Kellams: One hundred and ninety years ago this week, delegates were meeting in the state House in Little Rock to create Arkansas's constitution. From July 14 through Oct. 31, they worked. There have been attempts to write a new constitution since, and there have been more than 100 amendments, but the original document is still Arkansas's constitution.
A new exhibit at the Special Collections Gallery in Mullins Library at the University of Arkansas celebrates the evolving process of the Arkansas Constitution. “Regnat Populus: Digitizing 190 Years of Arkansas Constitutional History” is a thorough guide curated by three University of Arkansas students. The project is a collaboration with the Quill Project at Pembroke College at Oxford University, and part of a greater effort to bring constitutions and similar documents from around the world online.
Last week, we shared information about the Quill Project, and today we're going to hear more from the three students who curated the exhibition: Kaylee Rowe, Ashlyn Fox and Brock Manasseri. At Tuesday's opening reception, I asked them if they thought they had a more intimate knowledge of the state after working with the Arkansas Constitution for this project.
“I'd say, yeah. I mean, at any point the Constitutional Convention was made up of lawyers, sure, they were there to understand the legal aspects of it. But a lot of the time it was regular, everyday people, laymen who were popular in their communities — either they maybe were wealthy farmers, or maybe they were a minister who was important to the local town or whatever. But at every step, regular people worked on these, and we can see what they cared about at every moment of time by what they were talking about.
“In the 1840s, there was a crisis in Arkansas about the budget — the Holford bonds, as they've come to be known — and they're still talking about it in 1874. It's still a big problem, and it consumes the entire convention for a couple of days. And one man gets a nickname because of it: William "The Great Repudiator" Fishback, because he wanted to get rid of these bonds so bad.”
Kellams: We'll encourage people to come read about it. But what were these bonds?
“Well, I'm definitely not an economic historian, but from what I understand, we got our two primary bank systems in the 1840s, and one of which had to pay interest on some state bonds. So what they did is they sold the bonds that they had, I believe, as collateral to the New York Trust, at sub par, who then went and sold them to James Holford, who was a banker in London. And then, eventually, because of the 1837 economic depression that occurred, the New York Trust failed, and then our banks failed. And so all of that debt that accrued from those bonds just went to the state. And then it just, over time, increased in value until Holford and his family were like, "Hey, we want that money back." And the only person left there to answer to it was the state of Arkansas.
“So there was a big question of how much of this were we really liable for. And eventually, by 1874, people were arguing that we had already paid the value that we were required to because of how much we were paying on interest from these bonds. So, yeah, I think by 1869, it's somewhere like $1.3 million worth of debt just from the bonds alone, and there were other bonds as well beyond that.”
Kellams: So you take something like that, or the Brooks-Baxter War, which most Arkansans don't know about — there's so much history here that's connected to who rules, who governs, who has power.
“I would definitely say — very interestingly, after the Civil War, there was a constitutional convention in 1864 to get Arkansas back into the Union. And then there's another one in 1868, which was mostly the reconstructionists, the Republicans. And you could really feel the tone shift in 1874, whenever it's the Democrats coming back into power. And it's very interesting to see who is in power at the time and who is, of course, making those governing documents, and how that reflects in the records.”
Kellams: Two hundred people killed in this fight over who should be governor, in one month.
“Yeah, that's all it took. The tensions were really running hot, and that is why there had to be an emergency meeting called by the legislature to get the convention in order. And maybe because of how tense everything was, there was a remarkable political shift in who was allowed to go as delegates. We saw a lot of old Confederate officers, active Democrats, going to this convention as delegates, and they really changed the power structures in Arkansas.”
Kellams: Are you all history degrees? Is it — not to put words in your mouth — but is it frustrating that Arkansas nearing bankruptcy, an interstate civil war, that these are forgotten to the dustbin of history for most people? Does that get frustrating for you?
“There is an opportunity to be frustrated, but I wonder if that is the simple way out. I think the easier thing to do is to call attention to these. People are where they are, they have their own things to be worrying about. Arkansas today, we struggle with literacy, we struggle with our education system, all of these things that need addressing. So maybe having a war that happened one hundred and something years ago, maybe that's not fresh in your mind, but it can be instructive in solving the problems of today, if we keep in mind the changes that Arkansas has made throughout its 190 years. All it took was one person asking a question on a vote, and then a bunch of people just getting together. And that, to me, is a very uplifting and aspirational thing to look forward to. I think there is hope and interest in this constitutional process, and I think it can spell very good things for Arkansas in the future as well, if we remember that this kind of history is ours.”
Kellams: Procedural questions: What did y'all do during the last however many months or years you were working on this? What was the day like?
“That's a great question, and a question I've had to tell my friends and family many times — what do you do? It's very interesting. Of course, we are working with the University of Oxford. We have two senior editors, Beth and Amisha. They're amazing. They will take the convention records and kind of translate them into this searchable, graphical data, similar to inputting records into a library database, almost. And our job was to do that supplementary research, that proofreading. So we did all of these delegate profiles, which is why we're pretty connected to the delegates, because we've literally spent hours and hours researching them and looking into their genealogical records. Of course, we're looking at the parliamentary procedures and editing those, making sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed. And aside from that, just talking with people and having a good time, because everybody we work with is really, really cool and really smart.”
Kellams: So what's it like to be standing here in the middle of all of this?
“It's insane. It's been so long in the making. It's even better than submitting a final paper at the end of a semester. That's how I feel. It's just so wonderful. I think we were talking about advocating for this kind of information to be accessible to anyone who wants to learn about it. I think that's the most exciting part — people can just walk through and see everything, get to see tangible parts of this history. And I'm very proud that we were able to contribute in this way.”
Kellams: This is open to the public — the records that have been digitized. Can people find those?
“Yes, you can find it at quillproject.net/m2.”
“You can also just Google the Quill Project Arkansas, and it should pop up.”
Kellams: It'll show amendments?
“We are building the amendments process right now — it's not currently available. Those amendments are available through the state government's websites and stuff like that, but we have plans to make that model available as well. This exhibit itself, though, we have plans right now to make it truly accessible to Arkansans, because not everyone lives in NWA. Everyone comes from somewhere, and we want people who live in the Delta, who live in Little Rock, who live in Jonesboro, to have access to these records. So a digital exhibit is forthcoming. We're working on it right now.”
Kellams: Kaylee Rowe, Ashlyn Fox and Brock Manasseri are University of Arkansas students who are curators for the exhibition, “Regnat Populus: Digitizing 190 Years of Arkansas Constitutional History.” You can see it in the Special Collections Gallery at Mullins Library on the University of Arkansas campus, and like all exhibitions in this still relatively new special collections gallery, it is free and open to the public. No advance registration required. It will remain on display through Oct. 31, which happens to be the 190th anniversary of the end of the Arkansas Constitutional Convention. Our conversation took place during last week's opening reception. This is Ozarks at Large.
