INTRODUCTION         

Napoleon Bonaparte, flush with visions of a world empire, had forced the Spanish king to return the old French holdings in the New World.  Keeping these outposts depended on achieving naval parity with England and reconquering Haiti.  But yellow fever destroyed Napoleon’s army in Haiti, and faced with American hostility and war with England, he sold Louisiana to the United States.            

            The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase on October 19, 1803.  Actual French possession lasted only twenty days before the Americans took control of New Orleans on December 20, 1803, and in St. Louis on March 10, 1804.  A reference to Arkansas Post appeared in American records for the first time on April 14, 1804, and the military commander remained in charge in the absence of civil government for at least a year.

            The delayed arrival of the American officials foretold retarded economic, social and political development of Arkansas.  Geography put major hindrances on settlement, prolonging frontier conditions.  In contrast to some other Southern states, Indians were not an important factor, but plantation agriculture was slow to take root.  Violence, common to all frontier regions, was perhaps excessive and certainly enduring.

EARLY SOCIETY

            The passing of control forms Spain to France and then to America did not alter the lives of the people of Arkansas immediately.  At the time of Louisiana Purchase only two places could be called settlements.  One was Benjamin Foy’s (Foy’s) trading site.  The Spanish Camp de la Esperanza had been moved to the west bank of the Mississippi River and Anglicized to Hopefield.  Although no rival to the better-situated Memphis, which later arose across the River on the Chickasaw Bluffs, it remained an important village throughout the ninetieth century.  From it the United States government surveyed a road to Little Rock, and in the absence of a bridge, Hopefield became the ferry terminus for one of the leading routes into Arkansas.  

            The Post of Arkansas, the best-known settlement, consisted in 1819 of forty houses in the French style, which Governor James Miller called “but little better than a square of rail fence.”  Besides the habitants, Thomas Nuttall found “renegade Americans who have fled from honest society.”  In 1804, William Dunbar, a Mississippi planter and friend of President Jefferson, reconnoitered the southern region, finding at Hot Springs a few huts and a small group of convalescents.  Finally, a small Quapaw-French community was located up the Arkansas River at little Rock, a name that appeared in print for the first time in 1805. 

            Hunters still predominated.  The men-French, half-breeds and Americans-kept a small acreage near the Post or along one of the streams.  They erected French colonial homes or crude log cabins with dirt floors and stick and mud chimneys, cleared a few acres to plant corn, and farmed lackadaisically during the spring and summer.  As soon as the crops were in, they were off to hunt for the fall and winter.  Deerskins and bear fat, their most important commodities, were sold to factors (middle men) working for New Orleans trading companies.  Markets also existed for beeswax, otter, beaver, coonskins, and buffalo meat.

            The men wore buckskin suits and the women wore everything form bearskins to very revealing dresses.   One hunter recalled that dancing was a major recreation: “We had some old back down dances on the dirt floor and if any of us lost any toe nails, there never was anything said about it.”  The fiddler at the Post knew only one tune, and to scandal of newly arriving Americans, the French continued their fun on Sunday.

            Civilized amenities were few.  Governor Miller lived on bread, meat, grease and coffee and complained to his wife about the absence of butter.  The ancient legal principle of self-help prevailed, and civilization in the form of officials, laws, mail service and surveyors was almost unknown.  Because every civilized advance threatened their way of life, hunters were as stubborn as the Indians in trying to discourage immigration.  Part of the bad reputation Arkansas carried could be attributed to the tall tales they told travelers. 

            Because the hunter-trappers were the inadvertent agents of advancing civilization, the federal government sought to exercise some control over their activities.  Even in the seventeenth century it had been recognized that private trading with Indians often produced misunderstandings and led to wars.  Colonial security came to rely on a coherent Indian policy regulation trade.  This policy could be a useful weapon in diplomacy, acquiring new land, and “civilizing” Indians.  

            One manifestation of these assumptions was the existence in Arkansas from 1805 to 1810 of the Arkansas factory, a government trading post set up at he Post to secure the Indian trade of the Arkansas and White Rivers.  The factory system met with strong opposition from private fur traders, and a lack of cooperation from the military and the inefficiency of the operation itself doomed the experiment.  By the time the factory closed on September1, 1810, white hunters had largely replaced the Quapaw. 

