Timeline
1859 Education
Arkansas continued making progress in education: the General Assembly incorporated the Arkansas Institute for the Blind to succeed the State Blind Asylum; Jefferson High School of Pine Bluff opened as the state's first co-educational high school; Saint Johns College in Little Rock officially began classes in October; and Arkansas College in Fayetteville conferred two Master of Arts degrees, the first such granted in the state. Arkansas College and three other institutions made Washington County the education center for the state. Other trappings of progress included the grading of the railroad bed from north of the Arkansas River at Little Rock to the White River and the organization of a gas company to erect a plant and provide gas lighting to Little Rock.
Edward Payton Washburn offered for sale prints of his recent painting, the "Arkansas Traveler," for $2.50. The story of the "Traveler," as told by Sanford C. Faulkner, was printed to accompany the engraving. The picture and story have become a staple of American folklore and many musicians have used the "Traveler" theme. Since Washburn died in 1860, be did not profit much from the print, which was later mass-produced by Currier and Ives. As time passed, the Arkansas Traveler image became criticized locally for the "backwards" impression it gives of Arkansas.
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union appointed Mrs. Robert Ward Johnson to be Vice Regent from Arkansas. Mrs. Johnson announced that the Ladies Association had entered into a contract to buy the "mansion, gardens, landing place and above all, tomb," of George Washington's estate on the Potomac River. She urged women of the state to help raise the purchase price for the home of the "father of our country." (The fourth Vice Regent from Arkansas, Mrs. J. Fairfax Loughborough, founded Historic Arkansas Museum in 1939.)
Two national events displayed a new aggressiveness in sectional strife. The Southern Commercial Convention in Vicksburg, not content to retain the right of slave ownership in the South, sought to open up the foreign slave trade again. Congress had prohibited the foreign slave trade in 1808. In October, John Brown led an attack on the arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to instigate a slave rebellion. A force of United States Marines, commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee, took Brown and his followers prisoner. Brown was later hanged for treason and criminal conspiracy.
Even before these events, the General Assembly followed Governor Conway's advice and acted to remove all free Negroes from Arkansas. Free persons of color were seen as a potentially disruptive element and, after 1860, were to be enslaved for a year and their earnings from that period were to be used for their removal.
