Timeline
1824 Expansion
Bottomlands, bayous and swamps made overland travel into Arkansas very difficult. To encourage immigration, Congress authorized the surveying of a road from Memphis to Little Rock in January.
Expansion was further aided when Acting Governor Crittenden began negotiating a treaty with the Quapaw tribe which was finally signed on November 5. The Quapaw, despite the pleadings of Chief Heckaton, were forced to give up their ancestral home for a small amount of money, merchandise and an annuity. The tribe was to be merged with the Caddo in the Red River region to the southwest. With the Quapaw out of the way, white settlement could now expand into a large part of central Arkansas and Little Rock could spread east past the "Little Rock" into former Quapaw lands.
Violence often flared up as a part of frontier life. Andrew Scott killed Joseph Seldon in a duel on May 26. While this was not the first duel in Arkansas, the fact that both men were presidentially appointed Superior Court judges did not reflect well on the developing reputation of the Territory.
In the presidential election, the "western" candidate Andrew Jackson won a plurality of popular and electoral votes, but failed to win a majority. Thus, the election was referred to the House of Representatives to be decided early the next year.
On December 27, James Miller submitted his resignation as governor of the Territory. Miller, absent from Arkansas for 18 months, gave poor health as his reason for resigning. He then became Collector at the Port of Salem, Massachusetts and later appeared in that position in the introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel A Scarlet Letter.
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