Representative Sherrard Clemens

Sherrard Clemens (April 28, 1820 – May 30, 1880) was a politician and lawyer from Virginia and Missouri. A cousin of the author Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, he was part of a prominent family whose members were active in law, politics, and literature. The unincorporated community of Sherrard in Marshall County, West Virginia, was later named in his honor, reflecting his regional prominence in the mid-nineteenth century.

Clemens was born in Wheeling, Virginia (now Wheeling, West Virginia), on April 28, 1820. As a young man he received an appointment as a cadet to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, but he resigned after approximately six months and did not pursue a military career. He subsequently attended Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated before turning to the study of law. In 1843 he was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in his native Wheeling, establishing himself as a member of the local legal and political community.

As a member of the Democratic Party representing Virginia, Clemens entered national politics in the early 1850s. He was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives in 1852 to fill a vacancy, serving from 1852 until 1853. After a brief interval out of office, he was again elected to the House in 1856 and served three terms in Congress from 1857 to 1861. His service in Congress occurred during a significant and turbulent period in American history, as sectional tensions over slavery and states’ rights intensified in the years leading up to the Civil War. During these terms he participated in the legislative process and represented the interests of his Virginia constituents within the Democratic Party framework.

Clemens was known for his sharp tongue and vivid political commentary. He was not favorably impressed by Abraham Lincoln, whom he famously described as “a cross between a sandhill crane and an Andalusian jackass.” He further characterized Lincoln as “vain, weak, puerile, hypocritical, without manners, without moral grace, and as he talks with you he punches you under your ribs,” and asserted that the president was “surrounded by a set of toad eaters and bottle holders.” His personal life also reflected the combative political culture of the era: Clemens fought a duel with O. Jennings Wise, the son of Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise. Wise emerged uninjured from the encounter, while Clemens sustained a severe injury to his right testicle.

Despite his harsh criticism of Lincoln, Clemens opposed secession when the Southern states began to leave the Union. In 1861 he served as a member of the Virginia Convention, which debated the state’s course in the secession crisis. That same year he attended the First Wheeling Convention, held from May 13 to 15, 1861, in what was then northwestern Virginia. Although present at this gathering that laid the groundwork for the creation of West Virginia, Clemens actively opposed the partitioning of Virginia into two states. After his congressional service and his participation in these critical deliberations, he resumed the practice of law in Wheeling. Mark Twain later wrote of their differing political paths, recalling that at the time of the Civil War he himself had been a “warm rebel” and Sherrard Clemens a Republican, but that later Twain temporarily became a Republican while Sherrard Clemens became a “warm rebel,” illustrating the fluid and often paradoxical political allegiances of the period.

In the later years of his career, Clemens relocated westward. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he continued to practice law and remained engaged in professional pursuits until his death. He died in St. Louis on May 30, 1880, and was interred in Calvary Cemetery in that city. His life spanned the antebellum, Civil War, and early Reconstruction eras, and his legal and political activities in Virginia, West Virginia, and Missouri, as well as his familial connection to Mark Twain, secured him a distinct place in nineteenth-century American political and cultural history.