Forsaking All Others: A True Story of Interracial Sex and Revenge in the 1880s South

2. The Confluence Across the River

2 the Confluence across the river Isaac and Martha arrived in an Arkansas that was in transition . Like blacks and whites throughout the South after the war, Arkansans sought to reclaim their lives and communities . They rebuilt cities and towns, repaired farms, and reestablished county and state governments. Southern Unionists in Arkansas had taken political charge of the state as early as January 1864. Empowered by federal military control of Little Rock, the state capital, and by President Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan, Unionists drafted and approved a new constitution, elected legislators, and selected a new governor, Isaac Murphy of Madison County. The new state officials fell in line with Lincoln’s requirement that slavery be abolished but went further by repudiating Confederate debt and denying the right of secession. Once in power, the new legislature passed a loyalty provision that denied voting rights to anyone who had aided the Confederacy since April 18, 1864, the date of the new governor ’s inauguration.1 With the end of the war in 1865, former Confederates in Arkansas began agitating for voting rights. Their demands for suffrage were assisted by two occurrences, one at the The Confluence across the River 20 nationallevel,theotheratthestatelevel.Nationally,Andrew Johnson’s becoming president after Lincoln’s assassination meant that southern whites had an ally in the White House. Johnson, a southerner, initiated a Reconstruction plan that returned political rights to most former Confederates who petitioned for them. Within Arkansas, conservative Democrats successfully challenged the state’s loyalty oath provision through the courts. In Rison et al v. Farr (1865), the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution gave no power to the legislature to restrict the voting rights of adult white males.2 The political enfranchisement of former Confederates ensured their return to power in Arkansas politics. In August 1866 conservative Democrats took control of both houses of the state legislature. None of the Unionists standing for reelection were successful in their bids for office. Conservatives also seized power in most of the other states that had seceded from the Union. By the start of 1867, it appeared that former Confederates throughout the South had regained with the ballot box what they had lost on the battlefield.3 The reemergence of the former masters to positions of political power did not bode well for the civil rights of former slaves. In Arkansas conservatives enacted legislation that relegated blacks to inferior status. Arkansas legislators denied blacks voting rights and forbade them from serving on juries or in the state militia. In addition, the state outlawed intermarriage and authorized a segregated public school system.4 ByJanuary1867conservativeDemocratsseemedtohave a firm grasp on state power. Nationally, however, events The Confluence across the River 21 were already in play that would severely weaken their hold. In the fall 1866 congressional elections, northern voters , wary of developments in the South, gave Republicans heavy majorities in both houses. Beginning in March 1867, Republicans passed new Reconstruction legislation over the vetoes of Andrew Johnson—acts that voided the existing state governments in all of the former Confederate states except Tennessee. The provisions then placed the ten remaining southern states in five military districts, putting military governors in charge of keeping the peace and registering adult males who were eligible to vote. Excluded from voting were those who had ever sworn allegiance to the U.S. government and then betrayed that oath by actively supporting the Confederacy. Once a state had constructed a new constitution and chosen new leaders, that state would then gain official readmission upon its ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, a measure designed to both empower blacks and punish former Confederates.5 Radical Reconstruction, as the collection of new measures came to be known, ushered in an era of significant political and social change in the South. The Republican Party, nonexistent in the region before the war, now stood as a viable party. African Americans, enslaved and disenfranchised in antebellum times, became the primary constituents of southern Republicans. With their newfound political clout, white and black southern Republicans muscled through legislative provisions that expanded opportunities for African Americans and weakened the legal foundations for prewar notions of white supremacy.6 In Arkansas the racial leveling produced by Radical Reconstruction manifested itself in many ways. African The Confluence across the River 22 Americans served as delegates to the constitutional conventions of 1868 and 1874 and maintained a presence in every General Assembly...