            While the majority of the people were living in a hunter’s paradise, those who marketed the hunter’s goods rose to positions of leadership in their communities.  Benjamin Foy,( Reference to Benjamin Foy) a Dutch trader, prospered in Hopefield.    Aaron Burr, whose Trans-Mississippi schemes eventually led to his arrest on treason charges, were among the notable visitors at Foy’s home.

            Even more entrepreneurial was Frederick Notrebe.  An immigrant form France, Notrebe arrived in 1811, settling at the Post, where he served as factor for New Orleans companies.  His economic activities made him the leader of the French community and involved him in politics.  In contrast to the cabins of the hunter, Notrebe set a table with cut glass and silverware, hosted Washington Irving on his journey to Arkansas and impressed that fastidious traveler, G.W. Featherstonhaugh (pronounced Fanshaw). Notrebe was also an agent in the economic changes that overtook territorial Arkansas.  Beginning in 1819, he became involved with New Orleans cotton agents and encouraged the introduction and production of the new white-bolled plant. 

Cattle on the Frontier

            Even before farming was well established, commercial cattle rising came to Arkansas.  Cattle had been a part of the frontier since colonial days.  In general, the cattle culture followed and overlapped with hunter-trapper culture.  In the Mississippi River Valley, evidence of commercial cattle production first appeared in 1796.  As early as 1807, reports indicate that livestock brought from Kentucky were grazed in Arkansas on public lands.  The Emigrant’s Traveler’s Guide of 1834 indicated that prairie remnants in eastern Arkansas were considered choice cattle lands.  Cattle were allowed to run free in the woods as well, eating the long, thin grasses that grew in the virgin forest.  Canebrakes were also fertile feeding grounds, especially in the spring when tender tops emerged.

            Controlled breeding was as unknown as permanent pasture, fences or veterinary care.  When cattle were slaughtered, the meat was packed in salt and shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans to go to the West Indies.  The hides became important sources of leather for tanneries.

            References to salt abound in de Soto expedition accounts, for prehistoric Indians used the salt springs and early European settlers continued the practice.  With refrigeration still in the future, salt was needed in quantity for preserving meat.  Imported salt sometimes sold for $20 to $35 a bushel, and a resident wrote in 1826, “ comes higher to the people of the Country, than any other article.” Fortunately, Arkansas had salt resources. 

            One of the oldest saline in Arkansas was on Saline Bayou on the Ouachita River at Blaketown (Arkadelphia). There had been an earlier Indian operation on the site, and in 1811 John Hemphill developed it further.  He had boiling kettles shipped in form New Orleans.  This saline springs functioned under a variety of owners until the 1850s.  Another early operation useful to the Arkansas Cherokee was near Dover on Illinois Bayou.

            Perhaps the most valuable saline was located west of Fort Smith near the Grand River.  In 1815, with the permission of the Osage who claimed the land, Major William Lovely authorized Bernard R. Mouille, Johnson Campbell and David Earheart to establish a works there.  Known as the Campbell Salt Works, it flourished until Campbell was murdered in 1819.  David Earheart and William G. Childers, the accused, were the first criminal defendants in the new Arkansas territorial court.  Thomas Nuttall, the naturalist who visited the site in 1819, reported that at its peak, the enterprise produced 120 bushels a week from one well drilled through solid limestone.

            After the collapse of the Campbell operation, John W. Flowers, a white man married to a Cherokee woman, set up a works near the junction of the Arkansas and Illinois Rivers with the permission of the Cherokee.  Whites’ complaints about the salt monopoly led the federal government to turn the site over to Mark and Richard Bean.  The Beans bought the kettles used at Campbell’s works and built a furnace protected from the weather by a log shed.  According to an 1821 traveler, “… the Workers on Small Well with a few kittles about 55 gallons of water about three days in the Week…”

The firm charged $1 a bushel and supplied all the settlements along the upper Arkansas River.  By 1822, the establishment consisted of a double log cabin, slave quarters, stables, two drying houses, salt warehouses, two long houses holding 100 iron kettles, outhouses, furnaces and a five mile road leading to another warehouse on the Arkansas River.  Output was thirty-five to forty bushels a day.

            Although the Beans charged $1 a bushel at the warehouse, transportation costs pushed up the price for consumers.  The Cherokee, never happy about a white salt works in their midst, complained that they paid $3 at Fort Smith and demanded the return of the salines.  The federal government brushed aside these complaints and granted the Beans a three-year lease in 1822.

