Arkansas Secession Document 1861

2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The absorbing documents collected in Slavery and Secession in Arkansas trace Arkansas’s tortuous road to secession and war. Drawn from contemporary pamphlets, broadsides, legislative debates, public addresses, newspapers, and private correspondence, these accounts show the intricate twists and turns of the political drama in Arkansas between early 1859 and the summer of 1861. From an early warning of what Republican political dominance would mean for the South, through the initial rejection of secession, to Arkansas’s final abandonment of the Union, readers, even while knowing the eventual outcome, will find the journey both suspenseful and informative. Revealing both the unique features of the secession story in Arkansas and the issues that Arkansas shared with much of the rest of the South, this collection illustrates how Arkansans debated their place in the nation and, specifically, how the defense of slavery—as both an assurance of continued economic progress and a means of social control—remained central to the decision to leave the Union and fight alongside much of the South for four bloody years of civil war.

Arkansas in the Civil War: 1861 is a documentary chronology of Arkansas in 1861 using only primary sources to tell the story of why Arkansas left the Union in and joined the Confederate States of America. Many of the documents in Arkansas in the Civil War: 1861 have never been published. This is the first time ever the whole story of the first year of the Civil War in Arkansas is told by both sides of the conflict using only primary source documents. Sales of this book help maintain Civil War battle sites in Arkansas. Included in Arkansas in the Civil War: 1861: - complete list of Arkansas lawmakers (U.S. and General Assembly) -Content index -official militia dispatches -legal documents, including proclamations, resolutions, and ordinances (including the Ordinance of Secession) -poetry -flag presentations to military units -proceedings of the secession conventions (March and May) -official reports of military actions -19th century humor -announcements -over 200 pages of primary source documents in chronological order for the first time ever in print from both sides of the conflict

Five writers examine the political and social forces in Arkansas that led to secession and transformed farmers, clerks, and shopkeepers into soldiers. Retired longtime Arkansas State University professor Michael Dougan delves into the 1861 Arkansas Secession Convention and the delegates’ internal divisions on whether to leave the Union. Lisa Tendrich Frank, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, discusses the role Southern women played in moving the state toward secession. Carl Moneyhon of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock looks at the factors that led peaceful civilians to join the army. Thomas A. DeBlack of Arkansas Tech University tells of the thousands of Arkansans who chose not to follow the Confederate banner in 1861, and William Garret Piston of Missouri State University chronicles the first combat experience of the green Arkansas troops at Wilson’s Creek.