Read an Excerpt
Arkansas History: A Journey Through Time
The Growth of the Twenty-Fifth State of the Union from 1833 to 1957
By Arlen Jones iUniverse
Copyright © 2015 Arlen Jones
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7636-0
CHAPTER 1
Arkansas before Statehood
The purchase of Louisiana from France by the United States for $11,250,000 was consummated on October 31, 1803. It was then that President Thomas Jefferson approved of the treaty of purchase, as ratified by Congress, together with an act of Congress, authorizing him to "take possession of Louisiana and form a temporary government therein." For its immediate and temporary government, the purchased territory was divided into two parts. All the land north of the present state of Louisiana was designated as the District of Louisiana. The United States, through its agent, Major Amos Stoddard of the US Army, actually took possession of this section of the purchase at St. Louis on March 10, 1804. At that time the district, which was regarded as unorganized territory, was attached temporarily to the Indiana Territory, of which General William Henry Harrison was governor. About a year later the name District of Louisiana was changed to Territory of Louisiana, and as such, the whole of Upper Louisiana, as the district was popularly known, was divorced from Indian Territory and given a territorial government of its own.
President Jefferson, on March 3, 1805, appointed General James Wilkinson of the US Army governor of Louisiana Territory. A territorial legislature, composed of the governor and the territorial judges, was convened at St. Louis, and there, on June 26, 1806, the legislature created the District of Arkansas. This embraced nearly all the present state of Arkansas, together with the greater part of Oklahoma. On March 3, 1807, General Wilkinson was succeeded as the governor of the Louisiana Territory by Captain Meriwether Lewis, and on August 23, 1808, Governor Lewis appointed the following officers for the government of the District of Arkansas: Harold Stillwell, sheriff; John W. Honey, judge of Probate; Joseph Stillwell, Francis Vaugine, and Benjamin Foy, judges of the Court of Common Pleas; Perley Wallis, deputy attorney general of the district; and Andrew Fagot, justice of the peace. Judge Honey held his first session of court on December 12, 1808, at Arkansas Post, then the seat of government for the district.
In the fall of 1809, Governor Lewis died in Tennessee while en route to Washington; he was succeeded by Benjamin A. Howard of Kentucky. It was during the administration of Governor Howard (1810–1812) that the New Madrid earthquake all but destroyed the village of New Madrid and left sunken, overflowed areas in the northeast corner of the District of Arkansas.
Congress changed the name of Louisiana Territory to Missouri Territory on June 4, 1812, following the admission of the southern part of the Louisiana Purchase to the Union as the state of Louisiana. On October 1, 1812, Governor Howard issued a proclamation changing the five districts of the Missouri Territory into counties and the legislature into an elective body of two houses: a Council and a House of Representatives. Arkansas Post was continued as the seat of government in Arkansas County. The first popular election in the territory was held on November 9, 1812. Edward Hempstead was chosen as the territorial delegate to Congress, and representatives from the several counties to the House in the legislature were also elected. Arkansas County, though it was not given a House member all its own, was represented jointly with New Madrid County by Samuel Phillips and John Shrader. Governor Fredrick Bates called the newly elected members of the House of Representatives into session on December 7, 1812, and they nominated persons for appointment or confirmation by the president of the United States to membership in the Council, or Senate, of the legislature. While the House and the acting governor were waiting for President James Madison to pass on and confirm the election of the personnel of the Council, the new governor of the territory, William Clark, younger brother of George Rogers Clark, arrived at St. Louis and started his duties.
Governor Clark called the legislature, or General Assembly as it was officially named, together for July 5, 1813. The boundaries of Arkansas County were defined by an act of this legislature as "all that part of Missouri Territory south of New Madrid County." The same act further provided that thereafter the county of Arkansas should elect its own separate representative in the House. A census of the territory was ordered, and when completed, it showed Arkansas County as having a male population of voting age of 827.
Meanwhile, Congress passed an act requiring that two terms of Superior Court, the US territorial court, be held "in each and every year at the Village of Arkansas." The same act further provided for the appointment of an additional territorial judge, who was required to reside "at or near the Village of Arkansas." To this office President Madison appointed George Bullit, of Ste. Genevieve County, on February 9, 1814. Judge Bullit promptly moved with his family to Arkansas Post, where he stayed in office until 1819. During the five years of his residence at the Post, the territory now embraced in the state of Arkansas was redivided into five counties by the Missouri legislature and Bullit organized local government in all of them.
