of the Quapaws it must have been a lovely spot. Then the tall trees
grew untouched upon its rolling hills, and its numerous little streams,
now converted into sewers, flowed murmuring beneath overhanging ferns
to mingle with the river.
When it was first visited by white men no one knows. During 1541 and
1542 De Soto marched back and forth through the region, seeking for
gold with a Spaniard’s hunger; but the accounts of his wanderings are
uncertain and confused, and the blood of the unhappy natives which once
marked out his pathway has long since mingled with the dust.
Then for almost two hundred years the solitude of the wilderness
remained unbroken. At rare intervals the French _voyageurs_ went up and
down the Mississippi, establishing forts and trading-posts; but the
great river so engrossed their attention that they left its tributaries
unexplored. At length, in 1722, a French officer, Bernard de la Harpe,
ascended the Arkansas, and on April 9th reached the picturesque heights
of Big Rock, where the army post is now located. Standing upon the
brink of its lofty precipice he watched the river winding far away in
the distance between the mountains of the West, and dreamed of the
mighty empire that France should build up where lay the untrodden
beauty of the woods. The whole site of Little Rock was spread out
beneath him, clothed in verdure, and he mentions the slate bluffs which
it presents to the stream.
Then again the curtain is drawn over the scene. Doubtless from time to
time French _voyageurs_ ascended the river to barter with the Indians
for their furs, but they left no mark. In 1803, the country passed to
the United States as a part of the Louisiana purchase, and the hardy
Anglo-Saxon pioneer began to penetrate the wilderness, his Bible in
one hand and in the other his long, death-dealing rifle. As early as
1814 three or four squatters were dwelling at Little Rock or in its
vicinity, subsisting chiefly by the chase; and even then the importance
of the site was so conspicuous that strong men dwelling in St. Louis
and other places began to struggle for possession of the title with a
pertinacity rarely equalled.
At this period it escaped a great danger. An effort was made to
christen it Arkopolis, and deeds were executed with that designation;
but better counsels prevailed, and it retained its old name, “The
Little Rock,” the article then being an inseparable portion of the
title.
[Illustration: NEW STATE HOUSE.]
It was still a mere spot in the forest marked by a few log huts when,
on October 24, 1820, it was made the capital of the territory. On
the 4th of July of that year the Rev. Cephas Washburn had preached
the first sermon ever heard there, and in the rude cabin there were
gathered to listen to him only fourteen men,--no women,--probably
all the inhabitants of the place. Yet no one doubted that they were
standing upon the site of a future city, or questioned the wisdom
of the Legislature when it established the capital in the remote
wilderness, far from the Mississippi in whose neighborhood the scanty
population of the territory was chiefly gathered.
The town grew slowly. It was far from the centers of population, and
the means of travel were slight and precarious. It was made a post
office town on April 10, 1820, but the inhabitants in 1830 numbered
only four hundred and fifty, and it was not incorporated until Nov. 7,
1831.
[Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE.]
In 1860, the population was only about five thousand. Between 1833
and 1846 the State House was built, a handsome edifice for the time
and place; but generally the buildings were constructed of wood, not
infrequently of logs, and were wholly unpretentious. Yet it is probable
that there has never been in the city so much ability, certainly never
so many striking personalities, as in those early days. It was a time
when the nation was in its lusty youth, when the spirit of adventure
and the love of independence were strong in the breasts of men. It
was an age of great orators, when men felt strongly and expressed
themselves in words that burned. It was an age when the romantic
movement in literature was at its best, and when the sad smallness of
the realistic school had not cast its blight on every lofty enthusiasm.
It was a time of buoyancy, of expansion,--when the love of change and
adventure, the weariness of the conventionalities of civilized life,
the attractions of a future of unknown possibilities, were drawing many
of the ablest and most ambitious of the nation’s youth to the distant
West. Their hopes were often chimerical; but of their abilities and
their energy there can be no doubt. They sought the West, conscious
of their strength, burning with ambition, each dreaming that he would
be the master-spirit of the new empire that was springing from the
wilderness. When they found that instead of being unquestioned leaders
among ignorant frontiersmen they were pitted against foemen worthy
of their steel, and equally determined to rule the destinies of the
infant commonwealth, the rivalries were fierce, the animosities bitter,
the struggle intense. Politics ran high, and conflicting ambitions led
to a degree of personal virulence in writing and in speech surpassing
anything that we have to-day. When these young men first met, fire
flashed as when flint and steel are struck together, and in the
territorial days their quarrels were too often solved by the duel.
