About Thomas L. Clingman
Thomas Lanier Clingman, known as the "Prince of Politicians," was an American politician who was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845 and from 1847 to 1858, and U.S. senator from the state of North Carolina between 1858 and 1861. During the Civil War, he refused to resign his Senate seat and was one of the many southern senators subsequently expelled from the Senate in absentia. He then served as a general in the Confederate States Army. When he first entered the War, Clingman was the commander of the 25th North Carolina Infantry and took part in the Peninsula Campaign. In 1847 he regained the seat and won reelection in 1849, 1851, 1853, 1855 and 1857. Kuwohi, Tennessee's highest mountain, shared with North Carolina, was renamed Clingman's Dome in his honor in 1859 as Kuwohi was one of the mountains he had accurately measured, being said to be the first person to do so. Clingman graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1832, where he was a member of the Dialectic Senate of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.
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