While George Rogers Clark, by his heroic performances, won for himself a conspicuous place on the pages of our western history, he fell short of his ardent desires. Adversities followed his successes, the ingratitude that is proverbial as to republics, was his mead, and in the end he died an impoverished and embittered man. A part of his scheme of conquest was the capture of Detroit as well as of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and his ambition even aimed at the stronghold in Canada. Indeed, had he received adequate support the map of the United States might have been other than what it is today. But the support was nor forthcoming and no expedition ever reached Detroit. His position was a peculiar one. He was not in the employ and under the authority of the United States, as the Continental soldiers of the Revolution were, but in the employ of Virginia, and that state financed his campaign. But Virginia's resources were badly taxed by affairs nearer home, and perhaps she was not to blame for failing to provide men, money and supplies for the remote frontier. Then with the surrender of Cornwallis, in 1781, actual war with England ceased. There was still plenty of work to do among the Indians of the Northwest, and Clark was the logical one to do it, but Virginia, on the plea of economy, dismissed him from her service, and at a time when, as Mr. English affirms, "he was in dire distress for even the common decencies and necessaries of life." In 1783 he made a journey through the wilderness to Richmond, Virginia, "in a condition of poverty," to request of then governor, Benjamin Harrison, a small advance of money on account, as he was "exceedingly distressed for the want of necessary clothing, etc.," and added that the state, he believed, would be found considerably in his debt. Whether he received any relief then is not recorded by our authority, but twenty years after, when he was paralyzed and helpless, he was granted a pension of four hundred dollars a year, and twenty years after he was in his grave the state acknowledged her debt by awarding thirty thousand dollars to his heirs (English, pp. 784-5).

In 1786 the hostilities of the Indians to the north again imperiled the Kentucky settlements. Ere this Virginia had ceded the northwest to the United States, but the nation was so slow to take the situation in hand that Kentucky herself raised a defensive army, put Clark in command and sent an expedition against the tribes of the Wabash. It was but the beginning of new misfortunes for Clark. Through insubordination of the men the invasion came to naught. Then the leader, after due conference with his officers, established a garrison at Vincennes, and inhabitants having become hostile to the Americans. The garrison had to be provisioned, and to meet what he considered a military emergency; he forcibly possessed himself of the goods of Vincennes merchants, chiefly one Laurent Bazadon, a Spaniard. The government refused to stand good for the debt imposed upon it and censured Clark for his act. Subsequently Bazadon brought suit against Clark personally for $20,000, and an interesting statement of that suit commanding the sheriff to attack sundry pieces of land in Clark's Grant may be found in the Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History for March, 1908. While it is stated on the document that this case was dismissed it is elsewhere said that he personally suffered loss for debts, which his country should have paid. At any rate it is the opinion of history that both Virginia and the nation poorly requited him for the services that added to the country one of the most valuable sections of our vast domain. He felt this bitterly, and there exists a story to the effect that when Virginia sent him a sword as a testimony of appreciation of his services he broke it in anger.

Clark never married and in his latter years, almost to the time of his death, he lived alone in his log house at Clarksville, beside the falls. Among his misfortunes were paralysis and a burn, which necessitated the amputation of one leg. He died in 1818, at the home of his sister, Mrs. Lucy Croghan, near Louisville, Kentucky.