John Alexander McClernand (30 May 1812 – 20 September 1900) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-IL 2) from 4 March 1843 to 3 March 1851 (succeeding Zadok Casey and preceding Willis Allen) and from IL-6 from 8 November 1859 to 28 October 1861 (succeeding Charles D. Hodges and preceding Anthony L. Knapp).
Biography[]
John Alexander McClernand was born in Breckinridge County, Kentucky in 1812, and his family moved to Shawneetown, Illinois while he was young. Self-educated, he was admitted to the bar in 1832 and served as a US Army private in the Black Hawk War. In 1835, McClernand founded the Shawneetown Democrat newspaper, and he served in the State House as a Democrat in 1836 and from 1840 to 1843; he went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1843 to 1851 and from 1859 to 1861, and he was known to be a Jacksonian Democrat who was opposed to abolitionists and the Wilmot Proviso and formulated the Compromise of 1850. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him a Brigadier-General in the Union Army at the start of the American Civil War, hoping to retain the loyalty of southern Illinois, which was heavily populated by pro-slavery southerners. McClernand commanded a division of Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee from the Battle of Belmont in 1861 to January 1863, notably putting up a strong defense against the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh. In January 1863, he was given an independent command when he was sent to take Arkansas Post, doing so at the Battle of Fort Hindman. On 18 June 1863, he was relieved of command by his rival Grant during the Siege of Vicksburg, but President Lincoln restored him to command on 20 February 1864, assuming control of his old XIII Corps. He fell ill, however, and Thomas E.G. Ransom took over his corps for the Red River Campaign. He resigned on 30 November 1864 and played a prominent role in Lincoln's funeral in April 1865. After the war, he served as a district judge and was President of the 1876 Democratic National Convention. He died in Springfield, Illinois in 1900.
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