            With the establishment of Fort Gibson on the Grand River and increasing white settlement in the area, the Beans anticipated an expanding market.  They developed a new spring in 1825 and announced plans to open a road to the White River.  Despite the disruptions caused by the Osage-Cherokee war, the salt business flourished.  By 1828, the Beans had sixty kettles at one works and thirty at the other.  The white influx had become so great that the legislature created Lovely County.

            The Arkansas Cherokee brought the Beans’ control to an abrupt halt when all whites were expelled from the area.  In August 1828, Cherokee Walter Webber took over their works, and the smaller works of John Lasater established in 1826, went to Samuel McKay.  George H. Guess (Sequoyah), who had run a Cherokee salt works in Arkansas, opened a new saline, and the Cherokee reopened the old Campbell works.  The Beans argued that they had been done an injustice, and in 1857, they received $15,000 in compensation from the federal government. 

            Other bitter struggles took place over salines.  According to federal law, all salines were reserved to the government.  However, in Sevier County in southwestern Arkansas, an unidentified saline went on the market.  Two sets of buyers tried to gain possession: one led by a man already producing salt there ands the other by “a united effort of disappointed Speculators, Our Territorial Secretary Mr. Crittenden and a Mr. Chester Ashley of the Bar.”  Ownership of this spring remained unresolved for many years.

            Despite its early prominence, salt did not remain important long.  In 1840, Congress cold lease to private parties.  Seven years later the state was permitted to sell them.  By that time, national salt prices had plummeted because of new techniques of mining I Louisiana and Ohio and better transportation.  The boiling method became obsolete, although it was revved during the Civil War.  As the first industry, salt manufacturing was contemporaneous with the arrival of the frontier.  The extensive use of slaves by the Beans presents another side of the peculiar institution. 

Land Speculation 

            When the new lands of the Louisiana Purchase came under American control, interested individuals began to look for easy profits.  Because the buying and selling of land was the major occupation for Americans, the first wave of settlers arriving in Arkansas was intent on enriching themselves as first-comers.  One old hunter later remembered the arrival of civilization this way: “We about this time began to get some male contracts and soon after that some Law sutes mixed in.”  The lawyer, the surveyor, the land speculator and the politician began arriving in Arkansas.

            In putting the new lands of Louisiana the market, the government envisioned a grand plan of organized growth.  Although often circumvented, elements of this plan were profoundly important to Arkansas.  One feature was the institution of a systematic and comprehensive survey using physical descriptions scientifically given rather than the old English system of “ metes and bounds” in which property descriptions depended on physical objects such as trees or creeks.

            For the Louisiana survey, two government surveyors, P.K. Robbins and Joseph C. Brown, met where the baseline and the fifth principal meridian intersected, a point in a swamp in eastern Arkansas.  It was from this point that most legal descriptions of property in the Louisiana Purchase were based.  The spot is now a small state park at the juncture of Lee, Phillips and Monroe Counties, and a visit there graphically illustrates the difficult conditions faced by these surveyors and the early settlers.  Most land titles in Arkansas are recorded by township, range and section, but older counties still have land measured in metes and bounds.

            The first step in formal settlement was to regularize the old French and Spanish land titles.  Because no grants in Arkansas and only thirteen I Missouri complied with all the French or Spanish rules, Congress modified the strict standards of the law by setting up a court in St. Louis to hear individual pleas. Those without papers but with a proven history of residence could convert their French arpents (five-sixths of an acre) into American titles.  A more fertile source for fraud, collusion, forgery and favoritism could hardly be imagined.  One Arkansas resident estimated that perhaps only one claim out of twenty was legitimate.

            Although most claims were filled in Missouri, some speculation extended their reach into Arkansas, and William Russell was equally at home in both areas.  Russell, who surveyed, bought and sold land, was involved in one claim for more than a million acres.  His numerous critics charged him with concealing public records for private use, secretly converting small grants into large ones, surveying bogus claims and withholding from landowners news of the confirmation of their grants in order to get their property.

            In 1818-he platted the town of Rome just outside Arkansas Post, where it competed with William O. Allen and Nicholas Rightor’s nearby site called Arkansas.  Russell relied on Sylvanus Phillips, who came to Arkansas in 1797 and later founded the town of Helena, named after Phillips’s daughter.  Phillips’s job was to watch over Russell’s lands.  Russell never paid the tax assessments, finding it cheaper to let the land go for taxes and have trusted agents but it back at the subsequent sale.

