Dark Times Ahead

But it was still a troubled time. Turbulent spirits had not yet accepted the restraints of normal life. There were festering resentments and grievances born of the war, which occasionally flared into hot words and violence.

Crops were short in 1864, and not abundant in 1865. Poverty retained its harsh grip on the state.

Nevertheless, life was fast returning to the quiet channels of everyday affairs. The people, eagerly taking up their work, intent on rebuilding their farms, homes and businesses, were recovering their hope. They wanted to forget the war, as a bitter destroying thing that was past and done.

But though the war had ended, peace – real peace- had not yet come to war-torn Arkansas and the other states of the Confederacy.

Abraham Lincoln, who seems to have decided on humane treatment of the South as the surest way to heal the nation’s wounds, was shot by an assassin on the evening of April 14, 1864. He died the next morning on April 15.

And with Lincoln’s passing, a sinister shadow reached out from Washington over the Southern land. It was the looming harshness of the Reconstruction period that Arkansas and all the shattered South faced as the storm of war faded away.