Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/778

726 extra session of the legislature at Neosho. On July 3ist the State convention had declared his office vacant and appointed a new governor. He entered the army of the Confederacy with the rank of brigadier-general, but was compelled by failing health to resign, and died at Little Rock, Ark., December 6, 1862.

John W. Ellis, governor of North Carolina at the outbreak of the war of the Confederacy, was first elected to that position in 1858 and was re-elected by a large majority in 1860. He was an ardent advocate of the ordinance of secession, and when hostilities began, though sinking under a fatal disease, he was prompt to seize the public works and military stores within the State. April 20, 1861, he ordered the seizure of the United States mint at Charlotte. In July, 1861, he died at White Sulphur Springs. Previous to his election as governor, Mr. Ellis had attained distinction as an attorney, had been a member of the general assembly in 1844, and in 1848 had been called to the bench of the superior court.

Colonel Henry Toole Clark, of Edgecomb, was president of the senate of North Carolina which met in November, 1860, and upon the death of Governor Ellis, in July, 1861, he succeeded to the gubernatorial functions. He served until January 1,1863, during the trying period of the organization of the State for war, and was succeeded by Governor Vance. After the close of the war, Colonel Clark was elected a member of the famous legislature of 1865. His death occurred February 21, 1874. He was a man of great amiability and much literary culture. He was graduated at Chapel Hill in 1826.

Colonel Zebulon B. Vance, governor of North Carolina from January 1, 1863, until the close of the war, was born in Buncombe county, May 13, 1830, of Revolutionary ancestry. He studied law in 1851, and began the practice and his political career. As a Whig he was elected to