            Confirmed French and Spanish claims actually amounted to less than 1 percent of Arkansas’s total land area, but the claims did include many prime commercial and agricultural sites.  The news that the government was recognizing claims led a descendant of John Law to claim unsuccessfully all of Arkansas on the basis of Louis XV’s long forgotten grant.  So many claims surfaced that in 1824 Congress gave Arkansas Territory’s Superio9r court jurisdiction over smaller claims.  These claims brought James Bowie of Bowie knife fame to Arkansas, for he had a trunk full of forged papers, false affidavits, nonexistent witnesses and the active support of Chester Ashley and Robert Crittenden.

            The second problem that upset the orderly course of settlement was the speculation in New Madrid certificates.  On December 16, 1811, the New Madrid Earthquake, the worst American earthquake, on record, hit the Mississippi River Valley.  Because the area was sparsely settled, few persons actually witnessed the event, but earthquake stories became a fruitful source of folklore.  To speculators the earthquake became a cause for rejoicing, for Congress granted 515 New Madrid certificates giving landowners whose property was damaged by the disaster the right to relocated elsewhere.  Only twenty actually were used by the original grantees; the remainder fell into the hands of speculators.  Little Rock and Hot Springs were both claimed under New Madrid certificates.  

: The Mississippi Valley Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812

: New Madrid Earthquake,  witness's account

: New Madrid Earthquake, witness's account

: New Madrid Earthquake, witness's account

Welcome to Paragould, Arkansas information about New Madrid certificates

Squatters

            The American government’s inability to control westward expansion was nowhere more evident than in Arkansas.  Thousands of families headed west, and with total disregard for land laws, picked out choices sites and erected crude cabins.  In the early nineteenth century, occupancy generated no legal rights, so these squatters existed in a legal no-man’s land. “A large proportion of the citizens of Arkansas are, or have been [squatters] at some period of their lives,” the Arkansas Gazette asserted in 1838.  In response to western pressures, Congress passed a series of preemption laws giving those living on the land the first chance to buy it.  Other purchasers’ had to pay the squatter for the value of any improvement. In operation by 1830, these laws were not replaced by the Homestead Law until 1862.

CREATING A GOVERNMENT

            The two major population centers on the Mississippi, New Orleans, the shipping point for the Mississippi Rivers Valley, and St. Louis, boasting a population of about a thousand and the center for the fur trade, fixed their boundaries with little regard for Arkansas, which contained only a small population of hunters.  

            The Territory of Orleans, the future state of Louisiana, began with the unsurveyed thirty-third parallel as the northern border.  The remainder of the Louisiana Purchase was designated as the District of Louisiana and assigned to Governor William Henry Harrison of Indiana Territory.  On March 3, 1805, the District received territorial status as the Territory of Louisiana.  General James Wilkinson, subsequently exposed as a Spanish spy, was the first governor, and the judges of the federal court constituted the first territorial legislature.

            The District of New Madrid, created at the same time, included all of Arkansas and southern Missouri.  On June 27, 1806, the District was divided, and the southern half became the District of Arkansas, the first legal use of the name.  Wilkinson was succeeded by Captain Merriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame.  After Lewis’s death in 1809, a possible suicide resulting from his difficulties in governing the region, General Benjamin Howard was in charge until June 4, 1812 when Captain William Clark, the other half of the famous expedition, took over, and remained as governor until Arkansas embarked on a separate existence as a territory in 1819.

            A number of changes took place during the time Arkansas was a part of the district. In 1812, the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana, causing the old Louisiana to become the Territory of Missouri.  By 1816, voters could elect both the upper and lower legislative houses and choose a nonvoting delegate to represent them in Congress.

            In 1813, the Missouri legislature created Arkansas County with the Post as county seat.  The northern boundary ran from the mouth of the Little Red River (Judsonia) due east to the Mississippi River; what was to become the northern remainder of the state was a part of New Madrid County.  The next year Henry Cassidy was chosen to represent Arkansas County in the legislature.  In 1814, Arkansas was assigned its own judge by Congress, and the following year Lawrence County created out of the southern part of New Madrid County with a northern boundary line running north of the current state line.  Lawrence County’s seat of justice, Davidsonville, the site of the first post office in Arkansas, was served once a month by a horseman who traveled from Monroe Court House, Louisiana, via Arkansas Post (the second post office) and thence to St. Louis.

