History.—The first settlement by Europeans in Arkansas was made in 1686 by the French at Arkansas Post (later the residence of the French and Spanish governors, important as a trading post in the earlier days of the American occupation, and the first territorial capital, 1819-1820). In 1720 a grant on the Arkansas was made to John Law. In 1762 the territory passed to Spain, in 1780 back to France, and in 1803 to the United States as a part of the “Louisiana Purchase.” Save in the beginnings of western frontier trade, and in a great mass of litigation left to the courts of later years by the curious and uncertain methods of land delimitation that prevailed among the French and Spanish colonists, the pre-American period of occupation has slight connexions with the later period, and scant historical importance.
From 1804 to 1812 what is now Arkansas was part of the district (and then the territory) of Louisiana, and from 1812 to 1819 of the territory of Missouri. Its earliest county organizations date from this time. It was erected successively into a territory of the first and second class by acts of Congress of the 2nd of March 1819 and the 21st of April 1820. By act of the 15th of June 1836 it was admitted into the Union as a slave state.
There is little of general interest in the history of ante-bellum days. Economic life centred in the slave plantation, and there was remarkable development up to the Civil War. The decade 1819-1829 saw the first newspaper (1819), the beginning of steamboating on Arkansas rivers, and the first weekly mail from the east. Trade was largely confined to the rivers and freighting for Sante Fé and Salt Lake before the war, but the first railway entered the state in 1853. Social life was sluggish in some ways and wild in others. An unhappy propensity to duelling, the origin in Arkansas of the bowie-knife,—from an alleged use of which Arkansas received the nickname, which it has always retained, of the “toothpick state,”—and other backwoods associations gave the state a reputation which to some extent has survived in spite of many years of sober history. The questions of the conduct of territorial affairs do not seem to have been contested systematically on national party lines until about 1825. The government of Arkansas before the Civil War was always in the hands of a few families closely intermarried. From the beginning the state has been unswervingly Democratic, save in the Reconstruction years, though often with heavy Whig or Republican minorities.
In February 1861 the people of Arkansas voted to hold a convention to consider the state of public affairs. The convention assembled on the 4th of March. Secession resolutions were defeated, and it was voted to submit to the people the question whether there should be “co-operation” through the Lincoln government, or “secession.” The plan was endorsed of holding a convention of all the states to settle the slavery question, and delegates were chosen to the proposed Border State Convention that was to meet at Frankfort, Kentucky, on the 27th of May. Then came the fall of Fort Sumter and the proclamation of President Lincoln calling for troops to put down rebellion. The governor of Arkansas curtly refused its quota. A quick surge of ill-feeling, all the bitterer on account of the divided sentiments of the people, chilled loyalty to the Union. The convention reassembled on call of the governor, and on the 6th of May, with a single dissentient voice, passed an ordinance of secession. It then repealed its former vote submitting the question of secession to the people. On the 16th of May Arkansas became one of the Confederate States of America.
In the years of war that followed, a very large proportion of the able-bodied men of the state served in the armies of the Confederacy; several regiments, some of coloured troops, served the Union. Union sentiment was strongest in the north. In 1862-1863 various victories threw more than half the state, mainly the north and east, under the Federal arms. Accordingly, under a proclamation of the president, citizens within the conquered districts were authorized to renew allegiance to the Union, and a special election was ordered for March 1864, to reorganize the state government. But meanwhile, a convention of delegates chosen mainly at polls opened at the army posts, assembled in January 1864, abolished slavery, repudiated secession and the secession war debt, and revised in minor details the constitution of 1836, restricting the suffrage to whites. This new fundamental law was promptly adopted by the people, i.e. by its friends, who alone voted. But the representatives of Arkansas under this constitution were never admitted to Congress.
