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The Peculiar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas

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The Peculiar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2014 The ecP uliar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas Kelly Eileene Jones University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Kelly Eileene, "The eP culiar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 2044. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2044 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The Peculiar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas The Peculiar Institution on the Periphery: Slavery in Arkansas A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Kelly Houston Jones University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bachelor of Arts in History, 2006 University of North Texas Master of Arts in History, 2008 December 2014 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ____________________________________ Dr. Jeannie M. Whayne Dissertation Director ____________________________________ _______________________________________ Dr. Daniel E. Sutherland Dr. Kathryn Sloan Committee Member Committee Member ____________________________________ Dr. Patrick G. Williams Committee Member Abstract Slavery grew quickly on the western edge of the South. By 1860, more than one quarter of Arkansas’s population was enslaved. While whites succeeded remarkably in transplanting the institution of slavery to the trans-Mississippi South, bondspeople used the land around them to achieve their own goals. Slaves capitalized on the abundance of uncultivated space, such as forest and canebrake, to temporarily escape the demanding crop routine, hold secret parties and religious meetings, meet friends, or run away for good. The Civil War created upheaval that undermined the slave regime but also required those African-Americans still in bondage to carefully navigate their use of the woods and “wild” spaces. ©2014 by Kelly Houston Jones All Rights Reserved Acknowledgments Thanks to Carl Moneyhon for introducing me to the study of the South, the late C. Fred Williams to the frontier, and Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell to the study of slavery. Dr. Campbell models sharp scholarship and professional generosity. In addition to showing me how to research and write, he taught me important life lessons like being a compassionate educator, defining my long-term goals, and firing a shotgun. Special thanks to Dr. Jeannie Whayne for raising me as a scholar, and, in addition to the fields listed above, bringing me up in the study of African-American, Arkansas, and agricultural history. A fine mentor in academia and personal life, Dr. Whayne has understood my vision for this project from the beginning, and her unwavering confidence in me has brought it to fruition. Thanks to the impressive lineup of historians at the University of Arkansas who make up the rest of my dissertation committee, Professors Daniel Sutherland, Kathryn Sloan, and Patrick Williams. Dr. Williams is an expert editor and a particularly polite listener to the ramblings of excited graduate students. Thanks to the funding provided by the University of Arkansas Department of History, the Mary Hudgins Research Fund, the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society, and the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. These fellowships and grants have allowed me to reach far and wide for sources on the lives of Arkansas slaves. Thanks to the scholars, archivists, and panelists who have advanced my thinking, writing, and research. In particular, the experts at the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections, the Arkansas History Commission, and the UALR/Pulaski County Law Library have provided invaluable assistance. Thanks to Story Matkin-Rawn for generously sharing the story of Reuben Johnson. Thanks to Debbie Liles for the source on Worthington’s trek to Texas. And thanks to the Arkansas Historical Association for the friendly forum it provides to budding Arkansas historians. Thanks to my support system of graduate students, friends, and family. My twin sister Carly is all three of those and my cheerleader, too. And very many thanks to Chris Jones for being the nicest guy on the planet. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the memories of our sisters: Ash and Bertie. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Landscape of Bondage on the Edge of the South 16 Chapter Two: The Landscape of Resistance on the Edge of the South 50 Chapter Three: Chattels, Pioneers, and Sojourners for Freedom: Arkansas’s Bonded Travelers 70 Chapter Four: Occupied Time: The Rhythm of Work on the Cotton Frontier 105 Chapter Five: Confidants and “No ‘Counts”: Slaves’ Social Circles on the Margins 161 Chapter Six: “Stormy Times for Everybody”: Wartime Slavery 199 Conclusion 236 Bibliography 243 Introduction Reuben Johnson’s life on a plantation south of Little Rock changed forever when he heard a man read from the Bible one Sunday. From that moment, Johnson became determined to be able to do the same. But he was a slave—chattel, under the laws and conventions of Arkansas and the South—and was therefore forbidden from achieving an education. Nevertheless, the determination to learn to read and write engulfed him, and Johnson found ways to teach himself. He listened to recitations of the alphabet outside the white children’s schoolhouse, and eventually managed to secure a book to study on his own. Although the master confiscated the book and whipped him for having it, Johnson raised money for another one by gathering walnuts to sell to passing peddlers. This time, a hollow log housed the precious contraband. Johnson snuck into the woods to bring out one page at a time for studying in the quarters. Eventually, however, he was found out. Again his book was seized, and again he paid for it in lashes. Johnson persevered, however, securing yet another book by enlisting the plantation wagoner to help him sell hay he had been gathering at night. Johnson again relied on a log to conceal his latest prize, but now restricted his study to sessions in the woods. Finally, Johnson realized his dream of literacy after fleeing to fight for the Union in 1864.1 Reuben Johnson was one of hundreds of thousands of slaves making calculated use of space to negotiate their bondage in places across the South. He relied on the public road to meet passing peddlers in order to sell nuts he gathered from the woods, probably using the woods that bounded the road’s edges for cover until the right person passed. Swaths of tall grass in clearings 1Rev. Reuben Johnson, “My Struggles for Education,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1878. 1 or, perhaps, abandoned acreage, became marketable hay after he combed his neighborhood in the night to cut and gather it. Johnson used uncultivated spaces around him to his advantage when he could. The forest provided forage that he converted to cash for one of his books, and he chose the woods as a safe place to store each book he acquired. Finally, after Johnson’s pursuit of literacy became too dangerous to practice on the plantation, the woods became his classroom.2 Ira Berlin has shown how the context of place and time, on a larger scale, is crucial to understanding the experiences of American slaves, like Johnson, in the places they lived. For example, the “charter” generation of Africans in early New Orleans experienced different work routines and found different opportunities for resistance than people held in bondage in North Carolina during the years of slave exportation from that state. Place and space mattered.3 But the place where Reuben Johnson lived, worked, and resisted—the southern periphery—is underrepresented in the historiography. Places west of the Mississippi River, where slavery was young in 1860 and the terrain thinly (yet rapidly) settled, still receive relatively little attention as scholars continue to target slavery in the southeast for study. Token mentions of slavery in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and northern Louisiana make their way into general histories, but more in-depth investigation into the daily lives of enslaved people on the periphery of the South is needed. Even Walter Johnson’s recent magisterial work on slavery in the Mississippi Valley, River of Dark Dreams, while it offers a good general synthesis of the 2 Ibid. 3Although his account does not specify where he cut the hay he sold for books, Johnson’s nighttime gathering suggests that he cut it from grassy zones where whites would not have missed it. Ibid.; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2003), 93, 215. 2 Mississippi Valley, is focused more on the east side.4 Some context is available on the stories of people on the edge of the South, provided by historians like Randolph B. Campbell, who first brought the story of enslaved Texans to light, and more recently, Diane Mutti Burke, who explores the lives of slaves on Missouri’s small holdings.5 But the focus of scholarship on American slavery remains in eastern, higher-populated, and longer-settled zones of the South. Reuben Johnson’s home, Arkansas, has been especially neglected by the scholarship. Negro Slavery in Arkansas, published in 1958, remains the only published statewide study of slavery in the natural state.6 To examine the experiences of Reuben Johnson and the 111,000 other men, women, and children enslaved in Arkansas is to explore slave life in rugged space. Arkansas was remote, thinly populated, and made up of mostly undeveloped terrain even at the start of the Civil War.
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