Arkansas Politics and Government, Second Edition

2. Some Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Political Explanations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [18], (1) Lines: 0 to ——— 1.0pt PgV ——— Long Page PgEnds: TE [18], (1) chapter two Some Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Political Explanations If the plantation system engendered the habit of command, the Arkansas frontier encouraged the rejection of all authority and an every man for himself attitude. Michael B. Dougan, Confederate Arkansas, 1982 One thing that they taught me was that politicians are the source of all disillusionment. Shirley Abbott, Womenfolks, 1983 the socioeconomic environment When Arkansas was admitted to the Union in 1836, its territory consisted of 53,335 square miles, much of it densely forested, little of it easily accessible. On its eastern border, separated by the Mississippi River from Tennessee and Mississippi, lay a vast flood plain, almost impassable in the rainy season, its swamps a known breeding ground for malaria and other dread diseases. The Ozark Mountains straddled two-thirds of the state’s northern border with Missouri, and its entire western border fronted on Indian Territory, legally closed to white migration and settlement. The southern border, coming up the Red and Ouachita rivers from Louisiana, was more easily penetrable, but these rivers were highly unpredictable, ranging from trickle to flood, and the Red River route was further complicated by a hundred-mile logjam known as the Great Raft. The most popular path into the interior was by canoe or raft up the Arkansas River, which transects Arkansas in its flow from the uplands of Colorado to the Mississippi (see map 1). The earliest Arkansas inhabitants of European descent were hunting and trapping Frenchmen, coureurs de bois, who left little mark other than some French placenames; nor did Spanish possession (1762–1803) leave any Some Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Political Explanations 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [19], (2) Lines: 81 to 85 ——— 4.34398pt ——— Long Page PgEnds: TEX [19], (2) TEXAS OKLAHOMA MISSOURI TENN. MISSISSIPPI LOUISIANA OZARK MOUNTAINS OUACHITA MOUNTAINS ARKANSAS VALLEY GRAND PRAIRIE SOUTHERN FOREST and LOWLANDS D E L T A L O W L A N D S C R O W L E Y ’ S R I D G E W hite B l a c k S t . F r a n c i s M i s s i s s i p p i Arkansas S a l i n e Bartholomew Red Ouachita Y a z o o W h i t e Map 1. Arkansas Regions and Rivers permanent settlements or cultural heritage behind. As late as 1804, army surveyors descending the entire Arkansas River did not see a single white inhabitant.When permanent settlers began arriving in the nineteenth century, most clustered along the Arkansas River, their link to each other and to the outside world.1 An imaginary diagonal line drawn from the state’s northeast to southwest corners approximates the major geophysical division within Arkansas: flat plains to the east (Mississippi Alluvial Plain) and south (Gulf Coastal Plain) of the line and hilly uplands to the north (the Ozarks) and the west (the Ouachitas). At almost the precise geographic center, on the Arkansas River, is Little Rock, Arkansas’s second territorial and first state capital, and by far its largest town since the 1830s. Although the lowland areas had much of the deepest, richest soil, much of this land originally lay under dense cane and swampland. For that reason, most of the early settlers headed to the elevated sections, where the soil was thin and rocky but the climate far healthier. Because a major investment 20 Some Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Political Explanations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [20], (3) Lines: 85 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TE [20], (3) in land and slaves could only be justified where relatively good transportation could ensure a profit on cotton exports, sizable...