Arkansas Admitted to the Union

Arkansas Admitted to the Union

On June 15, 1836, Arkansas was the 25th state admitted to the Union. Arkansas was the third state to be created from the vast area of the Louisiana Purchase. Thus, like its neighboring south -central states, it was visited and ruled by the Spanish and French before coming under the jurisdiction of the United States.

The first European to visit the region that is today Arkansas was the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. The exact path of de Soto's 1541 explorations is unknown, but it is probable that de Soto's party crossed the Mississippi near present-day Helena, Arkansas, proceeded northward to the mouth of the St. Francis River, and then went southwest to the Arkansas River. De Soto's search for gold next took him farther west to Hot Springs and Caddo Gap. After he and his companions failed to find the precious metal, they journeyed down the Ouachita River, and after wintering at either Camden or Calion they continued on into the area that is now the state of Louisiana.

De Soto's party did not establish any permanent settlements in Arkansas, and no other Europeans ventured into the Arkansas region for more than 130 years. Then, in 1673 the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. Marquette and Joliet remained at the Native American village of Mitchigamea, close to the junction of the Mississippi and Arkansas, for about one month. Having learned that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and having been warned of both hostile native tribes and hostile Spanish to the south, the French decided to return north to Canada.

Like de Soto before them, Marquette and Joliet left no permanent reminder of their sojourn in Arkansas. This, however, was not the case with the next Europeans to visit the region. Early in 1682 a party of Frenchmen led by René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, journeyed down the Mississippi and on April 9 reached its mouth. La Salle claimed all the territory bordering the Mississippi and its tributaries for King Louis XIV of France and planned to fortify the region from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. However, he died in 1687 while attempting to establish the first settlement in the vast area he had claimed for France. Meanwhile, in June 1686 his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, who had set out on an unsuccessful expedition to find his leader, built a small fort in Arkansas.

This first permanent European settlement in Arkansas was modest. Tonti left only six Frenchmen in 1686 at what became known as Arkansas Post, and within one year four of these men had abandoned the fort. Tonti, who is known as the Father of Arkansas, continued to assist at the settlement. He granted the Catholic church a large tract of land near the post and arranged for a priest to minister to the residents of the settlement and to preach to the neighboring native tribes.

Tonti's faith in the Arkansas Post was not unfounded. Located about 15 miles west of the Mississippi, near the junction of the White and Arkansas Rivers, the post served early settlers, trappers, and hunters. Its significance as a trading center was drastically diminished when New Orleans was established at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1718, but throughout the period of French rule over Louisiana the post served as an important link between French settlements along the Gulf of Mexico and those in the upper Mississippi valley.

Even after the establishment of the Arkansas Post, however, settlement of the surrounding area proceeded very slowly. In 1718 the Scottish financier John Law was given a tract of 80,000 acres on the Arkansas River about seven miles from the post. Law planned to colonize this land with about 1,500 settlers from Germany and France. The first contingent, of about 800 (mostly from the Alsace region of modern-day France), arrived in Arkansas in 1720. They built cabins on Law's land and with the assistance of friendly natives managed to survive their first winter in America. Within the year, however, Law went bankrupt and without his financial backing the settlement collapsed. The colonists abandoned the Arkansas settlement and many resettled a few miles outside New Orleans.

Law's unsuccessful venture was the only major attempt to colonize Arkansas during the period of French rule. Some French trappers and priests entered the area during the first half of the 18th century, and the many rivers, prairies, bayous, and mountains that bear French names are a reminder of these early adventurers. However, the number of Europeans who came to Arkansas during the French period was extremely small, and thus in 1762 when France ceded its lands west of the Mississippi to Spain only 88 people inhabited the Arkansas Post.

Under Spanish rule the population of Arkansas continued to grow slowly. A number of new settlements were made, including those at Montgomery's Landing, Hopefield, Portia, and Dardanelle. A census in 1785 revealed that the European residents totaled only 196 persons. In 1800 Spain transferred the entire trans-Mississippi region back to France, and three years later, when the area came under the jurisdiction of the United States as a result of the Louisiana Purchase, Arkansas could still count only about 600 non-Native American inhabitants.

For administrative reasons, the United States Congress divided the Louisiana Purchase region into two separate territories in 1804 and included Arkansas in the District of Louisiana, or Upper Louisiana as it was also known. In 1805 Congress gave Upper Louisiana separate territorial status and designated the lower part of present Missouri and all of present Arkansas as the District of New Madrid within the new territory. The following year the District of New Madrid was further subdivided when its southern region was recognized as the District of Arkansas.

