Robert E. Lee’s Jesuit Classmate

The website for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester has a great section on its former presidents, and it seems that the college’s president during the Civil War years was quite an interesting figure. Father James Clark (1809-1885) was the first West Point graduate to join the Jesuits. Born in Pennsylvania, he entered the United States Military Academy in 1825 and graduated with the likes of future Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston in the Class of 1829. Future Confederate president Jefferson Davis was a year ahead. (Edgar Alan Poe also had a short stay at the academy during Clark’s time.) After a year of service in Louisiana, Lieutenant Clark resigned his commission (not such an unusual move at the time.) Not long thereafter, he became a Catholic and joined the faculty of St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, connected with the seminary. In 1844, he joined the Jesuits and was ordained three years later. (Usually it takes a lot longer, but his seminary experience may have counted in this regard.) Father Clark taught Mathematics and Physics at Georgetown until he was named President of Holy Cross, a position he held for six years. We’re told that he took a lively interest in the doings of his former classmates. After Holy Cross he served as president of other Jesuit colleges until he retired to Georgetown, where he died on September 9, 1885.