Walter Clark—Fighting Judge and Women’s
Rights Advocate
Walter
McKenzie Clark was the oldest child of Gen. David and Anna Maria Thorne Clark. He was born on August 19, 1846 at Prospect Hill in Halifax Co., NC, but spent
most of his young years at Ventosa, the Clark plantation on the Roanoke River.
At the age
of 8, Walter was sent to school at
Vine
Hill Academy
near
Clarksville [later Scotland Neck] also in
Halifax County. In a letter to his mother he
wrote, “I go to Sunday School and church, and also clean my teeth every morning,
and everything else you requested me to do.” In 1857, he was sent to
Ridgeway School
in Warren Co. and in 1859 to
Belmont
Select School
in Granville Co., where he excelled in every subject. In 1860, at the age of
14, he was enrolled in Tew’s
Military
Academy at Hillsboro,
Orange Co.
Soon after
NC seceded from the Union on May 20, 1861, Gov. Ellis called for volunteers to
assemble at Camp Ellis, near Raleigh, Wake Co. He asked
Col. Tew of the Academy to assign a cadet to act as drill master for the first
contingent of raw recruits. Walter Clark—only 14 years old—was given the
assignment.
The Camp Ellis
troops were organized into the 22nd Regiment under the command of Col.
J. Johnston Pettigrew, and Clark, known as “Little Clark,” was elected 2nd
lieutenant and drill master, where he served until November when he became
drill master for the 35th NC Regiment at Camp Mangum,
also in Wake Co.
In the
summer of 1862, “Little Clark” became Col. Matt W. Ransom’s adjutant. The
regiment joined Gen. Lee’s army and Clark saw
plenty of action. He was present at the Second Battle of Manassas and took part
in the capture of Harper’s Ferry. After that, the troops marched double-quick
to Sharpsburg,
where on Sept. 17, the bloodiest one-day battle of the war was fought.
Clark later wrote an account of that day in which he told
how he was pulled out of the line of fire: “All the mounted officers in the
division instantly dismounted, turning their horses loose to gallop to the
rear. It being the first time I had been so suddenly thrown in contact with a
line of battle, and not noticing, with the smoke and uproar, that the others
had dismounted, I thought it my duty to stick to my horse; in another moment,
when the smoke would have lifted, I should have been taken for a general
officer and would have been swept out of my saddle by a hundred bullets. A
kind-hearted veteran close by peremptorily pulled me off my horse. At that
instant a Minnie ball, whistling over the just emptied saddle, struck the back
of my left hand which was still clinging to the pommel, leaving a slight scar…
.”
Gen. Ransom had a slightly different recollection. He said that a big
mountaineer private ran up to Clark and pulled
him off his horse, exclaiming, “Git off’n this horse, you darned little fool!
You’ll git killed.”
Later, when the regiment was in
winter quarters near Richmond, VA
with Gen. Lee, Clark wrote his mother asking
for a pair of boots. The soles of his shoes had given away and his feet were
partially on the ground. “I have thought my feet would freeze in these low
shoes, for they keep no more water out than if I had none. It is folly to think
that persons in the army can purchase at any time, anywhere, what they need.”
At another time he wrote his mother,
“ …we had to lie in an open ditch, the rain pouring down, without blankets or a
mouthful to eat (and the enemy picking off every man who raised up to stretch
his benumbed limbs) for two nights and a day …”
Walter Clark resigned his commission
in 1863 and enrolled at UNC. He graduated a year later, first in his class. He
was reading law, although, as he wrote his father, “… I would not be entitled
to plead until I am twenty one.” As soon as he graduated in June 1864, he
returned to his regiment and continued to serve until he was paroled on May 2,
1865.
After the
War
When Clark
returned to Ventosa, there was nothing left. The fields were a wilderness of
weed. Federal soldiers had stolen the livestock and burned the mansion to the
ground. David Clark’s health was ruined and Walter took over management of
Ventosa and Riverside, near New Bern in Craven Co. He became the head of
the family at age 18 and managed to rehabilitate Ventosa and keep his
family—mother, invalid father and 8 siblings—together.
In December 1865, at the age of 19,
he wrote to the Raleigh
Daily Standard: “The picture of abandoned farms, stagnated business, a
dejected people and open lawlessness is fearful to contemplate. Gentlemen may
go to Raleigh
and legislate, but what does their collective wisdom amount to if the plow
stands still in the furrow and the anvil rests on its block? …”
In January, 1867, Walter Clark was
admitted to the practice of law in Halifax Co. and opened his office in
Scotland Neck. At 21, he was licensed by the Supreme Court. He soon moved his
office to Halifax
where his practice thrived.
“Miss
Sudie”
“[I] go up to Company Shops
[Burlington, Alamance Co.] today for the purpose of seeing Miss Sudie Graham.”