The Federal and Confederate forces controlled at this time different parts of the state; there was some ebb and flow of military fortune in 1864, and for a short time two rival governments. Chaotic conditions followed the war. The fifteenth legislature (April 1864 to April 1865) ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, and passed laws against “bush-whacking,” a term used in the Civil War for guerilla warfare, especially as carried on by pretended neutrals. Local militia, protecting none who refused to join in the common defence, and all serving “not as soldiers but as farmers mutually pledged to protect each other from the depredations of outlaws who infest the state,” strove to secure such public order as was necessary to the gathering of crops, so as “to prevent the starvation of the citizens” (governor’s circular, 1865). Struggling in these difficulties, the government of the state was upset by the first Reconstruction Act. The governor in these years (1865-1868) was a Republican, the caster of the single Union vote in the convention of 1861; but the sixteenth legislature (1866-1867) was largely Democratic. It undertook to determine the rights of persons of African descent, and regrettable conflicts followed. The first Reconstruction Act having declared that “no legal state government or adequate protection for life or property” existed in the “rebel states,” Arkansas was included in one of the military districts established by Congress. A registration of voters, predominantly whites, was at once carried through, and delegates were chosen for another constitutional convention, which met at Little Rock in January 1868. The secessionist element was voluntarily or perforce excluded. This convention ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and framed the third constitution of the state, which was adopted by a small majority at a popular election, marred by various irregularities, in March 1868. By its provisions negroes secured full political rights, and all whites who had been excluded from registration for the election of delegates to the convention were now practically stripped of political privileges. The organization of Arkansas being now acceptable to Congress, a bill admitting it to the Union was passed over President Johnson’s veto, and on the 22nd of June 1868 the admission was consummated.
Arkansas now became for several years Republican, and suffered considerably from the rule of the “carpet-baggers.” The debt of the state was increased about $9,375,000 from 1868 to 1874, largely for railroad and levee schemes; much of the money was misappropriated, and in a case involving the payment of railway aid bonds the action of the legislature in pledging the credit of the state was held nugatory by the state supreme court in 1875 on the ground that, contrary to the constitution, the bond issue had never been referred to popular vote. An amendment to the constitution approved by a popular vote in 1884 provided that the General Assembly should “have no power to levy any tax, or make any appropriation, to pay” any of the bonds issued by legislative action in 1868, 1869 and 1871. The current expenses of the state in the years of Reconstruction were also enormously increased. The climax of the Reconstruction period was the so-called Baxter-Brooks war.
Elisha Baxter (1827-1899) was the regular Republican candidate for governor in 1872. He was opposed by a disaffected Republican faction known as “brindletails,” or as they called themselves, “reformers,” led by Joseph Brooks (1821-1877), and supported by the Democrats. Baxter was irregularly elected. The election was contested, and his choice was confirmed by the legislature, the court of last resort in such cases. He soon showed a willingness to rule as a non-partisan, and favoured the re-enfranchisement of white citizens. This would have put the Democrats again in power, and they rallied to Baxter, while the Brooks party now assumed the name of “regulars,” and received the support of the “carpet-bag” and negro elements. After Baxter had been a year in office Brooks received a judgment of ouster against him from a state circuit judge, and got possession of the public buildings (April 1874). The state flew to arms. The legislature called for Federal intervention (May 1874), and Federal troops maintained neutrality while investigations were conducted by a committee sent out by Congress. As a result, President Grant pronounced for Baxter, and the Brooks forces disbanded.
The chief result was another convention. In 1873 the article of the constitution which had disfranchised the whites was repealed, and the Democrats thus regained power. By an overwhelming majority the people now voted for another convention, which (July to October 1874) framed the present constitution. It removed all disfranchisement, and embraced equitable amnesty and exemption features. It also took away all patronage from the governor, reduced his term to two years, forbade him to proclaim martial law or suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and abolished all registration laws: all these provisions being reflections of Reconstruction struggles. The people ratified the new constitution on the 13th of October 1874. After Reconstruction the state again became Democratic, and the main interest of its history has been the progress of economic development.
The following is a list of the territorial and state governors of Arkansas:—