After the admission of the State in 1836 affairs became more tranquil.
The strong men gradually learned to dwell together in peace; but their
rivalries, though less bloody, were not less strenuous.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WHERE THE ARKANSAS LEGISLATURE WAS HELD IN
1835.]
[Illustration: ALBERT PIKE.]
All parts of the country contributed their quota. From Massachusetts
there came perhaps the two ablest men, Chester Ashley and Albert Pike,
men who would have been remarkable in any age or place. Connecticut
sent Samuel H. Hempstead; Virginia, Henry W. Conway and Solon Borland;
Kentucky, the State’s most accomplished orators, Robert Crittenden and
Frederick W. Trapnall, besides William and Ebenezer Cummins and George
C. Watkins; North Carolina, Archibald Yell; Tennessee, Absalom Fowler
and Ambrose H. Sevier; and there were many others from various sections
worthy to enter the same arena.
[Illustration: ROBERT CRITTENDEN.]
And not at home alone were the great abilities of these men
acknowledged. Arkansas’ first two senators were Ashley and Sevier,
and the former was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the
Senate, while the latter was the chairman of its Committee on Foreign
Relations, the only time when the chairmanship of both those great
committees has been lodged in the hands of a single State,--and that a
State whose population consisted of a few frontiersmen almost lost in
the primeval forest.
[Illustration: THE OLD FOWLER MANSION.
NOW THE RESIDENCE OF JOHN M. GRACIE.]
And when the Mexican War was over and the time came to reap the fruits
of victory, it was Mr. Sevier who, together with Mr. Justice Clifford,
negotiated the treaty of peace.
[Illustration: THE CRITTENDEN RESIDENCE.
THE FIRST BRICK HOUSE BUILT IN LITTLE ROCK. NOW THE HOME OF GOVERNOR
JAMES P. EAGLE.]
The leaders of the infant commonwealth were all lawyers. In the early
days of the Republic the position of lawyers was much more commanding
than it is at present. Their social influence has waned before the
aristocracy of wealth; and their political power has largely passed to
the “boss” and the machine, whose authority rests on a more material
basis than eloquence and reason. And never was there a city so
dominated by its bar as Little Rock in the olden times. Everything
circled around the great lawyers. Even the wealth of the community
was mostly in their hands. The houses of the citizens were generally
of wood, and usually stood upon the street; but scattered about there
arose the stately mansions of the leaders of the bar,--of Ashley,
Pike, Trapnall, Fowler, Crittenden, Hempstead and others, encircled
by extensive grounds and shaded by patriarchal trees, dominating the
surrounding dwellings almost like feudal châteaux. In these mansions
were concentrated the social and intellectual life of the community,
and its history was the story of their daily struggles for pre-eminence.
[Illustration: THE OLD PIKE MANSION.
NOW THE RESIDENCE OF COLONEL JOHN G. FLETCHER.]
So Little Rock grew and flourished, men dwelling in peace beneath their
vines and fig trees, until the year 1861 brought up the momentous
question of disunion and war. Arkansas was strongly attached to the
Union. In its mountainous regions there were no slaves, and three
fourths of the people were white. The convention called to determine
the course the State should take adjourned without action, declining
to enter the confederacy that had been formed at Montgomery, Ala.
But when they reassembled the war was already flagrant, and with only
a single dissenting vote they cast in their lot with their brethren
of the South. The result was hailed by the people of Little Rock with
unlimited enthusiasm. Confidence in the success of Southern arms was
universal. No grim spectre of invasion and despair haunted their
dreams. But the awakening was rude. The Northern armies poured across
the border in overwhelming numbers, and soon the people had to fight
for their altars and their firesides. Rarely have a people sprung so
universally to arms, or defended their homes with such tenacity. Out of
a voting population of 61,198, fully fifty thousand were in the ranks.
