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.
| 1836 Statehood >
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