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The history of slavery in Arkansas began in the 1790s, before the Louisiana Purchase made the land territory of the United States. [1] Arkansas was a slave state from its establishment in 1836 until the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1865. [ 1 ]
The Union-occupied territories of Louisiana [8] and eastern Virginia, [9] which had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, also abolished slavery through state constitutions drafted in 1864. The State of Arkansas, which was not exempt but came partly under Union control by 1864, adopted an anti-slavery constitution in March of that ...
With the statehood of Arkansas in 1836, the number of slave states grew to 13, but the statehood of Michigan in 1837 maintained the balance between slave and free states. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, had prohibited slavery in the federal Northwest Territory.
Ultimately, a massive and devastating four-year-long war resolved the interstate conflict over slavery, and when rebel state governments were finally overwhelmed by force of arms, various civilian and military representatives of the U.S. government emancipated those people who remained legally enslaved.
Although the initial act did not mention emancipation, the Second Confiscation Act, enacted on 17 July 1862, stated that escaped or liberated slaves belonging to anyone who participated in or supported the rebellion "shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves."
The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the U.S., contrary to a common misconception; it applied in the ten states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, but it did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slaveholding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) or in parts of Virginia and Louisiana ...
The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied the second part of an attempt to block a casino amendment from going before voters this November.
The Republican Party was dominant in Arkansas, and nearly all African Americans supported the party as it was seen as the party of abolition and emancipation. In 1868, the Arkansas State Constitution was rewritten to give Black people the right to vote and hold office, making Arkansas the first former Confederate state to do so.