Courts and Lawyers on the Arkansas Frontier: The First Years of American Justice

Abstract

AS A RESULT OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE, millions of acres of land west of the Mississippi were annexed to the United States. In the territory of Louisiana, stretching from what is today the southern border of Arkansas up to Canada, the common law legal system of the United States replaced the civil law system of France and Spain, which had previously been in force at the scattered posts and settlements. A framework of courts, judges, attorneys, and juries was thus imposed on a wild frontier. White Americans, French traders, Native Americans, and slaves petitioning for freedom are all to be found in dockets of these frontier courts, which some have characterized as discouragingly primitive and crude.1 The record books and files of the courts of Arkansas Post from 1808 to 1814 show how this new judicial system was imposed on that community and the surrounding territory.2 Studying the workings of those early courts, their officers and litigants, and several of the earliest cases not only sheds light on the practice of law on the southwest frontier but also opens a window on life in Arkansas during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, a period about which we know little.3 Within a year after the purchase, Congress had effectively annexed the vast bulk of the newly acquired land to the territory of Indiana as the district of Louisiana. As such, its laws were enacted by the territorial legislature, composed of Gov. William Henry Harrison and the Indiana territorial judges (in the first stage of territorial government the governor and judges served as the legislature). A year later, Congress made the district of Louisiana a territory in its own right. Arkansas made up the southernmost portion of the territory of Louisiana, just north of the territory of Orleans. In 1812, when the territory of Orleans achieved statehood and took the name of Louisiana, the old territory of Louisiana was renamed the territory of Missouri for clarity's sake. Arkansas remained the southernmost part of the territory of Missouri until it achieved territorial status in its own right, as the territory of Arkansas on July 4, 1819.4 The Louisiana Territory was subdivided into five districts in 1804.5 Over the next decade, Arkansas was sometimes part of a larger district or county and at other times a district or county in its own right with its own county government-a confusing state of affairs that was not conducive to the administration of justice. The Arkansas legal system would be distinguished from other frontier jurisdictions by the frequency with which territorial governors shut down courts at Arkansas Post, the furthest ones from the seat of government in St. Louis. In 1804, Arkansas was part of the huge district of New Madrid. The court of record for the district sat at the town of New Madrid, over two hundred miles from Arkansas Post. The first district of Arkansas was created in 1806 by Gov. James Wilkinson and abolished in 1807 by Acting Gov. Frederick Bates. Gov. Meriwether Lewis reestablished the district of Arkansas in August 1808.6 The Courts of Common Pleas and General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the Arkansas District, the first functioning courts of record, convened at Arkansas Post, the district's seat of government, intermittently from December 1808 to March 1814.7 The district of Arkansas was abolished a second time and was annexed back into the new county of New Madrid in 1812 by Gov. Benjamin Howard because of the difficulty of keeping the offices at the distant post filled and staffed.8 But in 1814 Arkansas finally regained a permanent separate status as the county of Arkansas. Once more, it was the seat of a court of record, now called the General Court. In 1819, the Territorial Superior Court, the highest court of the new territory of Arkansas, was established and met at Arkansas Post until the seat of government moved to Little Rock in 1821. Although the record books of these territorial courts have been available to researchers at the Arkansas History Commission, for many years historians believed that the case files had been lost. …