            As Arkansas’s population increased, three additional counties were created in 1818: Pulaski; Clark and Hempstead.  By 1819, certain political forces in Missouri were agitating for statehood.  As it then stood, Missouri was deemed too large for admission, so a movement developed to detach the southern counties.  Evidence indicated that Arkansas residents were equally anxious to depart from Missouri.  In November 1818, a Missouri newspaper reported Arkansas County in a “state of anarchy for months, having no sheriff in commission nor judge in attendance and although they have a population of nearly 10,000 souls, they remain without weight in our councils.”

            However, the sentiment was different in the New Madrid area.  J.  Hardeman Walker, a prominent politician, cattle baron and landowner, is credited with instigating the changes that show up present-day maps as the “Missouri Bootheel.”  So defined, Missouri’s proposed admission to the Union went before the Congress.

            The emergence of Arkansas Territory reflected less the needs of the people living in the area than it did the will of policy makers in Washington.  Since the creation of the American Republic, sectionalism had been rampant with New England interests ready to sacrifice the frontier for commercial advantages with Spain or Great Britain.  The Louisiana Purchase committed the new nation to westward expansion but did not resolve whether such expansion was to be in line with Northern or Southern cultural aspirations.  In this emerging, debate, one hotly contested issue was African slavery.

            Although the slavery question achieved its greatest notoriety in the debate over the admission of Missouri, the granting of territorial status for Arkansas actually marked the onset of the struggle.  New York Congressman John W. Taylor proposed that Arkansas be stopped from importing new slaves and should be required to emancipate those already there.  At one point the House of Representatives accepted Taylor’s proposal, but after a trip in and out of committee, the amendment disappeared.  One strong argument used by pro-slavery men was the Louisiana Purchase Treaty guaranteed residents their property rights and that because slavery existed in Arkansas in 1803, it would be a violation of slaver owners’ rights to remove it in 1819.

            Eventually Congress approved the creation of Arkansas Territory but the Missouri debate continued.  The Missouri Compromise in 1820 resolved nothing, for it simply balanced Missouri with Maine.  However, in fixing the Arkansas-Missouri border as the future northern limit on slavery in Louisiana Purchase lands, the Missouri Compromise left Arkansas as a border slave area with a possible northwest outlet to freedom.           

 The main government official in the Territory of Arkansas was the governor, appointed by the president for a three-year term.  The governor also served as commander of the militia and superintendent of Indian affairs.  The second major executive official was the secretary, appointed for a four-year term, which handled the official business of the Territory and served as acting governor in the event of that official’s absence or death. The judicial system was made up of three presidential appointed judges constituting the Superior Court with both original and appellate jurisdiction and other local courts established by the legislature.  The first legislature consisted of the governor and judges, but the governor could allow the freeholders the right of election as soon as they indicated a desire for an elected body.  The laws of Missouri were to continue in force until modified.

History of the Territorial Courts

Forming the Territorial Government 

            The Arkansas Territory legally comes into existence on July 4, 1819.  The event seems to have passed without notice at the Post, for it was not until July 28, 1819, that the territorial secretary, in the continued absence of the governor, called the judges into session, and decreeing the laws of Missouri in effect, established the offices of audition and treasurer and formed two judicial circuits. 

            This secretary, the single most controversial figure in early Arkansas history, was Robert Crittenden,(     http://www.nps.gov/arpo/park/newsletter/ scroll down to page 6) aged twenty-two, and the younger brother of Senator John J. Crittenden and a member of a prestigious Kentucky political family. To Albert Pike, a friend an admirer, young Crittenden was “ a thoroughly well-bred Kentucky gentleman, “ and  “sagacious and well informed.” To critic, Judge Thomas P. Eskridge, he was “the agitator of faction, the instigator of crime, the promoter of duels, the corruptor of youth, the open and shameless gambler, [and] the inmate of the vilest and most debasing associations of profligacy.”