But they fought in vain. On Sept. 10, 1863, Little Rock was captured by
the Northern forces under General Steele. They did the place no harm,
save that upon one of its highest eminences they constructed a powerful
fort, and to hold it in security leveled the forest to a great distance
in every direction, destroying many a monarch of the wood which it will
require centuries to replace.
[Illustration: CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POST OFFICE.]
Since the Civil War the history of Little Rock has been one of
continuous development. Even the period of Reconstruction, that
strange saturnalia that constitutes one of the darkest spots in the
annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, did not retard its growth. It is now
a city of some forty thousand inhabitants, and its future has never
been so bright. The mildness of its climate and the profusion of its
flowers have won for it the name of “The City of Roses.” The charm
of its society, where Southern hospitality is so happily blended
with Northern thrift and neatness, have made it a favorite place for
visitors from every State. Its inhabitants are fond of art and of
foreign travel, and few cities of its size send to Europe a larger or
more regular contingent, or can show to the visitor more statues and
pictures brought home from abroad. A breadth of view unique in the
South, which has led it to welcome immigration from the North, has
saved it from stagnation, and in all departments of business there
are almost as many men from the North as from the South. The Indian
Territory, which for years has stood as a Chinese wall upon the State’s
western border, cutting it off from all participation in the great
movement of transcontinental traffic, and retarding its progress to an
extent that is almost inconceivable, is now opening, and railroads are
penetrating the new field. Commerce is flourishing, factories springing
up, and everywhere the schoolmaster is abroad in the land. The decrees
of the future are inscrutable, but, so far as mortal eye can discern,
the twentieth century will be for Little Rock one of constant growth
and advancement, material and intellectual, and the wisdom of the men
who planted the State’s capital upon this rock when it stood alone in
the pathless wilderness will be more than justified.
[Illustration: LITTLE ROCK UNIVERSITY.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ST. AUGUSTINE
THE OLDEST TOWN IN THE UNITED STATES
BY GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS
Far down on the Atlantic coast lies the old city of St. Augustine.
Unlike most of our early towns, which have either been abandoned,
like Jamestown, or rebuilt and modernized until their ancient form
and fashion are no longer recognizable, St. Augustine has preserved
its antiquity. Its newness is placed alongside, but does not overlie
and hide, its ancient character. Its old self is still there, always
to be felt and seen, and ever about the old city there cling historic
associations which throw around it a charm that few can fail to feel.
The aroma of its life is in its past: and when we recall the fact
that it is more than forty years older than Jamestown; that it was a
comparatively old town when the Puritans landed at Plymouth; that
here, for the first time, isolated within the shadows of the primeval
forest, the civilization of the old world made its abiding-place, where
all was new and wild and strange; that this now so insignificant place
was the key to a possible empire; that on its occupation or destruction
rested French or Spanish domination; that it was a vice-provincial
court, boasted of its Addantados, men of the first mark and note, of
its Royal Exchequer, its public functionaries, its brave men-at-arms;
that its proud name, _La siempre fiel ciudad de San Agustin_ (“the
ever-faithful city of St. Augustine”), was conferred by its monarch;
that here the cross was first planted; that from the Papal chair itself
rescripts were addressed to its governors; that the first great efforts
at Christianizing the fierce native tribes proceeded from this spot;
that the martyrs’ blood was first here shed; that around these walls
the clash of arms and the battle-cry have been heard, we may well feel
a greater interest in this ancient city than is possessed by mere brick
and mortar, rapid growth or unwonted prosperity.
[Illustration: THE OLD CITY GATE.]
The first European who visited this spot, so far as we know, was that
sturdy cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who in 1513 came to Florida in
search of the fountain of youth, but, failing to find it, gave to
Florida its name and perpetuated his own by the romantic quest upon
which he came.
