University of Arkansas Fayetteville - Razorback Yearbook (Fayetteville, AR)

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later a company was organized in Little Rock to run cars drawn by small steam engines. Finally electric cars were used. UNIVERSITY IS FOUNDED About this time the greatest advance in education since the printing of the first paper in Arkansas came. The University of Arkansas was established. By the Morrill Act in 1862, Congress granted each state pub¬ lic land to be used as an endowment for education. The legislature under Governor Murphy in 1868 ac¬ cepted the provisions of this act, but Congress refused to recognize the Murphy administration. Under Re¬ construction Government the legislature approved the Morrill act and the step had been taken. That was March 27, 1871. Only three counties in the state, Washington, Pulaski and Independence, voted to make bids. Citizens in Little Rock and Pulaski county voted down a proposi¬ tion to sell bonds to secure the University. Independ¬ ence County voters voted against such a proposal. Later Batesville voted to issue bonds in the amount of $50,000 for the location of the state school. In addi¬ tion, private subscriptions amounted to $19,000. Washington county voted to give $100,000 in county bonds and the town of Fayetteville agreed to issue $30,000 in city bonds. Only two votes were cast against the proposition. Prairie Grove offered to sub¬ scribe about $23,000. Fayetteville got the bid and the construction bill said the liability shall be irre¬ vocable and forever fixed and binding. In 1880 ex-President Grant visited Arkansas and was the first chiet executive to appear in the state. Others have been President Harrison in 1901, Roosevelt in 1905, Taft, 1909. Roosevelt the second will honor Ar¬ kansas in June this year as it celebrates its Centennial. Confusion as to pronunciation of the name of the state led the legislature, at the suggestion of the Eclec¬ tic Society of Little Rock, to pass a law fixing it as if it were spelled Arkansaw. A Confederate Veterans ' Home was made by the state in 1891 to care for the aging figures of Amer¬ ica ' s Dark Age. ARKANSAN FIRES FIRST SHOT OF WAR Arkansas responded quickly to the national call for troops in the Spanish-American War and furnished her quota of two regiments. An Arkansas boy, Stokely P. Morgan, of Camden, fired the first shot of Admiral Dewey ' s fleet which sank Spanish ships at Manila. The corner stone of the new state capitol was laid in 1900, but the building was not finished until 1910 due to lack of interest by administrators. Floating Down the Mississippi to the Territory of Arkansas

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An Early View of the University Campus vented the legislature, then in session, from working. Sen. Powell Clayton of the Federal army was elected governor by a political dictation method of prevent¬ ing many Confederates from voting. A new con¬ stitution was set up in 1868 by the same action. With loyalists in power, parasites of politics, called carpet-baggers, came to get appointments to govern¬ mental positions. They nearly bankrupted the state, besides badly scarring the social system. The Northerners organized a Union League to teach negroes how to vote. But the Ku Klux Klan, capitalizing on negro fears of ghosts, broke up the League. PRIVATE CIVIL WAR IS STAGED Arkansas had a little private civil war in 1873 when the Brooks-Baxter trouble was precipitated by a nar¬ row-margin election of Elisha Baxter, Reform-Repub¬ lican, over Rev. Joseph Brooks, Democrat. After Brooks contested and the legislature reiterated Baxter ' s victory, the Democrats saw his honesty, and went over to his side. Republicans got mad at him for not ap¬ pointing them to office, so they got behind Brooks and some of them went with the latter to the capitol and forced Baxter to leave. He did. He went fo St. John ' s Military College for protection, and for a time there was a large number of armed troops in Little Rock. The only battle occurred at Palarm when a boat bringing guns from the University was fired upon with little damage. Finally President Grant decided the mess in favor of Baxter. Another war happened in Perryville when two families began feuding in 1882. The trouble brewed so hot that the sheriff went to Little Rock and swore his inability to handle the situation. The Quawpaw Guards was organized and dispatched to the scene, and the war was soon ended. To get rid of carpet bag rule a new constitution was adopted in 1874. This year marked the beginning of continuous Democratic control of Arkansas, for the Republicans failed to put a ticket in the field. The first telephones in Arkansas were set up by Western Union in Little Rock in 1879. The exchange there is the third oldest in the United States. The State Hospital for Nervous Diseases was built in 1883. Bauxite was discovered in 1887 by Dr. Branner as he walked over a field south of Little Rock. In 1888 the first electric lights were installed in Lit¬ tle Rock. But street cars, had been running since 1876 when mule cars were first operated. Twelve years

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The apple blossom was made the state flower in 1901. And in the same year natural gas was discov¬ ered on Massard Prairie, south of Fort Smith. When he was walking over his farm near Murfrees¬ boro, John W. Huddleson picked up two brilliant stones. He had them appraised, and thus was started America ' s only diamond field. The tuberculosis sanitarium was established near Booneville in 1909. Arkansas ' s official flag was adopted in 1913 after a contest had been conducted over the state to get a suitable design. Miss Willie K. Hocker of Pine Bluff won the award. Arkansas, the state song, was adopted in 1917. It was written by Mrs. Eva Ware Barnett. CAMPUS BECOMES CAMP Then came war. Again Arkansas ' sons took their places in the field. Her quota was supplied and train¬ ing camps were set up in the state. One extensive camp was on the campus at Fayetteville and the build¬ ing now occupied by the physics department was one of the military structures during that period. Camp Pike near Little Rock, and an aviation field at Lonoke, were also constructed. Arkansas furnished 66,437 men for the United States army in the World War. There were 5,359 men from the Wonder State in the navy and marines and 66 in the coast guard. Total casualties were 2,660. Many heroes of skirmishes came from Arkansas, and the last shot of the war was fired by a man from Pocahontas. Black gold, the mineral which made thousands flock to south Arkansas in 1920, was discovered in the Hunt¬ er Discovery Oil Well near Stephens, Ouachita Coun¬ ty. A great boom was precipitated and populations of towns around El Dorado boosted tremendously. PROSPERITY REIGNS An era of unheralded prosperity then began its reign over the state. Manufacturers increased. Crops in¬ creased. Population increased. Political progress of Arkansas ' sons led Joe T. Robinson, Senator, to be nom¬ inated by the Democratic party for vice president in 1928. When the man who wrote the shortest auto¬ biography ever printed in the Congressional record, T. H. Caraway, Jonesboro died, his wife, Hattie W., was made Senator, and was the first woman ever to hold such a chair. From such a heritage, Arkansas is properly fitted to be the Wonder State. The pioneers who built the great State have set before us a mark. As we stand on the threshold of our second hundred years, we may see the romantic past; we must make the future. The Capitol at Little Rock