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

John R. Eakin

John R. Eakin John R. Eakin was one of those pioneer Arkansans who excelled in a number of fields, most especially in journalism and the law. He edited the Washington Telegraph newspaper in Hempstead County in the heated times leading up to the Civil War, as well as serving as something of a reformer in the Arkansas Supreme Court. Eakin was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in , the son of a Scottish immigrant who made a small fortune in a frontier mercantile business. Eakin was well educated for the times, having begun college at age eleven and later graduating from the University of Nashville.He studied history and read law at Yale University, finishing his legal educating by reading under the prominent Andrew Ewing of Nashville. He married the college-educated Elizabeth Erwin, related by marriage to Edgar Allan Poe, in . Eakin inherited considerable wealth when his father died in , much of which he spent on agricultural experiments—especially in growing and breeding grapes. By , Eakin was growing more than one thousand grape vines representing forty varieties and species. However,he was financially overextended.His circumstances reduced, Eakin relocated to Washington, Arkansas, in  to practice law. Arriving in Arkansas just as the nation was embarking on a great debate over the future of slavery, Eakin affiliated with the Whig Party and did his part to prevent the secession of Arkansas from the Union. After becoming editor of the Telegraph in , Eakin “opposed secession and war with pen and on the stump,” as the nineteenth century historian John Hallum later wrote. Once hostilities commenced with the firing on Fort Sumter,South Carolina,in the spring of ,Eakin,like most antisecessionist leaders, immediately closed ranks with the new Confederacy.While a state convention was meeting to consider secession, Eakin wrote: “Filled with indignation—all our love turned to disgust—anxious only now for the glory and honor of the South, we cry for war.” Indeed, over the  next four years he became known as the most widely read Arkansas propagandist for the rebel cause.Michael B.Dougan,the author of the entry on Eakin in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, defended Eakin’s editorial stance: “he believed the press should be ‘controlled by men of conscience,’ and he refused to print forged documents or intentionally misleading stories.” When Little Rock fell to Union troops in September , the Confederate state government fled to Washington, where a new state government was established in the county courthouse. The Telegraph became the official organ of the Arkansas Confederacy during the final two years of the war. It was the only Arkansas newspaper to publish continually throughout the Civil War, which gave Eakin substantial influence. When the guns finally fell silent in April , Eakin was quick to bury his disgust and accept a presidential pardon for his role in the rebellion—a course he also urged on his readers. Then he promptly gave up the Telegraph and went into politics. (The newspaper itself survived for another century. The Etter family closed it in , by which time the town of Washington had become a tiny village abandoned to history.) Since the Whig party could not survive the Civil War, Eakin, like his fellow Washington Whig and future governor and U.S. senator Augustus H. Garland, joined the Democratic Party—though “of necessity, not of choice,” as one of his contemporaries said. In  Eakin was elected to the state legislature, and in  he served in the constitutional convention that wrote the charter under which Arkansas is governed today. Soon thereafter he was elected chancery judge,and in  he was appointed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. As a jurist, Eakin was something of a maverick. In several cases he voted to protect the rights of women.While his choice of words would later sound quaint, his sentiments were clear in  when he wrote that it is “undoubted everywhere that men and children are safest under the moral influences and social surroundings which are approved by women.” Eakin realized that married women had received some legal protection in Arkansas since . The state constitution, adopted in , John R. Eakin  even contained a provision giving property rights to married women. The  general assembly adopted legislation to ensure a whole range of rights for married women, including the right to own and transfer property, to own a business, and to sue or be sued. Until the adoption of this law, women...