An Uncompromising Secessionist: The Civil War of George Knox Miller, Eighth (Wade's) Confederate Cavalry

1. Prewar: 14 June 1860 - 11 May 1861

Seven of the letters in this chapter were written by George Knox Miller in 1860 or 1861 during his last months as a law student, all but one of them from Charlottesville, while he attended the University of Virginia. They shed light on Southern college student life in those last antebellum months and on the attitudes of an intelligent young white Southerner on the eve of secession and war.1 The ¤rst letter is included because of its description of Little Rock and the incident that took place there during the 1860 presidential campaign. The omitted sections of this letter deal with personal matters and relate to several individuals who cannot now be identi¤ed. The remaining three documents are from the pen of Knox Miller’s patron, Gen. William Hopkins, a member of the South Carolina Secession Convention. 14 June 1860 Little Rock, June 14th, 1860 Dear Friend, . . . Our little city is making a stride towards improvement—Soon we will have a telegraph to Memphis—the Rail Road will be put in operation as soon as they can get the Iron [rails] up the [Arkansas?] river— The gass company are getting on very fast—and it is thought we will have our city lighting with gass by July—Some ¤fty new buildings went up in the last three months—and a great many more [are] building.2 Politics run very high at present—political speaches—political parties 1 Prewar 14 June 1860–11 May 1861 and political Barbacue’s are the order of the day—even the ladies [are] struck with a political mania, and you hear very little save politics in the fashionable circles; I am just as fond of reading politics as any one, but I do not like studying it to the exclusion of every thing that is good and holy and even banishing good nature from our midst—We have now Presidential, Gubernatorial, Congressional, & Legislative candidates on the “stump” as it is called. A few evenings since a Douglass elector came here to speak—the hall was crowded—but no sooner did he make his appearance than the crowd pelted him with marbels—hissing all the time until he gave up in dispair. I have not heard where he went from here.3 . . . Flora Linde’s husband ( Judge Rector) is one of our candidates for Governor and bids very fair to be elected—Flora is canvassing the state with him.4 I believe I have said all I can say of interest for this time—so hoping that fate may throw us together some time and with many kind wishes for your welfare, I will hasten to subscribe myself your sincere and affectionate friend Ella PS I had almost forgotten to give my name. As for my given name some call me Ellen [illegible] and almost all children, my proper cognomem is Elmire E. Kimber. . . . 5 Notes for 14 June 1860 1. GKM’s autobiographical “Memoranda” relates events of student life that he did not mention in his letters. 2. The telegraph line, which had been under construction for months, was completed 8 Mar. 1861. The Memphis & Little Rock Railroad was completed from Little Rock east to De Vall’s Bluff on the White River and from Memphis (actually from Hope¤eld, Ark., since no bridge then spanned the Mississippi River at Memphis) west to Madison, Ark., on the Saint Francis River in 1862. The gap was not closed until after the war. The city got gas lighting in the spring of 1860, but this June 1860 letter indicates that some problems may have arisen with the system. John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas (Chapel Hill, 1947), 134, 142– 43; Leo E. Huff, “The Memphis and Little Rock Railroad during the Civil War,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 23 (1964): 260–70; and Michael B. Dougan, Confederate Arkansas: The People and Politics of a Frontier State in Wartime (University, Ala., 1982), 29–31. 3. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was the 1860 presidential candidate of the Northern (national) Democrats. His proposal to allow settlers in each 2 / Prewar Federal territory to determine the status of slavery therein proved unpopular with Southern whites who demanded recognition of their right to take slaves into any territory and to have the institution protected there by the federal government . I have been unable to verify the report about the speaker. 4. In 1860 Judge Henry M. Rector of the Arkansas...