C. B. Johnson, Washington:
Spoke too late, like Irishman who swallowed egg. Arsenal in hands of Governor.
Edmund Burgevin.
Official Records, first ser., vol. liii, supplement, 617.
The senders and recipients of the telegraphic dispatches were, with one or two exceptions, all relatives of each other, and all in public life. Robert Ward Johnson and William K. Sebastian were, at the time, United States senators from Arkansas; Thomas C. Hindman and Albert Rust were Arkansas representatives in Congress; Albert Pike was in Washington, prosecuting the Choctaw Indian claim; Edmund Burgevin was the attorney-general of Arkansas and a brother-in-law of Governor Rector; Richard H. Johnson and James Johnson were brothers of Robert W. Johnson, the former being proprietor and editor of the Little Rock Democrat and the latter, in future years, a colonel in the Confederate army. In 1868, R. W. Johnson moved to Washington City and became the law partner of Albert Pike. [Arkansas Historical Association, Publications, vol. ii, 268.] Hindman was the man who sneered at the precautions taken to insure President-elect Lincoln’s safety [Stanwood, History of Presidential Elections, 235]. Sebastian was expelled from the Senate because of his southern sympathies; but, as he really took no active part in the Confederate movements, the resolution of expulsion was rescinded in 1878.
[164] It would be interesting to know whether Elias Rector had as yet formulated any such plan for personal aggrandizement such as must have been in his mind when he wrote the letter to Douglas H. Cooper that called forth from Cooper the following response:
Private & Confidential
Copy
Fort Smith May 1st 1861.
Major Elias Rector