Timeline
1831 Plans for the Capitol
After Governor Pope appointed his nephew, Fontaine Pope, aide-de-camp, young Pope fought two duels as self-appointed defender of his uncle's honor. The first, against John Cocke in 1830, ended happily after three shots were exchanged and no one was injured. The second found Pope facing Charles Fenton Mercer Noland. Fent Noland had been brought to Arkansas from his Virginia home to settle him down.
His father had authored the Virginia law against dueling. Nevertheless, concern for "honor" carried Pope and Noland into combat on the Mexican side of the Red River. Pope was wounded and died four months later.
Many in the Territory associated the consumption of liquor with the uncivilized elements of frontier life. A Temperance Society was founded in April to battle the grog shops and those who visited them.
The General Assembly, dominated by Crittenden supporters, struck a blow at William Woodruff's pride by electing Charles Bertrand Printer to the Territory. The Assembly also incorporated the town of Little Rock, which now went from a trustee to a mayor-council form of Government.
Recognizing that Arkansas needed a government building, Congress granted 10 sections (6,400 acres) of land to the Territory to be traded or sold to construct or acquire a capitol building. The General Assembly voted to exchange the 10 sections for the Robert Crittenden home, which could immediately serve as the State House. Governor Pope did not appreciate this poor bargain and vetoed the bill, only to meet strong criticism.
Late in August, Nat Turner, a black preacher, led a slave insurrection in Virginia in which 57 whites were killed. Turner and his followers were subsequently killed or executed, but slaveholders in the southeast took the insurrection as a major threat. Yet, it received slight mention in the Little Rock newspapers, suggesting Arkansas considered itself more western than southern.
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