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Regional Disputes: the Highlands vs. the Delta The Arkansas highlands were thoroughly "Jacksonian," (in the anti-federalist sense of the term) in their political outlook. Their identification with the Democratic Party was further cemented by their intense support for Yell. The political situation in the highlands was so one-sided that Albert Pike used it as a source of humor in his "Autobiography": "They cast about 600 votes in [Randolph County] and I think no more than 15 or 20 Whigs - it was no use for a Whig to run for office. All the candidates were Democrats. "According to the tale, one year two Democrats were running for the same office. Rather than vilify a fellow party member, they made a pact not to make an accusation against each other unless they were together on the stump. This way each would have the opportunity to respond to any charges. Not long afterwards one of them heard that his opponent had called him a hog thief. He immediately sought out his adversary and berated him. "Well, it was true, was it not?" asked the opponent. "Yes," was the reply, "it was true. But look here, if you go and tell that story again if you dare damn it if I don't tell everybody that you are a Whig." This division of Arkansas into two distinct regions with conflicting interests began from day one of statehood, eclipsing less important ideological distinctions between Whigs and Democrats. The delta was dominated by cotton planters and slave labor. In the highlands, subsistence farming was the norm and cash was derived principally from livestock, milling, and moonshine. Local biases tended to prevent effective statewide programs in education and transportation. This notion of conflicting regional interests has a long standing in Arkansas historiography and is supported by a considerable amount of evidence. Moreover, it is critical to an understanding of how the events surrounding secession unfolded. The fact was that the economies of the highlands and delta were almost completely independent of one another, something implicitly recognized by the Legislature when it created virtually autonomous banking systems for the two regions. Rivers provided access to markets for the delta, while increasingly tying the region to the rest of the South. The delta had no great need of roads and railroads. It was the highlands that sought these, but they principally looked to the west for the ultimate market for their products. This trend had been accelerated by the boom associated with the Gold Rush, and was further fueled when the initial surveys for the proposed transcontinental railroad seemed to indicate that the most favorable route passed through Arkansas. The overwhelming majority of highlanders owned no slaves and those that did owned few. A highland farmer might dream someday of owning a few household servants, but his stake in this "peculiar labor system" would scarcely be the same as a planter with capital invested in hundreds of hands. The truth was that slavery simply was not economically viable in the sort of economy at play in the highlands and was unlikely to flourish there for many of the same reasons it had died out in the North. In the last decade or so, evidence has mounted indicating that considerable resentment toward lowland planters existed among upland farmers throughout the South. There was also hostility against slave competition on the part of white craftsmen and mechanics. There is also evidence that many of Arkansas's early settlers were westerners by temperament, men who had immigrated in part to escape societies dominated by planters. John Latta was a case in point, as was Joseph Kuykendall. Both men would free their slaves in their wills. (Waddy Moore, Territorial Arkansas: 1819 1836, Ph.D. Thesis, University of North Carolina, 1962.) Many others would do likewise, a large number because of the influence of Jesse Haille, the antislavery head of the Methodist Church in Arkansas from 1824 to 1829. As late as 1838, an Arkansas branch of antislavery, American Colonization Society, would be founded in the Ozark highlands. (Othniel Pendleton, "Slavery and the Evangelical Church," Journal of the Presbyterian Society, September, 1947.) Even those opposed to abolitionism on anti-federalist, Jacksonian grounds, could still harbor resentment toward planters. This is evident in this 1835 letter to the Little Rock Times at the time of the constitutional debate on apportionment: "Of the whole white population, for one who has twenty slaves, we find twenty who have no slaves. The one, then, will be the sufferer by the abolition of slavery in the Territory, and to enable him to loll in ease and affluence, and to save his delicate hands from the rude contact of the vulgar plow, the twenty who earn their honest living by the sweat of the brow are called upon with the voice of authority assumed by wealth to receive the yoke. They must agree to a tenfold increase of tax to support a state government, because my lord is threatened with danger of desertion from his cotton field if we remain as we are. |