            In either event, Crittenden was a member of what that crusty agrarian philosopher of Virginia, John Taylor of Caroline, called the “paper aristocracy,” men who used government office, patronage, land deals and sharp practices to launch their economic and political careers. Joining Crittenden were Judges Andrew Scott from Missouri Territory, Charles Jouett of Michigan Territory and Robert. P. Letcher of Kentucky.  All were related to prominent politicians or had held office elsewhere before their appointments in Arkansas. Only Judge Scott remained in Arkansas for life.

            After the first session of the legislature concluded with the governor still absent, acting governor Crittenden proceeded to fill the vacancies his session had created. James Woodson Bates and Neil McLane were assigned to the judicial circuits; William Trimble and Henry Cassidy became the circuit attorneys; George W. Scott, the judge’s brother, was make audito5r and James Scull was appointed treasurer.  Crittenden then appointed the entire roster of county officials. In response to a petition from the freeholders on October 20, he elevated Arkansas to a territory of the second grade, thus allowing the voters to elect the next legislature and send a delegate to represent the Territory in Washington.

            In the November 20, 1819, election for representative, James Woodson Bates defeated firms other candidates. Bates whom Albert Pike called a “polished, keen, brilliant writer,” was another of the paper aristocracy. A student at Yale and gradate of Princeton, Bate had moved from Virginia to Missouri. His bother, Frederick, had been secretary of three different territories, and another brother, Edward, became attorney general in the Lincoln administration. 

                Thus government in Arkansas was a going concern and the people had spoken when, at last, on December 26, 1819, governor James Miller ( http://dArkansas Post Newsletter  scroll down to page 6) of New Hampshire arrived at Arkansas Post. Miller, a second choice for the appointment, was competent, deserving and needy. During the War of 1812, he had been a minor hero at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, where his success. Miller entered Arkansas on a large barge with flags flying.  One had “Arkansas” on it in large letters and “I’ll try, Sir” interspersed in several places.

            To the governor’s embarrassment, Crittenden’s interpretation was sustained. In addressing the legislature, miller urged the adoption of a territorial law code and support of education. The advance the Territory economically, he pledged to ask the federal government for more roads and postal routes, favorable land policies and suitable Indian treaties. 

            If Governor Miller expected to preside over rapid and peaceful expansion, he misjudged the nature of the people.  Problems appeared in the judiciary in early 1820.  One of the three judges, Judge Jouett, had been absent almost his entire term.   On May 1, 1820, he wrote to the president resigning his office saying that his family was sick and his wife would not remain in Arkansas.  Judge Letcher returned to Kentucky (where he was subsequently a congressman and governor), creating a second vacancy on the court.  One of the new appointees, John Thompson of Ohio, started for Arkansas but apparently heard such discouraging accounts of the unhealthiness of the region that he turned back.  Eventually, Joseph Selden, a United States army major form Virginia, accepted Letcher’s seat, and Benjamin Johnson of Kentucky, brother of Senator Richard M. Johnson, took Jouett’s position.  

    Mr. and Mrs. William Woodruff

The Arkansas Gazette

             While   the   government   was   forming ,  William  E.  Woodruff , a  New  York-born  printer , appeared at  Arkansas  Post .   Woodruff  was foreman of  the   Nashville  Clarion  when he  learned  that  the  new  territory  would  be  without the services of a printer .   Buying  a used wooden  press , Woodruff  started for Arkansas , arriving  at  the   mouth of the  White  River cutoff on a New Orleans-bound keelboat .   There he transferred   his press to a pirogue and was poled up to the Post . Woodruff later recalled  that he had convinced the nervous craftsmen that the press was not an infernal engine spewing out bullets . 

Early Duels

             The first recorded duel in the Arkansas Territory occurred on March 10,1820, between William O. Allen, a former military officer turned Arkansas Post lawyer, and Robert C.Oden, a lawyer recently arrived from Kentucky, the origins of the conflict are unclear, beginning by one account as a personal difficulty arising from a prank and by another account from political differences.  Allen challenged Oden, and the two men met on  a small island near the Post, where both were wounded and Allen died        The appearance of dueling in Arkansas was to be expected.   Since the Hamilton-Burr duel of 1804, the practice had been growing in popularity, especially among the elite of the western border.  Thus the Allen-Oden duel enlisted George W. Scott, the United States Marshal and brother of Judge Scott, as Allen's second.  In the eyes of the law, death by dueling was murder.  Although a grand jury indictment was handed down against both Oden and the seconds, the charges were dismissed at the trial on various legal technicalities.  The legislature on October 23, 1820 passed a strict law against dueling, but the practice  continued.  Ten more duels of significance occurred before statehood and this resort to honor continued until after the Civil War.    

