Slavery and Secession in Arkansas

 

Historian Gigantino (Univ. of Arkansas) has assembled an array of primary sources relating to the debate surrounding secession in Arkansas, including speeches, private letters, government documents, broadsides, memoirs, and newspaper excerpts.  These resources, drawn from across the state and covering the years 1859–61, highlight the diversity of opinion on secession in Arkansas—a border state where slavery and its wealthy defenders were concentrated in lowland areas, while its highland areas tended to oppose leaving the Union (as exemplified by one Benton County broadside that raised the specter of only slave-owners being allowed to vote in the proposed Confederacy).  The editor does an excellent job of letting these sources speak for themselves about the evolving motivations behind secession.  A robust defense of slavery dominated the public debate from the beginning, with the resolutions of the first secession convention focusing entirely on that “peculiar institution,” but Fort Sumter provided the real catalyst for Arkansas to leave the Union.  With renewed public interest in the causes of Southern secession, this illuminating book will certainly find an audience among those interested in an honest accounting of the past, and in letting long-departed voices speak as to their own motivations.

–G. A. Lancaster, independent scholar

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty/researchers; professionals/practitioners; general readers.

Choice, February 2016