III, p. 487.
Clark had spent all his own substance and all else he could beg,
borrow--or appropriate--in the conquest of Illinois and the
defense of Kentucky. His only reward from Virginia was a grant of
land from which he realized nothing, and dismissal from her
service when she needed him no longer.
All that Clark had asked for himself was a commission in the
Continental Army. This was denied him, as it appears now, not
through his own errors, which had not at that time taken hold on
him, but through the influence of powerful enemies. It is said
that both Spain and England, seeing a great soldier without
service for his sword, made him offers, which he refused. As long
as any acreage remained to him on which to raise money, he
continued to pay the debts he had contracted to finance his
expeditions, and in this course he had the assistance of his
youngest brother, William, to whom he assigned his Indiana grant.
His health impaired by hardship and exposure and his heart broken
by his country's indifference, Clark sank into alcoholic
excesses. In his sixtieth year, just six years before his death,
and when he was a helpless paralytic, he was granted a pension of
four hundred dollars. There is a ring of bitter irony in the
words with which he accepted the sword sent him by Virginia in
his crippled old age: "When Virginia needed a sword I gave her
one.
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