Tennessee's highest mountain, also partly in North Carolina, was renamed Clingman's Dome in his honor in 1859 as Kuwohi was one of the mountains he had accurately measured, being said to be the first person to do so.[3] The mountain's name was changed back to Kuwohi in 2024.[4] He died in Morganton, North Carolina, and was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina.[5]
^Wheeler, John H.. Reminiscences and memoirs of
North Carolina and eminent North Carolinians. Columbus, Ohio:
Columbus Print. Works, 1884
^ abInscoe, John C. and Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. ISBN978-0-8078-5503-4. p. 32.
