Arkansas militias during Reconstruction
Radical Republicans seized control in 1867 and abolished existing state governments and militia organizations, and disenfranchised former Confederates.
The most severe conflict of this period occurred during the so-called Brooks–Baxter War with rival parties, with supporting militias, battling for control of the governorship.
[1] Immediately following the official end of the Civil War in the summer of 1865, white southerners began to repopulate the local militia and insurgent groups.
The first was an act which dissolved all existing Confederate-state governments and placed the states under the control of the occupying Federal forces, and the second, passed on March 2, 1867, abolished the various southern militia organizations.
[3] Most white males who had participated in the late rebellion were now disqualified to vote, so Radical Republican candidates won all state offices and most seats in the legislature.
The newly elected Governor Powell Clayton succeeded in getting Congress to reauthorize militia organizations in states with pro-Union governments re-established.
In October 1868, the adjutant general could count 37 militia companies totaling 1600 men, the majority of which were black, in the newly formed Arkansas State Guard.
Governor Powell declared Martial Law and militia forces seized the town of Center Point in the southwest and took 60 prisoners on November 12, 1868.
The militia under General Daniel Phillips Upham killed and captured several in an engagement against Klansmen in Augusta in the Northeastern District.
"[8] In February 1873, Captain George R. Herriot of the state guard, during a physical altercation, was murdered by a third party at the county courthouse, but his killer was never brought to trial.
Herriot had been in Dover as a witness for a court hearing over a contested election for sheriff that had taken place when his state guard unit had been in Pope County.
[9] With orders from Washington DC to prevent a clash, Colonel Thomas E. Rose, commander at the Little Rock Arsenal, deployed U.S. regulars from the Sixteenth Infantry, plus two pieces of artillery on Markham Street, between the parties.
Nine Brooks supporters were killed and thirty wounded in an ambush set by Baxter forces at New Gascony in Jefferson County, south of Pine Bluff.
[10] On May 8, Brooks men ambushed a steamboat, the Hallie, and a company of pro-Baxter militia near Palarm Creek, south of present day Mayflower, on the Arkansas River.
Brooks forces eventually declared that unless the sniping was stopped, they would shell the city of Argenta with the two six pounder cannon present at the statehouse.
The reaction was so severe that in March 1879, the legislature, over the governor's veto, enacted a law abolishing the office of adjutant general:[11] Act No.
This bill having been returned by the Governor, with his objections thereto, and, after reconsideration having passed both houses by the constitutional majority, it has become a law this 11th day of March 1879.
Despite the efforts of each succeeding governor, this situation continued for over twenty eight years, until 1907 when the legislature finally reauthorized the office of adjutant general.
