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A true believer when it came to state's rights, Rector was reluctant to transfer Arkansas units to Confederate command. The Confederate government in turn refused to arm men not in Confederate units. This stalemate hamstrung Confederate efforts in the crucial early stage of the war in the trans-Mississippi west, when decisive action on the part of the Confederates might have tipped the scales in Missouri.
For their part the Confederates sent Major General Earl Van Dorn to take charge of things in Arkansas. He divided the state into military districts, assigning each a quota of troops. Conscription was threatened should the supply of volunteers prove inadequate. By this point Sterling Price, who was raiding in southern Missouri with more men than weapons, was attacked by federal troops under Brigadier General Samuel Curtis. Price fled into northwest Arkansas. Van Dorn ordered Arkansas troops under General Ben McCulloch to rendezvous with Price and troops from the Indian Territory under Albert Pike. The clash of all these forces on March 7 and 8, 1862, resulted in a Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge.
Van Dorn then marched what remained of the Confederate army out of Arkansas to fight Grant. Rector responded to this abandonment by threatening to secede from the Confederacy. Meanwhile Curtis had marched his army along the White River and found that nothing stood between him and Little Rock. Rector, convinced that the fall of the city was eminent, began removing state records to Hot Springs and then fled with his government. While this was taking place, Brigadier General J. S. Roane, the former governor, intercepted five Texas regiments bound for east of the Mississippi and commandeered them for Little Rock's defense. Curtis, learning that a new army now opposed him, encamped at Batesville to rest his men and resupply his army.
"We would be glad if some patriotic gentlemen would relieve the anxiety of the public by informing it of the locality of the state government," Richard Johnson, Rector's old rival, wrote in the True Democrat. "The last report that was heard of it here, it was aboard the steamer Little Rock about two weeks ago, stemming the current of the Arkansas River."
This humiliation proved the deathblow to Rector's political career. On October 6, 1862, he was forced to stand for re-election. He lost to Harris Flanagin 18,187 to 7,419. Flanagin, a colonel in the Second Arkansas Mounted Rifles, reportedly only learned of his nomination a few days before he was elected.
Next: Harris Flanagin
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