On this date, March 29, in 1829, newly inaugurated President Andrew Jackson appointed John Pope as the new governor of the Arkansas Territory. Pope was a man of considerable and perhaps formidable rectitude, a believer in fundamental democratic principles, and most important, a visionary for Arkansas.
John Pope was born in February 1770 in Virginia. The family migrated to Kentucky in 1779 during the worst of the Revolutionary War. An accident on the family farm left young Pope with only one arm -- and the insensitive nickname of "One-Arm Pope." He received a good education, including graduating from William and Mary College. He then read law in Lexington and set up a practice in Shelbyville, Ky.
Pope began his political career by winning election to the Kentucky legislature in 1802. Robert P. Bender, the author of the entry on Pope in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, has noted that Pope "quickly established himself as a significant figure in Kentucky politics and proved a worthy rival of Henry Clay," the Kentucky legislator who later rose to immense power in Congress as the leader of what became the Whig Party. In 1807 Pope was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Jeffersonian Republican -- predecessor of today's Democratic Party -- and brought a keen intellect, strong principles and considerable political acumen to his work in Congress.
Pope's service in the U.S. Senate came to an abrupt end in 1813, no doubt at least in part due to his vigorous opposition to the War of 1812. His Kentucky colleague, Henry Clay, was a major supporter of the war, and his followers denied Pope a second term.
In a strange twist of fate and political compromise, Pope managed to keep his political life on keel by becoming a reliable handmaiden for 1828 presidential candidate Andrew Jackson of Tennessee -- a veteran wager of war and popular politician. Pope was rewarded with the appointment as the territorial governor of Arkansas.
Pope dawdled since he had far greater aspiration -- including appointment as Jackson's attorney general. Kentucky friends wanted him to come home and run for Congress. Though he took the office reluctantly -- and it must be admitted that the governorship of a thinly populated frontier area with a reputation for violence was most unappealing -- Pope does deserve credit for moving his family to Little Rock, the first governor to do so. (Two early appointees to the Arkansas territorial Supreme Court did not even bother to make a trip to Arkansas.)
In addition to being thinly populated, Arkansas Territory was riven by political discord. Territorial Secretary Robert Crittenden -- another of the many Kentuckians who dominated early Arkansas politics -- had essentially established the initial territorial government by fiat in the absence of the first governor, William Miller, thereby creating Arkansas' first political machine. Crittenden was a Whig, so it was not surprising that President Jackson replaced him with a loyal Jackson man, William S. Fulton of Alabama.
Gov. Pope would be considered an activist governor today. He peppered the legislature with messages, admonitions and proposals, including one to actually create some sort of public school system for "the education of the rising generation of this Territory." As a Democrat, he supported the free distribution of public lands, restoring public credit (state script at this time was discounted 40 percent), and like many of his contemporaries, he sought legislation to discourage the carrying of guns -- part of his generally unsuccessful effort to redeem Arkansas' reputation as a land of the revolver and the Bowie knife. Pope was also willing to use his veto powers as well as postponing implementation of laws.
Gov. Pope was not blind to internal improvements and other topics usually associated with Whigs, including presenting proposals for a territorial road system as well as pleading with Federal officials to develop medical facilities at the hot springs in western Arkansas. (In his later years, Pope switched to the Whig Party -- the party of his old nemesis, Henry Clay.)
We should all honor Gov. Pope for his efforts to construct a dignified capitol building -- which was not as simple as it might sound, since the whole issue became a point of contention between the rapidly developing territorial political parties. When Robert Crittenden proposed that the territory buy his home (near the present Albert Pike Hotel on Scott Street) to use as a capitol building, sparks flew.
Gov. Pope vetoed the acquisition of the Crittenden home. An override effort failed by one vote. Thus, today we have the strikingly beautiful Old State House Museum on Markham Street to remind us that at least occasionally, early Arkansas leaders sometimes did the right thing.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
NAN Profiles on 03/29/2015