Charles Clark (24 May 1811-18 December 1877) was the Democratic Governor of Mississippi from 16 November 1863 to 22 May 1865, succeeding John J. Pettus and preceding William L. Sharkey.
Biography[]
Charles Clark was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1811, and he was raised in Mississippi and became a lawyer. He represented a settler in a land dispute with the Choctaw and was given land near Beulah as payment for his legal fee, and he formed a plantation on that land, growing it into a 5,000-acre estate and the most prosperous in the region. He served as colonel of the 2nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment during the Mexican-American War, and he later served as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, being wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and wounded and captured at the Battle of Baton Rouge. He served as Governor from November 1863 until the war's end in May 1865, and he settled on a plantation in Natchez in 1871 and died six years later.