The same election that made Rector governor also elevated Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. In his inaugural address Rector warned that the nation was rapidly approaching a crisis. "Is it to be the Union without slavery," he asked, "or slavery without the Union?" Rector went on to recount the grievances of the Southern states and acknowledged their right to secede, but stopped short of calling for secession by Arkansas.
The initial push for secession came instead from Arkansas's Congressional delegation. On December 21, 1860, Rep. Hindman and Senator Robert Ward Johnson, a leader of the Family who only a year earlier had nearly fought a duel with Hindman, co-signed a letter to the Arkansas legislature calling for a state convention to consider secession. Gov. Rector delivered an address to the General Assembly in support of the measure. "The Union of States may no longer be regarded as existing in fact," he warned, "making it imperatively necessary that Arkansas should grid her loins for the conflict, and put her house in order." The legislature approved a convention to meet in March and set an election to choose delegates.
South Carolina seceded in late December. Mississippi followed on January 9, Florida on January 10, Alabama on the 11th, Georgia on the 19th, Louisiana on the 26th, and Texas on February 1st.
Within Arkansas tensions mounted as the February election for convention delegates approached. The secessionists were well financed and controlled the majority of the state's newspapers, but a groundswell of Unionist sentiment sprang up in the Arkansas hill country where few slaves existed.
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