Return to First Page---ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 39, Summer 1980, p. 106
But, as the people of Arkansas were to discover, shaking an unflattering image was no easy task----particularly when the circumstances contributing to its development continued throughout most of the post-Civil War years. Ignoring the abundance of evidence that Arkansas was not a typical slave state; that secession came only after months of indecision and personal reflection, and then only after two meetings to consider the issue; and that Arkansas was one of the first to accept President Abraham Lincoln's offer of amnesty, Arkansans found themselves, nevertheless, grouped with the other rebellious states and forced to undergo the rigors of Reconstruction. The experience left a graphic imprint on the lives of most Arkansans and represented a major turning point in the state's history (20).
The humiliation of Reconstruction, added to the state's already backward image, was particularly damaging. Of particular note was a bitter dispute over the 1874 gubernatorial election. Two Republican candidates claimed victory, and a civil war was averted only by threatened intervention of federal troops. The Brooks-Baxter "war," as the event known locally, was featured on the cover of an eastern magazine, received wide coverage in the newspapers, and reinforced the state's reputation for violence and physical abuse (21).
In addition to the emotional scar, Reconstruction also left Arkansas with a large, mostly unaccounted-for debt. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the state auditor reported a surplus in the treasury in excess of $200,000. Ten years later the surplus had turned into a $15,000,000 deficit. As has been mentioned, the initial acts of the first legislature resulted in an indebtedness which the state still had not fully resolved. The result was a perpetual, devisive debate among legislators over what constituted honest debts and the procedure for paying off the deficit.
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- 20. For a general description of Arkansas during secession, war, and Reconstruction, see Michael B.
- Dougan, Confederate Arkansas: The People and Policies of a Frontier State Wartime (University, Ala., 1976), 5ff; and George H. Thompson, Arkansas and Reconstruction (Port Washington, N.Y., 1976), 3ff.
- 21. For an example of eastern coverage of the "war," see Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
- March 20, 1875; for local events see James H. Atkinson, "The Brooks-Baxter
Contest," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, IV (Summer 1945),
124ff.
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