Timeline
1850 Sectional Conflicts
The Mexican War enlarged the United States, with lands in the new southwest stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The question of allowing slavery in this new territory revived sectional conflicts between the North and the South, as did concern over the slave trade and the return of fugitive slaves to the South. Senate debate on these issues was the greatest in congressional history as John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster wrestled with Henry Clay and his proposed compromises. Stricken by a terminal illness, Calhoun listened to the reading of his arguments against compromise and against a United States government which would not provide special protection for the South. Measures, later known as the Compromise of 1850, were finally passed. They included entry of California as a free state; "popular sovereignty," through election by the people, on the slavery question in the newly established territories of New Mexico and Utah; strengthening of the fugitive slave law; and the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C.
The latest sheriff's census gave Arkansas a total population of 198,796, with 636 free Negroes and 45,242 slaves. One indication of a frontier is the predominance of men to women. In 1835, less than 38 percent of the white population was female; now, more than 46 percent were (82,217 men; 70,701 women). Little Rock counted 2,006 residents. Of the 570,123 acres of land in cultivation in the state's 51 counties, only 24 percent were in cotton.
Although public schools would not be permanently established until after the Civil War, education in Arkansas was a concern of many. The first kindergarten was started by Mrs. S.A. Haralson in Little Rock; the Masonic Grand Lodge of Arkansas committed to the creation of Saint John's College in Little Rock; the "State Blind Asylum" in Clarksville sought state funding; and the recently established Alexander Institute at Tulip changed its name to the Arkansas Military Institute. Woodruff complained of legislative squandering of the federal allocations of land which were to have gone to support public education.
Woodruff bought the Arkansas Gazette, which lay close to bankruptcy. There was little he kept except its name and its tradition as the oldest newspaper in the state. On February 8, he introduced the Arkansas State Gazette and Democrat.