The next duel highlighted the problems of enforcement.   Judges Scott and Selden of  the Superior Court had a personal difference over a game of whist.   The men circumvented the law by fighting  their duel on the east bank of the Mississippi opposite Helena, where Scott shot Selden dead on the spot.   Scott‘s only punishment was the United States Senate‘s refusal to  reappoint him to the bench in 1827.

The  first territorial political  issue was the selection of a permanent capital.   The Post was unhealthy, not centrally  located,  subject to frequent  flood, and  perhaps most  important, did not provide the possibility   of great profits to be made from speculation.   The legislature in the fall of 1820 heard about the prospective merits of Cadron and Little Rock.   Little Rock was chosen because  it was more centrally located, situated near richer farmland  and had more  powerful supporters . The governor signed the bill into law and set June 1,1821,as the re moval date .      

    The geographic advantages of the first rock escarpment on the Arkansas River were clear, but it was not certain who owned  the site.    Three New  Madrid certificates held by William O. Hara,  James Bryan and Stephen F.  Austin were contested by  two premption claims held by William  Lewis, Benjamin Murphy and  later William Russell.   The New Madrid owners actively pushed their site for the capital, offering as inducements a public square, lots and a temporary building .  A  New  Madrid claim was ranked under a preemption claim.   William Russell advised the New Madrid men that  the had purchased the preemption claims and  he demanded  $2 5,000 as settlement.  The New Madrid  party  refused payment, and  the case went to court.   Meanwhile,  Benjamin Murphy obtained from the Batesville land office another preemption certificate covering the area, and Russell,  whose claim had no foundation at all, promptly purchased  a half interest  in it.   Both sides distributed parts of their claims in order to bolster their influence.  Crittenden  and his friends Henry Conway, Joseph Hardin, Robert C. Oden, William Trimble and Townsend Dickinson labored with Russell.   The New  Madrid party enlisted Chester Ashley,  a  wily young lawyer from New York, and Governor Miller. 

             During the spring, with the question of ownership still unresolved, the government and its attendants moved up the River to what the O Hara group called Arkopolis and that within three years would be called Little Rock.   In June 1821  the Superior Court opened the new career of the territorial government by rendering a decision in the land claim. Because Judge Scott was a partner in the preemption claim, it was the newly arrived Benjamin Johnson who ruled that Russell did have access to the disputed land.

             The prospect that Russell would take possession of the buildings in the  disputed area led the New Madrid party to remove them.  A painted and masked gang that was well fortified with whisky set to work with ropes and chains to carry the buildings over into the adjacent Quapaw lands .   The one house they could not move was burned.    Surveys showed that the two claims did not coincide exactly  but overlapped.   The New  Madrid claimants controlled the location of the  seat of government, and the preemption held the river frontage.   The standoff led to compromise, and Little Rock began to develop .

The Era of Personal Politics

           The government in Little Rock remained remarkably like the old one at the Post.   Despite his boasts, Governor Miller did not try very  hard.   Finding little evidence of civilization or hope of future success or glory, he virtually left Crittenden to run  the show.   Most of the leading men  associated themselves with Crittenden and benefited  from his patronage.

       William E. Woodruff published Arkansas's first book, Laws of the Territory of Arkansas at the Post in 1821, but shortly after its publication Woodruff followed  the territorial government and moved the Arkansas Gazette to Little Rock.      Fittingly   this book, a compilation of   the laws carried over from  Missouri and those enacted by  the territorial legislature in 1819 and 1820, caused a controversy when Crittenden,     believing Woodruff had charged too much for the work,  refused full payment

             In 1821, James Woodson Bates announced he would be a candidate for reelection.  Opposing Bates was  Matthew Lyon,  the former Vermont Congressman, whose jailing by the Federalist Party for  violating the Sedition Act had made him a national hero.  Lyon had moved to Kentucky, where he served in Congress for  four terms (1803-1811), and in 1821 appeared in Arkansas, working  as an Indian factor.   The seventy-two-year -old veteran campaigned    vigorously but unsuccessfully.   His canvass of Little Rock was a disaster,  his mule having thrown him into a muddy bayou so that he arrived  a subject of much laughter by his companions and the  town.   