During the first years of American control, fairly extensive explorations were undertaken in Arkansas. The entire length of the Arkansas River was mapped and the course of the Ouachita River was plotted as far west as Hot Springs. Still, during this period Arkansas attracted few new permanent residents, and by 1810 the number of nonnative inhabitants had risen to only 1,062. After Louisiana gained statehood in 1812, Congress changed the name of the territory of Upper Louisiana, which included Arkansas, to the Missouri Territory. Until 1819 Arkansas remained a part of the Missouri Territory, and during that time Arkansas attracted a number of settlers from the section of the territory that today comprises southeastern Missouri. These new residents were victims of the New Madrid earthquake of 1811-1812, which was felt over an enormous area and rocked an area of the Mississippi valley extending southward 300 miles from the mouth of the Ohio. The disaster so devastated parts of southeastern Missouri that in 1815 the federal government authorized persons who had inhabited that hapless region to select other unorganized lands located elsewhere in the territory.

In 1819 Congress separated the area of Arkansas and most of what is today Oklahoma from the Missouri Territory and created from these regions the new Arkansas Territory. The territorial capital, first at Arkansas Post, was moved to Little Rock in 1821. When Congress considered territorial status for Arkansas, antislavery forces attempted to amend its territorial act so that no more slaves could be brought into the territory and those already there would be freed when they reached 25 years of age. The opponents of slavery won Senate approval for their measures, but the House of Representatives rejected the ban against slavery and thereby allowed it to continue in the region.

When Arkansas became a territory in 1819, the total number of non-Native American residents was about 14,000. In the years that followed, the population grew steadily. The victims of the New Madrid earthquake and veterans of the War of 1812, who had been promised land bounties at the time of their enlistments, helped account for the increase in Arkansas inhabitants during the two decades after 1819. Even more important was the fact that after the Missouri Compromise of 1820, banning slavery north of a latitude that bisected the country into a free North and slave South, Arkansas was the only southern area where slavery could expand westward.

In the 1820s and 1830s cotton was by far the most profitable commodity produced in the United States. However, cotton quickly exhausted the soil of the southeastern states where it was first intensively cultivated, and planters were forced to seek new lands farther west. Arkansas's climate proved to be ideally suited to the growing of cotton, and since there was no restriction against slaves in the territory, many planters chose to establish themselves in the underpopulated territory.

By 1833 the population of Arkansas had increased to 40,026, and many residents began to think of statehood. This number was almost 20,000 short of the 60,000 inhabitants required for admission to the Union. Nevertheless, in December 1833 Arkansas's congressional delegate asked the Committee on Territories to report “as to the expediency of admitting the Territory into the Union as a state.” At the same time that Congress was considering Arkansas's statehood, it received a similar request from Michigan. Since Michigan was to be a free state, its admission to the Union would upset the sectional balance of free and slave states, which had been established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unless pro-slave Arkansas also gained statehood.

Southerners regarded the situation as urgent. In 1835 Arkansas's delegate to Congress wrote: “Let Michigan get into the union without us, and we are then completely at the mercy of both houses of Congress.” To prevent this from happening, Arkansas lawmakers took an unprecedented step. When a census in 1835 showed that Arkansas had more than the 60,000 residents necessary for statehood, the governor sent a message to the territorial legislature expressing his feeling that “there can be no doubt but that, upon the application of the representatives of the people, Congress will freely grant to the people of Arkansas the requisite powers.” However, the Arkansas legislature did not wait for the federal Congress to initiate action regarding Arkansas statehood. Instead, the legislature, which met in October 1835, passed a bill calling for the election of delegates to a convention that would meet in January 1836 to draw up a state constitution.

By the end of January 1836 Arkansas's constitution was completed and a copy was sent to Congress. The admission bill easily passed the Senate, but in the House there were extended debates on the propriety of Arkansas's having formed a state constitution before receiving federal authorization to do so and also on the presence in the constitution of clauses permitting slavery in the new state. Even so, the forces opposing Arkansas statehood were not sufficiently strong enough to permanently block the area's admission to the Union. On June 6 Arkansas's congressional delegate persuaded the House to adopt a resolution that it would “consider until disposed of” the Arkansas and Michigan statehood bills. Seven days later the House passed the Michigan bill, and after 25 hours of further debate also approved Arkansas's statehood application. On June 15, 1836, President Andrew Jackson signed the bill making Arkansas the 25th member of the United States.

After the outbreak of the Civil War, Arkansas declared its secession on May 6, 1861. Full privileges of statehood were not restored until June 1868, after a new constitution enfranchising blacks had been drawn up under Reconstruction auspices and provision had been made for ratification of the 14th Amendment, a prerequisite for restoration to the Union.