At the second session of the Missouri General Assembly, Arkansas County had its own representative in the person of Henry Cassidy. It was during this session, on January 15, 1815, that the county of Lawrence was created, out of territory now partly in Arkansas and partly in Missouri.
The fourth and last territorial legislature of Missouri formed on December 15, 1818. It consisted of three new counties — Pulaski, Clark, and Hempstead — from about three-fourths of the area of Arkansas County. These three counties, together with Arkansas and Lawrence, were erected into the new Territory of Arkansas by an act of Congress approved March 2, 1819. The next day, March 3, 1819, President James Monroe appointed General James Miller of New Hampshire and Robert Crittenden of Kentucky as governor and secretary, respectively, of Arkansas Territory. July 4, 1819, began its separate existence. On the day appointed, Robert Crittenden, already on the scene, entered upon his duties as secretary and acting governor at Arkansas Post, which had been made the temporary seat of the territorial government. Governor Miller did not reach the Post until December 26, 1819.
The first Arkansas legislature convened at Arkansas Post on July 28, 1819. It was composed of the acting governor, Robert Crittenden, and the judges of the territorial Superior Court: Charles Jouett, Robert P. Letcher, and Andrew Scott. The legislature completed its work in five days and adjourned on August 3. At the insistence of Robert Crittenden, a general election was held on November 20. James Woodson Bates was elected territorial delegate to Congress; members of the first General Assembly — a Council and House of Representatives — were also elected. On that same day, November 20, 1819, William E. Woodruff printed at Arkansas Post the first issue of the Arkansas Gazette.
On January 27, 1819, the day after his arrival in Arkansas, Governor Miller called an extraordinary session of the General Assembly for February 7, 1820, at Arkansas Post. The session lasted two weeks, until February 24, when it took a recess, planning to meet again on October 2, 1820. At this adjourned session, the legislature passed an act making Little Rock the permanent seat of the territorial government and appointed June 1, 1921, as the date when the act of removal would be effective.
The second General Assembly, the first to sit at Little Rock, convened October 1, 1921. Robert Crittenden was again acting governor because of the absence of Governor Miller. Henry W. Conway had succeeded James Woodson Bates as the delegate to Congress. During the month of December in 1821, William E. Woodruff moved his printing press from Arkansas Post to Little Rock. By the beginning of 1822, Little Rock had grown from a clearing for a town site, with but a single shack of two rooms on it in July 1820, into a village of about a dozen houses, which were mostly built of logs.
Governor Miller, who bought a farm and built a residence on it at Crystal Hill, about twelve miles up the Arkansas River from Little Rock, held the office of governor until December 1824. He was succeeded in 1825 by General George Izard of South Carolina. Robert Crittenden continued as secretary of the territory under Izard. On October 29, Crittenden and Henry W. Conway, the delegate to Congress, fought a duel across the Mississippi from the mouth of White River; Conway was mortally wounded and died a few days later.
CHAPTER 2
How Arkansas Became a State
Just when the aspiration that Arkansas might take her place as a great American commonwealth first stirred the imagination of the dreamer of dreams can never be known. This much, however, we do know: as early as 1831, the vision of statehood floated like a cloud suffused with the roseate hues of the dawn before the prophetic eyes of Desha and Crittenden — a vision which neither of them lived to see realized.
In the campaign between Desha and Sevier for the election of a delegate to Congress, Desha stated that when Arkansas had the population required by law, he would, as a citizen, advocate the propriety of her entering the Union of states as soon as she could form her constitution and obtain the assent of the federal government. He pointed out that the delegate in Congress from the territory could not act, even after the territory possessed the requisite numbers, without "the expression of the will of a majority of the people made by a petition to Congress directly or through their legislature." The statehood issue was also made the topic of several communications appearing in the Advocate, which contained Desha's circular.
Sevier's views at that time were sufficiently set forth in his circular of April 11, 1831. He stated that the territory did not possess sufficient population to entitle it to admission into the Union. He said that, should immigration continue as it had done for the two or three years proceeding, the territory would shortly have it in its power "to enjoy the benefits of such a government." Until then the agitation of this "excitable question was premature. When we are out of debt and when we have the population and the means to support a state government, I am as anxious as the most impatient to see this territory become a state."
And then there was a lull. There was no reference to statehood in the four-column circular of Robert Crittenden in the Advocate of April 17, 1833, in which he announced himself a candidate for Congress against Sevier, and in which he set forth fully his connection with Arkansas affairs from 1819. Nor does it seem that either Crittenden or Sevier alluded to the subject in their canvass.
The scene shifted to Washington.
