Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

William E. Woodruff

William E. Woodruff William E.Woodruff, the founding editor and publisher of Arkansas’s first newspaper, is one of those icons of history that even the most unconcerned schoolboy finds interesting. Woodruff, a Long Island native and trained printer, first tried newspapering in Nashville, Tennessee, before relocating to Arkansas in , the year Arkansas became a territory. In the autumn of that year Woodruff set off by keelboat from Nashville,his vessel carrying not only a newly purchased secondhand Ramage press but also large bundles of paper, inkwells, printers’ ink, and everything that would be needed to publish a newspaper on the frontier. Woodruff was able to reach Arkansas Post by water, which was fortunate, for little in the way of roads existed in the newly minted territory. On the last day of October, , Woodruff arrived at the Post. In a recent history of newspapering in Arkansas,historian Michael B. Dougan noted that Woodruff, in choosing to spell the new territory Arkansas—rather than Arkansaw, the spelling used by the newly appointed territorial governor—essentially established how the name of the new territory would be spelled. The first issue of Woodruff’s newspaper,the Arkansas Gazette, was published on November ,. Woodruff continued to put out his weekly newspaper for the next three decades. He was an eyewitness to the founding of Arkansas, and he recorded the entire political and partisan process in minute detail. It was not an easy career, though, and his newspaper probably contributed little to his early income. He was the postmaster at one time, and he probably made his wealth from dealing in land. To some degree,Woodruff was one of many land speculators who haunted early Arkansas. Men like Moses Austin, father of the great Texas promoter Stephen F. Austin, cut their land-speculating teeth in Missouri and Arkansas before heading for Texas. Woodruff made a good deal of income by managing land for absentee owners. He also sold everything from vegetable seeds to books.  Woodruff encountered every conceivable shortage as he worked to get a reliable supply of paper, ink, and other necessities. During a two-year period during the s, the enterprising editor missed only two issues, but he had to print  issues on half-sheets,  on smaller stock,  on stationery or book stock, and  on a light blue paper. A total of  issues out of  encountered production problems. Fortunately for history, Woodruff distributed his newspaper far and wide.It is a truism in the field of state history that the early history of the Arkansas Gazette is the history of Arkansas. If it were not for the issues mailed to the Library of Congress in Washington—as well as the personal collection of an early Gazette printer, Hiram A. Whittington—a complete run of the newspaper would not be extant. Through Woodruff’s paper, we are able to witness the birth pangs of Arkansas politics. It recorded the  relocation of the territorial capital from the flood-prone and sickly Arkansas Post area to the “point of rocks,” where Little Rock would emerge. The early pages of the paper often told of duels, bloody shootings involving prominent men such as Pulaski County Clerk Robert C. Oden; Fontaine Pope, the nephew of Gov. John Pope; and C. F. M. Noland, a humorist and political satirist. Even the great Whig journalist , legal genius, and Masonic thinker Albert Pike engaged in a duel, but without loss of life to either combatant. Editor Woodruff knew the great organizer of territorial Arkansas, Robert Crittenden.Appointed territorial secretary at the age of twentytwo ,Crittenden basically took it upon himself to organize the new territory when the newly appointed governor, Gen. James Miller, was tardy in getting to Arkansas. When the governor finally arrived, his boat carried a large banner that read “Arkansaw.” Woodruff and Crittenden lost little time in becoming suspicious of each other, and soon they were in opposite and very hostile camps. From time to time, Crittenden managed to deny Woodruff access to official territorial printing work,but in  Woodruff got the contract to produce the first book in Arkansas, Laws of the Territory of Arkansas. Crittenden recruited Albert Pike to manage a newspaper, the Arkansas Advocate, to challenge Woodruff. This resulted in Arkansas’s first newspaper war, a battle that involved the publication of harsh political attacks that often veered into personal matters too. Then, William E. Woodruff  suddenly, there was a third newspaper, the...