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Arkansas Secession Convention, Bosecker.

Little Rock Arsenal, Ford.

Battle Of Pea Ridge, Industrias.

Sultana Disaster, Midina.

Key Figures, Henry rector, Issac Murphy, David O Dodd, Midina.

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David's father sent him on business hoping he was safe because he was under-aged ,

David learned Morse code and became a spy for the confederacy and spied on the union army collecting troop information

he was executed by hanging

November 10, 1846 - January 8, 1864

source: Encyclopedia of Arkansas

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During the 1861 secession crisis, Arkansas volunteer companies seized the Little Rock Arsenal from Federal troops, commanded by Captain James Totten. As debates over secession raged, Governor Rector demanded the arsenal's surrender to prevent bloodshed, as volunteers gathered. Without orders from Washington, Totten agreed to hand over the facility to the state militia. On February 8, his troops were peacefully escorted out of the city and boarded a steamer for St. Louis.

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/seizure-of-the-little-rock-arsenal-6854/

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Issac Murphy was the first Reconstruction Governor of Arkansas following the American Civil War, coming to power under President Abraham Lincoln's conciliatory policy. Unlike some other reconstruction administrations the Murphy administration was characterized by fiscal restraint and conciliatory attitude towards the soon-to-be defeated Confederates. Murphy is best known for casting the only vote against secession at the Arkansas Secession. Murphy was elected to the General Assembly of Arkansas two times as the representative from Washington County in 1846 and 1848.Convention. When the secession crisis swept the State in 1861 a group of Madison County citizens called on Murphy to represent them at the Secession Convention to which he agreed. The Arkansas Secession Convention voted to remain in the Union. When Fort Sumter was fired on and Lincoln called for troops from Arkansas the Secession Convention was recalled. The convention voted to take Arkansas out of the Union with only Murphy and 4 other delegates opposed. The convention chair called on the 5 opposition votes to change their votes so that Arkansas could speak with a unanimous voice. All 4 of the other nay voters changed their votes but Murphy refused.

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In the early hours of April 27, 1865, mere days after the end of the Civil War, the Sultana burst into flames along the Mississippi River. The Sultana was a 260-foot-long wooden steamboat, built in Cincinnati in 1863, which regularly transported passengers and freight between St. Louis and New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Although it was designed to only hold 376 persons, more than 2,000 Union troops were crowded onto the steamboat - more than five times its legal carrying capacity. The vessel docked in Vicksburg to address issues with the boiler during a routine journey from New Orleans.  Despite concerns of overloading from several officers, Williams refused to divide the men, insisting that they travel on one vessel.The Sultana steamed north up the Mississippi, but the severe overcrowding and faster river current caused by the spring thaw put increased pressure on its newly patched boilers.  Shortly after leaving Memphis, Tennessee on April 27th, the over strained boilers exploded, blowing apart the center of the boat and starting an uncontrollable fire. Many of those who were not killed immediately perished as they tried to swim to shore. Of the initial survivors, 200 later died from burns sustained during the incident.  Researchers indicate that 1,195 of the 2,200 passengers and crew died, making the Sultana incident the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/sultana-disaster

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"Conservatives hoped to transfer the Arkansas army directly into the Confederacy, but B. C. Totten, a states’-rights Democrat, surprised everyone by siding with Rector, thus enabling the governor to frustrate much of the transfer. Throughout the remainder of his term, Rector embraced state’s rights and denigrated Confederate authority from Richmond. By fall of 1861, the Arkansas army for the most part had gone home, leaving the state undefended even as many Union supporters joined an anti-war group called the Peace Society. The first Confederate general in the state to have problems with Rector, William J. Hardee, took his enlistees across the Mississippi River into Tennessee; the second general, Earl Van Dorn, who also quarreled with Rector, followed up his defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge by embarking his troops for Shiloh in Tennessee, although he arrived too late to take part in that battle. Rector’s response, printed on May 8, 1862, was a proclamation promising to “build a new ark and launch it upon new waters” if the Confederacy did not respond to Arkansas’s abandonment in the face of a Federal invasion into northeastern Arkansas.

Secession from secession did not play well, and when Thomas C. Hindman, now a major general, arrived, things changed quickly. A proponent of total war, Hindman would not brook any states’-rights arguments. Indeed, his military tyranny during the summer of 1862 exceeded anything on either side. Left in the shadows, Rector discovered that his enemies wanted the election promised in the Constitution of 1861. The state Supreme Court agreed, and Rector, all the while cursing one and all, ran again only to be defeated on October 6, 1862, by Harris Flanagin, a former Whig but one with ties to the Family. Flanagin’s campaign consisted of staying with his regiment in Tennessee; Rector tried to justify his record and denounced Flanagin for being an Irishman (which he was not). The vote, 18,187 to 7,419, was a decisive defeat for the governor. When the General Assembly met on November 3, 1862, Rector resigned. After his application for a commission in the Confederate army was rejected, he volunteered in the state reserve corps for the rest of the war."

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/henry-massie-rector-119/

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Henry Massie Rector (1816–1899) - Encyclopedia of Arkansas

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Henry Massie Rector was the state’s sixth governor. He was part of Arkansas’s political dynasty during the antebellum period, but he was not always…

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By the spring of 1862, Union forces had pushed Confederates south and west through Missouri into northwestern Arkansas. On the night of March 6, 1862, Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn and his 16,000-man Army of the West set out to counterattack the Union position near Pea Ridge. Hoping to move quickly, in a fateful decision, Van Dorn ordered the supply trains far to the rear. Learning of Van Dorn’s approach, some 10,000 Federals in Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis's Army of the Southwest marched to meet the Rebel advance the next day. The forces met near Elkhorn Tavern just three miles south of the Missouri border and fighting quickly ensued. Two Confederate generals, Brig. Gens. Ben McCulloch and James McQueen McIntosh, were killed in the action, halting the Rebel momentum. By nightfall, the Confederates controlled Elkhorn Tavern and the Telegraph Road. Curtis consolidated his force during the night, and the next day, counterattacked near the tavern and, by successfully employing his artillery, slowly forced the Rebels back. Running short of ammunition due to the absence of supply support, Van Dorn abandoned the battlefield, leaving Arkansas virtually defenseless. With the Confederate defeat, the Union controlled the border state of Missouri for the next two years.

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Battle of Pea ridge

Little Rock Arsenal

David Owen Dodd

Henry Rector

Isaac Murphy

Sultana Distaster