The Brooks and Baxter War. A History of the Reconstruction Period in Arkansas

Preface

. In less than a decade after the surrender of Lee the Southern States, one after another, threw off the governments erected under the military bills of Congress. They re-established governments in accordance with ancient usages, inherited from the colonies, and the rules of home government reserved to them in the Constitution of the United States. The re-awakening was irresistable and phenomenal. By these sketches I have attempted to trace the ætiology of this material and moral palingenesis in Arkansas. I have spent my youth in Arkansas, and I watched with deepest interest the succcessive stages of its disenthralment. In the early days of its settlement chance assemblages of adven turers from the older States, at the river towns on the Mississippi, committed lawless deeds on its border that gave it a reputation which did not apply to the interior.

The caricaturist of the Eastern press selected it as the scene of droll characters and incidents — the creatures of his im agination — and found a never-failing source of merriment in the tales of the "Arkansas Traveler." Young off-shoots from a civilization which had grown too exacting, perhaps, coming to the State and yielding a credulous faith in the reality of these burlesques repeated them, and fancied that they thus enhanced their own accomplishments, not fully appreciated at home. It got to be called the " Home of the bowie-knife and refuge of the cut-throat." The "gentle" "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " approves the bowie-knife — pronounces it the " Roman gladius, modified to meet the daily wants of civil society." Others, who never visited the State, or the South even, applied their caricatures to the Southern States generally.

The gifted Bret Harte, accomplished by the amenities of " Roaring Camp," and learned in the magic of "Ah Sin," has lately attempted to borrow them for use in distant Scotland. His etchings of M'liss and Yuba Bill are far below the art of Cable's "Les Demoiselles' Plantation" or Miss Murfree's "Drifting Down Lost Creek." His lam poon of "Elsie Kirby," whose "Maw" has invested twenty thousand dollars in a "syndicate" for obtaining by her daughter's marriage a share in the title and estate of a Scottish " laird," contains none of Nature's touches, and is a new role for a Southern girl. On her first meeting with the American Consul (a former claim-jumper from Scott's Camp, on North Fork), the author makes this feminine type of American thrift and modesty say : " It was mighty good of you to come and see me, for the fact is, I'm a Southern girl, and did not admire going to your consulate — not one bit.

I never was 'reconstructed,' either. I don't hanker after your gov'ment. I reckon I ain't been under the flag since the wah. I'll just run up and see if Maw's coming down. She'd admire to see you. You would n't think I was half engaged to Malcolm, would you?" Preface. IV Mr. Rudyard Kipling says he heard some conversation like this between real, living belles in San Francisco. He talked also with a girl who was not Southern, on the heights of the Yellowstone upon their first chance meeting — a full cousin to " Daisy Miller " — whose mothers were sisters. He paints his English portrait of these American girls as faithfully as Harte "bites in" his Scottish fancy. But Harte is confused with recollections of Nob Hill and studies of Poker Flat. W. D. Howells, essaying to quit the commonplace, attempts the blood-curdling romance of the loves of a naval officer and lovely mulatto girl.

The learned lover tells her that South erners hate "her race" because they "had injured it." He never heard of the "horrors of the middle passage," when her ancestors were brought by ships not Southern, naked cannibals, saved from being eaten, as captives, to our coasts, where they were disciplined to a degree of " culture " which Howells and some Bostonians regard superior to their own. Let us leave it to foreigners and expatriated Americans to hold Americans up to ridicule abroad, while we recognize their worth at home — in the cabinet, on the bench and in the pulpit. The " necessities of war " invited foreigners to aid in putting down the South. There is now no demand for a similar alliance to write us down. Or, is there ? Several years before the war I traveled nearly all over the State on horseback, alone and with out a weapon.

Its peace, plenty and hospitality were idyllic. I found everywhere men of culture, among them lawyers, soldiers, poets, orators, whose renown was not confined to the State, nor that of some to the United States ;* gentle, lovely women, whose lives of purity and refinement were as impressive as they were genuine, inherent. The cut-throats were imaginary until 1868. The papers, addresses, editorials, proclamations, military orders of " old citizens," repub lished in these pages, bear witness to the enterprise, ability and culture of the thinkers and workers who took part in the deliverance of the State from the grasp of the spoilsmen. Brooks men and Baxter men were animated by the same purpose. They afford abundant proof that our great State, with its fertile river valleys and grandly picturesque mountains and prairies, is not the habitation of ignorance, rusticity and crime.

To vindicate the honor of our oppressed people who, after years of patience, felt that longer endurance was reproachful, and rose up in their strength, as grand and irresistible as they were liberty-loving and patriotic, these pages were written. The opportunity ot publishing them came about this way: Capt. Cutter, editor and pro prietor of his handsomely executed Illustrated fournal, asked me to contribute to its pages. Mr. E. S. Brooks, editor D. Lathrop Publishing Company, at the suggestion of Mr. Geo. Russ. Brown of the Gazette, had applied to me to write the "Story of Arkansas." I preferred to write these sketches of the " Period of Reconstruction." Preface. V I began it from materials which had been gathered for me by a friend to whom I have given the name of " Darley Raynor." I finished it, after exhausting many sources of information.

The authority for the facts contained in the work accompanies them, connected, I think, by a sufficiently perceptible thread. They are reprinted from authentic reports of the press and sworn testimony of the actors. I would not have these papers to be considered a book of politics. They are but the pub lished records of dark experiences, which point an impressive moral for the whole American people. Mistaken solicitude for the blacks (certainly originating in a kind and noble impulse) prompted the measures that excited unnecessary antagonisms between them and the whites, with whom they were indissolubly joined by interest and contact; that violated democratic usage, in erecting vice-regal directories for their protection (?) instead of State governments "republican in form." Many acts suggested by the kindest motives are hurtful to the cause of humanity.

Under the circumstances by which he may be surrounded, the race of man must improve each exigency for his advantage, whether it demands peace or war. The contest is unending. The preservation of the "fit," which is to be desired, is only another conception of destruction or absorp tion of the "unfit," hardly less to be desired. The Malthusian metaphor serves a feast for a limited number of guests at Nature's table. The question is, who is to be favored with a seat? No principle purely of morals will govern the situation. The office of morality in the struggle, is to humanize it, and alleviate its bitter ness to those who are rejected. The preceding paragraph is the general sense of an article of Leslie Stephen, in the London Contemporary, which arrives at the following conclusion : " We give inferior races a chance of taking whatever place they are 'fit' for, and try to supplant them with the least possible severity, if they are 'unfit' for any place."

He had the Maoris, Bushmen, Africans, on their own soil, in view, while writing ; perhaps never heard of our " Fifteenth Amendment." If Mr. Lincoln's design, and the American policy of conciliation, mutual trust and confidence between officers and people had been observed, the State might have been made republican. The military governments contained the elements of their own destruction. This is the lesson taught in these faithful chronicles. J. M. H. *Capt. Bonneville, Irving's Scenes in the Far West; Albert Pike, Hymns to the Gods, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; A. H. Sevier, Minister to Mexico; Solon Borland, Minister to Nicaragua: A. H. Garland, United States Attorney General ; Edward Fitzgerald, Delegate to Ecumenical Council, Rome H. C. Lay, Member Pan-Anglican Conference, Lambeth.