More than fifty years afterwards, St. Augustine was visited by Menendez
with a Spanish fleet, and a permanent settlement was made. Admiral
Coligny, a distinguished leader of the Huguenot party in France,
harassed by the religious animosities which prevailed between the Roman
Catholics and Protestants, conceived the idea of planting a colony
of his co-religionists in America, both for their protection and to
extend the possessions of France into the new world. For this purpose
a small fleet was equipped in the year 1562, and sent out under the
command of Captain Jean Ribaut. The expedition came upon the coast of
Florida, near St. Augustine, the harbor of which they named the River
of Dolphins, because of the many porpoises they saw there. They then
entered the mouth of the River St. John’s, planted a column of stone,
and passed on to the coast of South Carolina, where they built a
small fort called Charlesfort. Leaving there a small garrison, Ribaut
returned to France, intending soon to return with a larger force.
[Illustration: PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES, FOUNDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE.]
Circumstances prevented his return, and it was not until 1564 that
Laudonniere, with three vessels and a larger number of Huguenots, came
prepared to make a permanent settlement of the country. He also came
first to the River of Dolphins, and thence to the St. John’s, called
by them the River May, and after some delay in further explorations
of the coast decided to plant his settlement on the St. John’s, where
he constructed a fort which he named Fort Caroline, on the south bank
of the river, a few miles from its mouth. The colony, however, failed
to obtain from the soil or the sea sufficient food, and were about
abandoning the country in the following year, when Ribaut arrived
with a larger and better class of people, to reinforce Laudonniere’s
settlement.
In the meantime, the Spanish sovereign had learned of these Huguenot
expeditions, and of their encroachment upon a territory which he
claimed for Spain by right of discovery, and at once set on foot an
expedition under the command of Pedro Menendez to drive out of Florida
the French Huguenots, whose faith he regarded with detestation.
Both the French and Spanish fleets came upon the coast of Florida about
the same time. Ribaut passed St. Augustine and anchored off St. John’s
bar. Menendez followed and exchanged a few shots with Ribaut’s vessels,
and retired to the harbor of St. Augustine, where he landed his forces,
occupying an Indian village called Selooe, which seems to have stood
about half a mile north of the fort, upon a tidal creek.
[Illustration: OLD FORGE.]
Ribaut, learning of the landing of Menendez’s forces, determined to
attack the Spanish vessels, which lay outside because of the low water
on the bar, and thus cut off the Spanish force from molesting the
French at Fort Caroline. He had hardly put to sea before he encountered
a terrible storm, by which his vessels were driven down the coast and
cast ashore.
Menendez, being apprised of Ribaut’s movements, and satisfied that
the French vessels would be either driven afar or wrecked on the
coast, determined to take the initiative, march across the country
and surprise Fort Caroline in its weakened condition, during Ribaut’s
absence. Guided by natives familiar with the country, he traversed the
forty miles of low, flat woods, and reaching his destination in the
early morning made a sudden attack upon the French fort and easily
captured it. Moved by a morbid hatred of the French Protestants, as
intruders on the Spanish territory, and still more as enemies to his
faith and hence entitled to neither mercy nor compassion, most of them
were slaughtered in the onset, and Menendez caused his prisoners to be
hung on the neighboring trees, with an inscription that he did this to
them “not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans.” Some twenty or more escaped
with Laudonniere to two vessels at the mouth of the river and thence to
France.
All of Ribaut’s vessels having been wrecked along the coast between
St. Augustine and Canaveral, although most of the people escaped with
their lives, they had no means of regaining Fort Caroline or of leaving
the coast for any point of refuge. Wrecked and wretched, they moved
northward along the coast, and at Matanzas, an inlet twenty miles
below St. Augustine, they were met by Menendez, who had returned from
Fort Caroline, and was informed of their shipwreck and condition by
natives living along the coast. Ribaut asked safe conduct, but Menendez
refused all overtures for terms of surrender, requiring unconditional
submission to his will or clemency. The result was that, as fast as
the French were brought across the inlet in small parties, he directed
that they should all be killed. This sad tragedy is commemorated by the
name, still borne by the inlet, Matanzas, the place of slaughter.