This was the start of Clark’s ardent 3 year
courtship of “Miss Sudie” Graham. She lived in Hillsboro, Orange Co., far from Halifax, and
Clark often told of catching midnight freight trains on his return trips.
On Jan. 27, 1875, Walter Clark and
Susan Washington Graham were married. Clark was a director and general counsel
for the Raleigh & Gaston and the Raleigh
& Augusta Railroads, and it was more convenient for him to live in Raleigh. The young couple
had an inexpensive but comfortable house, and it was there they raised their
family of 8—5 boys and 3 girls.
Stock Certificate
Clark
seemed to have boundless energy and enthusiasm. He and Gov. Holt purchased the Raleigh News, a daily paper which Clark managed for a number of years. He wrote an
annotated Clark’s Code of Civil Procedure
that was so well done every practicing lawyer had to have a copy. He
compiled and edited the State Records of
North Carolina (16 vols., 1886-97). He wrote a historical summary of
Methodism in NC and represented the Methodist church at a number of national
and international conferences. In addition, he found time to help his children
with their lessons and take the boys swimming in Crabtree Creek.
Fighting
Judge
Clark
was appointed to the Superior Court in 1885 and was elected, in 1889, to the NC
Supreme Court where he served until his death in 1924. He was inflexible against
all violators of the law. Recognized as a progressive, Clark
was an ardent advocate for women, children and minorities. He had conflicts
with such powerhouses as the American Tobacco Co. and several railroad
companies, including the Atlantic Coast Line. He urged better child labor laws,
once denying the right of an employer to plead that a child working with
dangerous machinery assumed the risk incident to the employment, and when
injured was barred from recovery.
Women’s
Rights
Walter Clark took an avid interest
in woman’s suffrage, serving as legal adviser to the North Carolina League of
Women Voters. He made his first speech favoring woman suffrage in 1911.
In 1913, Clark spoke to the
Federation of Women’s clubs in New
Bern. He said, in part: “…The legal status of women
under the common law … was simply that of a slave. A married woman under the
common law owned no property, except after the death of her husband. She could
make no contracts, not even for necessaries and not even with the consent of her
husband. She could not will or devise her property. Upon her marriage the
husband and the wife became one—and that one was the husband. He was master,
the wife was a nonentity. The moment she married, he became entitled to all her
personal property. He was entitled to the rents and profits of her real estate,
which he could sell for his lifetime, or it could be sold for his debts. If she
died, the husband still possessed the right to the rents and profits of all her
realty for the rest of his life, while at his death she received only a child’s
part of his personalty [personal property] and a life right, called a dower, in
only one-third of his realty. … She could not appoint a guardian for her
children, even when she outlived her husband.
“As to her personal rights, the
married woman came under the absolute control of her husband, who could
chastise her if he saw fit, provided the chastisement inflicted no permanent
injury. The reason given for this by Judge Pearson as late as 1868 was that it
was the husband’s duty to ‘make the wife behave herself,’ and if he beat her
without good cause it was held that the courts would not punish him, because it
was too small a matter to take notice of, unless she was permanently injured.
As late as 1868 it was held by our Supreme Court that if a husband whipped his
wife with a switch no larger than his thumb he could not be punished.
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"Can this plaintiff discharge that duty when so authorized by an act of the Legislature and commissioned by the Governor? Or is she barred because she is a woman? Under the Constitution of the United States no one is debarred from holding any office from President down because of sex. What provision of the state Constitution will be shattered, and what detriment will the public welfare receive, if by legislative and executive authority a woman shall authenticate a certificate made by herself by impressing the seal upon a piece of paper? If the defendant were a man, he would not be debarred from holding this appointment unless he were an idiot, a lunatic, or a convict."
From a case heard by the NC Supreme Court in 1915
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/notaries/notaries.html
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“The first improvement came in 1848
when a statute ‘provided that as to women married thereafter, their real estate
could not be sold by the husband nor for his debts.’ In 1868, the new
constitution contained a provision that was intended to emancipate married
women by providing that ‘a married woman should own her property as fully as if
she had remained single; that she might will it, and that she could sell her
personalty, but it was still required that she must get the written assent of
her husband to convey her realty. This last restriction still holds in this
state … .’ Despite the new provision, “the courts placidly proceeded to hold that
the earnings from her needle or cooking, or otherwise acquired by her labor
should nevertheless become absolutely the property of her husband, and that she
could not sue for it.” It was not until 1913 that women were granted the right
to their own earnings.
In 1916, Judge Clark spoke in Greenville, Pitt Co. on
the subject of votes for women. He argued, although women could not vote,
legally they could hold any state office, as the constitution did not specify
that office-holders must be men.
Walter Clark died on May 20, 1924.
[From The Connector, Newsletter of Tar River Connections Genealogy Society: Vol. 12, Number
3: Summer 2008.
