Rebellion and realignment: Arkansas's road to secession
Description
This work surveys Arkansas's road to secession with special emphasis upon the social and economic forces that compelled the state to abandon the Union. Arkansas's development was retarded by various factors, yet the state's economic picture brightened in the late 1850s as migrants from the Deep South brought a new cotton-slave prosperity. By 1860 Arkansas was as divided economically as it was geographically, a mountainous northwest with mostly subsistent farming, and a growing plantation-slave economy in the lowlands in the southeast. In politics, a well-organized political Dynasty dominated the state government from 1830 to 1860, a situation without parallel in the Old South Between 1859 and 1861 Arkansas experienced a series of political upheavals. In the state election of 1860 the Dynasty met defeat at the hands of the shrewd and ambitious Congressman Thomas Hindman. Once Hindman had been in the lower echelons of the Dynasty, yet this time he turned the contest into a battle of aristocracy vs. democracy. His ticket won the governor's office and Arkansas's two Congressional seats. In the presidential race of 1860, Hindman and the Dynasty formed an uneasy alliance to carry Arkansas for Breckinridge by a small majority. In voting for such a candidate the state expressed its belief in slavery that institution's expansion into the western territories Lincoln's election introduced the issue of secession to the state. Old political divisions were now rearranged as a new geopolitical alignment occurred, a mostly Unionist northwest opposed by a secessionist southeast. This new alignment was evident during the February election of 1861 and during the March assembly of the secession convention. Until Fort Sumter, Arkansas refused to secede, yet once war was inevitable the state's cultural, economic, and political ties to the Old South proved too strong to ignore. Arkansas became the ninth state to secede on May 6, 1861. Secession, however, failed to bring about total unity. Old political suspicions and divisions emerged and the mountainous sections of northern Arkansas never accepted the state's departure from the Union. This narration of Arkansas's political history until secession gives particular attention to the regional, racial and class antagonisms present within the state prior to the Civil War