Newman S. Clarke was a career military officer in the United States Army who served with distinction during the Mexican–American War of 1846-1848.
Clarke was born in Connecticut and began serving epin the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 (1812-1815). Three decades later at the outbreak of the Mexican–American War in 1846, he was appointed colonel in the regular army. He commanded a brigade of regulars in General William J. Worth's division during the siege of Veracruz, port city on the Gulf of Mexico of the eastern coast of Mexico, being one of the first brigades to wade ashore in one of the first amphibious landings in American military history. For his services at Veracruz, he was awarded with a brevet promotion to brigadier general of regulars. He continued leading his brigade westward into the interior of Mexico at the battles of Cerro Gordo and Churubusco, on the road to the capital of Mexico City, where he was wounded. He took a brief leave and command of the brigade went to his next-in-command, Lt. Col. James S. McIntosh. He was therefore not present at the bloody battle of Molino del Rey in which Colonel McIntosh was killed at the head of the brigade. The next officer to assume command of the brigade was also killed and the third commander of the brigade during the battle was also severely wounded. Brig. Gen. Clarke returned to command in time for the assaults on Chapultepec and pivotal Battle of Mexico City itself.
Clarke replaced a decade later longtime Brigadier General John E. Wool (1784-1869), in command of the Department of the Pacific (which then encompassed the entire newly-acquired western coast along the Pacific Ocean) in 1857. Clarke inherited the task of dealing with the ongoing Yakima War with local native Indians, which had begun in 1855. Responding to recent Indian attacks further north in the southern part of the new Washington Territory in the Pacific Northwest, Clarke sent out a force of 600 troops under the command of George Wright (1803-1865), who had served with Clarke earlier in Mexico. He also closed the territory to settlement. Wright defeated the Indians at the Battle of Four Lakes, but General Clarke continued to keep white settlers out. On September 13, 1858, Clarke took command of the Department of California, one of the two military departments created to split and replace the former larger Department of the Pacific, while command of the new Department of Oregon further north was turned over to General William S. Harney.
Clarke died a year later on October 17, 1860, while serving and living in San Francisco, California.