Arkansas secedes on May 6. The southeast…
May 1861 CE
Arkansas secedes on May 6.
The southeast Arkansas slave-based economy had developed rapidly in early antebellum Arkansas.
On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, enslaved African Americans numbered 111,115 people, just over twenty-five percent of the state's population.
Plantation agriculture set the state and region behind the nation for decades.
The wealth developed among planters of southeast Arkansas has caused a political rift to form between the northwest and southeast.
Many politicians are elected to office from the Family, the Southern rights political force in antebellum Arkansas.
Residents generally want to avoid a civil war.
When the Gulf states seceded in early 1861, Arkansas had voted to remain in the Union, and does not secede until Abraham Lincoln demands Arkansas troops be sent to Fort Sumter to quell the rebellion there.
On May 6, a state convention votes to terminate Arkansas's membership in the Union and join the Confederate States of America.
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