Timeline
1835 A New Governor and a Crime Wave
On January 30, President Jackson survived an assassination attempt. The assailant's pistols misfired; he was judged insane and committed to a lunatic asylum. Jackson, deciding against reappointing John Pope, chose William S. Fulton as Governor of Arkansas. Lewis Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, replaced Fulton as Territorial Secretary.
Pope soon left for Kentucky and his editor, John Steele, departed after receiving payment for the law digest. Steele's legal defense of certain criminals and his knack for locating and returning stolen slaves for a fee had raised the suspicions of some people in the Territory. A criminal gang, led by John A. Murrell, terrorized parts of Arkansas while professional gamblers plagued Little Rock. In response to the crime problem, worried citizens organized the Anti-Gaming Society. While the Society advocated legal means for solving this problem, Woodruff suggested lynching when those means failed.
Albert Pike, the most restrained editorial voice during the crime wave, suggested the need for a penitentiary which would adequately hold all eligible prisoners. Pike, a recent arrival from Massachusetts, had acquired the Arkansas Advocate early in the year, after his bride inherited a handsome estate.
As anti-slavery publications began to reach the South in greater numbers, Woodruff regularly warned his readers of the danger of freeing the slaves. For a while he urged that all free Negroes under 60 years of age be sent to Liberia.
Although Governor Fulton remained noncommittal on the issue, the General Assembly voted to call a constitutional convention as the next step toward statehood. After all, the Indians had been removed and Arkansas had better roads, regular steamboat service and met the population requirements for statehood. Agricultural production had grown and, through land office sales, private ownership of land had increased from 2,000 acres in 1830 to 630,000 acres in Arkansas even had Cane Hill College, its first institution of higher learning, founded by the Cumberland Presbyterians.