             Lyon lost the election by sixty-one votes to the incumbent Bates but refused to accept the tally blaming Crittenden for his defeat and charging him with various irregularities.  Congress upheld Bates's election, and Lyon died the following year.  Whether his charges were true cannot be ascertained, but this marked the first assertion that Arkansas was ruled by a clique,  the most enduring battle cry in Arkansas   political history .    

      The 1823 race produced four rivals for Bates's office:  William Trimble, Thomas P. Eskridge, Henry  W. Conway and Major William Bradford.    Behind this opposition  was the belief that Delegate Bates was negligent   in protecting western Arkansas interests, particularly with respect to lands and Indian    treaties.  In  addition, Bates  and Conway had a discussion, the import of which was that Bates planned to marry and retire from public  life in favor of Conway.  But Bates's fiancée died, and the distraught delegate decided too late to seek  a third term.  By the time Bates's decision reached Arkansas, Conway already announced with Crittenden' s support.   Both Eskridge and Trimble retired from the contest, making the race essentially between Bradford  and Conway .

          Major William " Old Billy" Bradford, the commander at Fort Smith, was at age fifty-one " a small, stern-looking man, an excellent disciplinarian  and a  gallant officer."  Much involved in western Indian affairs, he ran as the defender of western interests, a theme consistent with Lyon' s campaign two years earlier. Henry W. Conway, thirty-one, was the scion of  another of  those office-holding frontier families.  His uncle, William Rector, was  surveyor general of Missouri.  When Conway came to Arkansas as receiver of public moneys for the  Arkansas Land District ,   he was joined by a cousin, Ambrose Hundley Sevier, who began his career in Arkansas by serving as temporary clerk of the House of Representatives for the 1820 fall session.

     The campaign revolved around charges that Conway headed a Missouri party, that Bates had been forced  out of the  race and who could    best rid Arkansas of Indians.  The Gazette continued to be officially neutral   w with its columns open to letters from both sides.  Crittenden's support proved decisive, for Conway polled 1300 votes to Bradford's 921.

      Izard,   whose name was pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, was born in England during the residence there of his father, Ralph, a rich South Carolina  planter and notable Revolutionary War patriot.   Preferring a foreign post, George apparently was not pleased with his assignment.  While Izard was preparing to come to Arkansas, the   Crittenden faction triumphed again as Conway won   reelection by   defeating Bates, the former delegate, 2,105 to 519.  On May 31, 1825, Izard arrived in Little Rock, only to find the territorial secretary gone to Kentucky.   So completely had the secretary swallowed up the government that the new governor found himself unable to become acquainted with the Details of the Public Affairs in this Quarter.  Izard's subsequent hostility to Crittenden began with this initial embarrassment.

        In his opening move, Izard proposed to reorganize the territorial militia, a necessity in his view because the eastern Indian would be moving through the area to reach their new homes in the West.   Very little came from the effort, militia duty being a drunken frolic, but most of the leading   men received appointments as Arkansas Colonels. 

      The governor soon was embroiled in a variety of feuds.  He removed David Barber as subagent for Indian affairs, claiming Barber was negligent and intemperate, a charge Barber disputed.  He clashed with  Edward  W. Du Val, the Cherokee agent, over the payment of Indian claims, and he became engaged in  an enduring quarrel with Crittenden.   In the fall of 1826, Crittenden planned a leave of absence to go to Washington to settle   his government accounts, which apparently     needed considerable explanation.  Governor Izard decided to return to Philadelphia at the same time and opposed the secretary's plan.

      Fearing that Izard intended to thwart his renomination as secretary, Crittenden waited until after the governor left  and then he, too, departed, leaving  Arkansas with no executive.  A certain amount of newspaper criticism from the still disgruntled Bates became more serious when Delegate Conway proposed that in the absence of  both the governor and the  secretary another person be designated as acting governor.  Crittenden saw this move as a   betrayal, and a schism developed between the two leaders.  

James Miller Arkansas Territory Governor

George Izard Arkansas Territory Governor

Robert Crittenden acting Territory Governor     Robert Crittenden Shaped Territorial Arkansas » The Arkansas News

John Pope Arkansas Territory Governor            John Pope

William Savin Fulton Arkansas Territory Governor                   William Savin Fult

AHQ: G. W. Featherstonhaugh's Contribution to the Bad Name of Arkansas, 3.