The French Huguenots thus disposed of, Menendez proceeded to lay out
and build his proposed city. A castle and religious house were
first constructed, the castle as a protection against the Indians, or
the French, should others come. The castle or fort was built of the
trunks of trees, in an octagonal shape, near the present fort, and the
dwellings were located in the southern portion of the peninsula on
which the present city stands. The shoalness of the water on the bar
was a protection against an attack by sea, and the bay on one side, and
the Maria Sanchez Creek and St. Sebastian River on the other made the
town secure against an attack by land.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH FORT ON MATANZAS RIVER.]
Menendez, having secured the safety of his settlement, returned
to Spain, little dreaming of the retribution soon to fall upon
his fortified posts on the St. John’s from the hand of Dominic de
Gourgues, who, with a force of some two hundred and fifty men, left
France in 1568, with the purpose of avenging the massacre of his
countrymen. Arriving on the coast in April, he passed the mouth of
the St. John’s and brought his three vessels into Cumberland Sound.
Here, communicating with the Indians, whom he found very hostile to
the Spaniards, he gathered a large force of Indian allies, attacked
the Spanish forts at the mouth of the St. John’s River, captured them
after but little resistance, and then marched against Fort Caroline,
changed to San Matteo. Although the fort was well garrisoned, the
Spanish commander, believing that he was surrounded by a superior
force, fled, and De Gourgues captured the fort, meeting with little
resistance. In retaliation for the massacre of the Huguenots, he hung
his prisoners to the same trees, with the inscription, burned upon
a plank, that he did this “not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors,
thieves, and murderers.”
No further attempt was made by the French to colonize the southern
Atlantic coast, and thus ended the sad beginnings of what, under
other circumstances, might have proved the establishment of French
colonization along our whole Atlantic coast.
The annals of St. Augustine during the remainder of the life of
Menendez present only the usual vicissitudes of new settlements,
the alternation of want and supply and occasional disaffections and
annoyances by unruly soldiers or hostile Indians.
Unluckily for the little city, Sir Francis Drake, in 1586, returning
from the coasts of South America, discovered, in passing, the Spanish
lookout on Anastasia Island, at the entrance of the harbor. Having sent
some boats in, a town across the bay was discovered. During the night,
a fifer came out to the fleet playing the Prince of Orange march, and
informed Sir Francis that the Spaniards had abandoned their fort. This
report proved to be true, and Sir Francis found that in their haste
they had left behind some ten thousand dollars in the treasury chest.
Being fired upon by some of the inhabitants, he burned the town.
An engraved plan of Drake’s descent upon St. Augustine, published in
England upon his return, represents an octagonal fort between two
streams, and at the distance of half a mile another stream, and beyond
that the town, with a lookout and church and monastery. The plan shows
three squares lengthwise, and four in breadth, with gardens on the west
side. The relative position of the town with reference to the entrance
to the harbor is correctly shown, and there seems no sufficient ground
to doubt the identity of the present city with the original location.
The province was then under the government of Don Pedro Menendez, a
nephew of the Adelantado, who, after the departure of the English
fleet under Drake, began, with some assistance from Havana, to rebuild
the town.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST HOUSE IN ST. AUGUSTINE.]
A body of Franciscan missionaries came to Florida in 1592, and
established missions among the Indians at various points along the
coast and in the interior. For a time considerable apparent success
attended these efforts; but a few years later a concerted attack
was made by the Indians upon the missionaries, several of whom were
massacred at their posts. Hostilities became active in 1638 between the
Appalachian Indians and the Spanish settlements upon the coast. The
Indians were soon subdued, large numbers were brought to St. Augustine,
and as a punishment for their out-break they were forced to labor--it
is said for sixty years--upon the public works and the fortifications,
in quarrying and transporting the coquina stone from Anastasia Island.
About this period the English settlements in Carolina were established,
which was considered an encroachment upon the territory claimed by
the Spanish Crown by virtue of discovery and occupation. Unfriendly
feelings speedily grew up between the English and Spanish colonies,
embittered by difference of religious faith and an inherited rancor on
both sides.