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CHAPTER II.

PROGRESS OF EMANCIPATION IN THE STATES.

When the secession movement reached Arkansas it encountered the strong opposition of loyal men who had assembled in the Little Rock Convention,1 on the very day Lincoln was inaugurated, and who succeeded in defeating a resolution to take the State out of the Union.2 In his message to the convention, Governor Rector declared that the United States were composed of thirty-three independent sovereignties, each one a judge of its own wrongs and of the mode and measure of redress, and that the right of secession, so implacably assailed, was but the fruit of the American Revolution. He considered the question of the right of compensation "solved by practical demonstration," and declared the question of slavery to be the vital point of the whole controversy between the North and the South. The question for Arkansas to determine was, whether she would join her sister States of the South, with whom she had a common interest, and with whom she had a common destiny, or turn her eyes North to Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland and the eighteen abolition States, for sympathy and protection. Certainly not northward. In the past, fifteen Southern States had failed to protect slavery; how, then, could the remaining eight accomplish that object by adhering to the Union? "Cotton is king," said he, “and it would open a channel of commerce to every portion of

1 See Act of January 15, 1861, calling the convention, in the Journal.

2 The Journal of both Sessions of the Convention of the State of Arkansas, which were begun and held in the Capitol in the City of Little Rock. Little Rock: Johnson and Yerkes, Printers, 1861; 509 pages.

70

NEGROES,PROPERTY.

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civilization, free of cost to the country which produced it; would release all the fishery bounties paid by the general government to the Northern States exclusively, the tax on iron given Pennsylvania, as a peace offering and gratuity, the annual loss of slave property abstracted by the Northern from the Southern States; for it might readily be perceived that a confederacy of the slaveholding States would be less expensive to its people than the old Union kept up at an annual expenditure of sixty millions of dollars. The duty of Arkansas was plain, but an ordinance dissolving its connection with the old Union should be submitted to the people for their direct vote.1

When, on the eleventh, the convention met, the first resolution of importance declared that negroes and their descendants in slavery in the South were "property to all intents and purposes," under the protection of the Constitution of the State and of the United States, and that the denial of the right of property in slaves was a sufficient cause to dissolve the Union. As the session continued, resolutions of the import common to the ordinances offered in the Southern conventions of the time were proposed, and among them, one declaring the Union a compact. They accused the Northern States of violating the Constitution and the laws of the United States. They asserted that the inauguration of the Lincoln administration by vote of sectional majority was an indignity to the Southern States, of which they justly complained, and that any attempts on the part of the general government to coerce a State would be resisted by Arkansas to the last extremity. The majority of the delegates, however, were Union They preferred the old government, provided it

men.

1 Journal, Governor's Message, March 2, 1861, pp. 41, 49.

2 Journal, Robinson's Resolution, p. 51.

8 Journal, Hawkins's Resolution, Turner's Resolution, pp. 52, 55.

could be continued upon a basis that would recognize the rights of every State in the Union, South as well as North.1 On the thirteenth, a secession ordinance was introduced, but the convention refused to adopt it. Meanwhile, the provisional Confederate government at Montgomery had sent a special commissioner to the State to urge its secession.2 On the eighteenth, the commissioner was received, and on that day, a second, and amended, secession ordinance was proposed. The Union delegates wished to submit the whole question to popular vote,3 and one of them offered an ordinance to that effect as a substitute. A parliamentary struggle ensued with the result that the convention adjourned without acting on the great question. Not until May did it meet again, under call of its president, and, meanwhile, the sentiment of the State had greatly changed. As David Walker, the president, expressed it, "Hope had vanished, the Constitution had been violated, Sumpter had been fired on, the Union sentiment in Arkansas had been completely changed, the South had become a unit; the State must secede."4 Passion ruled the hour, and the ordinance of secession now was passed, almost unanimously. But the convention was not the State. At heart, a great body, though probably not the majority of its citizens, were loyal to the Union. But industrially as well as geographically, Arkansas was nearer to Montgomery than to Washington.

5

1 A. H. Garland's Resolution, Journal, p. 63.

2 William S. Oldham, a delegate in the Confederate Congress from Texas, commissioned by Jefferson Davis, Journal, pp. 74, 75. 3 Journal, p. 85.

4 Journal, pp. 117, 120.

5 See the "Ordinance dissolving the Union heretofore existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united under the compact and known as the Constitution of the United States of America," which "at ten minutes past four o'clock was declared adopted," and passed by a vote of sixty-nine in the affirmative, and nine in the negative; Journal, May 6, 1861, p. 124.

72

ARKANSAS A BATTLEFIELD.

The Davis administration soon provoked animosity and discontent in Arkansas, as it did in North Carolina, and later in Georgia, and there was needed only the active presence of national troops, though not necessarily of a large body, to enable the somewhat dazed loyal population to exercise their rights and wishes. The loyal citizens were lacking political organization and leadership; they were timid, and many were looking to the President for intervention. But Arkansas was a battlefield. The emancipation proclamation applied to the State, and the President urged its loyal citizens to adopt some plan of gradual emancipation, following the precedent of Missouri. He thought the precedent could be much improved, for it postponed emancipation seven years, "leaving all that time to agitate for the repeal of the whole thing."

It was not until August that military movements in Arkansas made it possible for its loyal people to gain control of the State once more; but loyalty follows the flag, and a political reaction immediately set in. The President was anxious for the reorganization of the State government. On the eighth of December he issued a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, most liberal and humane, offering full pardon to all persons, with few exceptions,2 implicated in the rebellion. These were granted full pardon with restoration of rights of property,—except as to slaves. They should take and subscribe an oath of

1 Lincoln to General S. A. Hurlburt, July 2, 1863. Lincoln's Works, II, 379.

2 "The persons exempt from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called Confederate Government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are or shall have been military or naval officers of said so-called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the army or of lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States Congress to aid in the rebellion; all

allegiance, which should be registered for permanent preservation.1 Whenever in Arkansas and in the nine other States in which rebellion existed, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth of the vote cast in the State at the Presidential election of 1860, who, having taken the required oath, and not guilty of its violation, and also being qualified voters, by the State law in force before any so-called act of secession, should re-establish a State government, republican in form and in no wise contravening the oath, this would be recognized as the true government of the State, and would receive the benefit of the provision in the national Constitution, declaring that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion and against domestic violence on application of the legislature, or of the executive, when the legislature cannot convene.2

who resigned commissions in the army or navy of the United States and afterward aided the rebellion; and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States service as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity." Lincoln's Works, Vol. II, p. 443.

1 "I, do solemnly swear, in the presence of almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So help me God." Id.

2 Article IV, Section 4.

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