To Realize Her Destiny
William E. Woodruff, editor of the Arkansas Gazette, had this to say:
As you invite your friends to a temperate discussion of a state government, in your paper of the twenty-first instant, I beg you to suggest an idea or two. The resolution submitted by Mr. Sevier to the House of Representatives, which was adopted, instructing the Committee on the Territories to inquire into the expediency permitting the people of Arkansas to form a state government, and for her admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, is marked by a wise and prudent foresight, as well as by a cautious circumspection on the part of Mr. Sevier. The step is an important one, and though the cooperation of the Legislature, and the expressed instructions of the people, would relieve him from a weight of responsibility, I doubt whether a different course would exonerate him the censure of his constituents. They place him at Washington as their sentinel and invest him with discretion to do what may appear to him to be for their interests.
Mr. Sevier says, "Michigan will of course be a free state, and should she go into the Union as such, the happy balance of political power now existing in the Senate will be destroyed, unless a slave state should go in with her." This reasoning of Mr. Sevier's appears to me conclusive; for an evenly balanced Senate, for and against slavery, will preserve and secure to us sources of wealth and future greatness. Arkansas is perfectly accessible to emigration, or will be in short time, by land and water. The great Memphis road will be shortly constructed, and an appropriation will be made this session for the removal of the obstruction for the Red River raft. As a territorial government, immigration would have no security for the removal of their Negro property. But let Arkansas be admitted into the Union as a slave State, and then will she have some security and a taxable influx of wealth and population that, together with the percentage on the sales of the public lands and the absolute grant of our salines, will yield her revenue sufficient to meet the contingent expenses of a state government. Let it be recollected that the southern and eastern parts of Arkansas are admirably adapted to the culture of cotton. The cold and unproductive lands of North Arkansas and West Tennessee; the sterility of the Carolinas; the somewhat rebellious spirit of Georgia; and the disaffection of the Negroes in Virginia and Maryland will induce people, with and without Negroes, to migrate to Arkansas from even the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as for the benefit of pastures as that their Negro labor and industry will be available to them. Those circumstances combined furnish evidence to my mind that Arkansas will emerge from weakness to strength, from poverty to wealth. As she increases in population, so will she increase in riches in a like ratio or proportion.
With respect to appropriations for internal improvements, I would remark that so soon as the national debt is extinguished, the revenue will be graduated to meet the current expenses of the government, so that the Government will not long have it in her power to extend appropriations of favor to us. She has been liberal already to profusion, and when we see her power diminished, let us escape from the fetters of childhood for the purpose of exercising a democratic voice in the councils of the nation, for the preservation of the Union, the envy of the world, and the proud inheritance of every honest American.
Government Has Been Good to Us
Mr. Woodruff went on to write the following:
That Arkansas should go into a state government appears to me desirable, for I do not like her utter dependence on the general government and her being obliged to receive the latter's dictation, without a vote in what may, or may not, be for her good.
True it is, that the Federal Government has fostered and protected Arkansas with a peculiar tenderness and paternal care, for which she owes her the same filial obligation of love and duty that children owe to their parents. She has, besides, extended to Arkansas an unparalleled degree of munificence as a part or portion of her patrimony, as you please. Yet, it ill comports with the genius and the free institutions of the American people to remain beyond a given time in a state of insecurity and nonage. Where we are not contributors, let us no longer be clogs and sturdy beggars. Let us set up for ourselves; let us be the pioneers of our own destiny, and try our capacity at self-government, as an integral part of this great Confederacy.
A state government might be considered somewhat premature but for the admission of Michigan as a free state into the Union, a circumstance which induces the precipitation of Arkansas into it at this time also. For if the balance or equilibrium is once lost in the National Senate, in favor of the free states, the loss will be irreparable. No territory can be subsequently admitted into the Union as a slave state. No future legislation can ever reach or repair it while the Senate of the United States, a strong coordinate branch of the national legislature, possesses the power of putting a negative spin on it.
Arkansas is favored by Providence with a mild and genial climate. The industrious, rich, and poor are amply compensated for their labors. The seasons are certain, and some parts of it are well suited to the cultivation of cotton. The northern and western sections of it produce small grain of every variety and in quantity and quality equal to any in the world. Summer and winter cattle ranges abound everywhere. A well-flavored grape grows in spontaneous abundance throughout the territory; and the German emigrants say that with a proper degree of attention to the treatment of the vine in Arkansas, as good wine can be made from it as they ever saw anywhere on the banks of the Rhine in Europe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Arkansas History: A Journey Through Time by Arlen Jones. Copyright © 2015 Arlen Jones. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
