Civil War through Reconstruction

A planter dedicated to stability and order, Rust was skeptical of secessionist radicals leading to Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. Yet by the time Arkansas seceded in May 1861, Rust favored disunion and would become a Confederate brigadier general. Though local historians boasted that 1,200 to 1,500 Union County men mustered into the Confederate military, the 1860 census counted only 1,219 white males age twenty to fifty. As was true elsewhere in Arkansas, some landowners set out for Texas with their slaves during the war. No battles were fought in Union County, although residents suffered from bushwhackers as Confederate control of southwest Arkansas diminished.

White landowners had enjoyed considerable wealth in antebellum Union County. While the war led to widespread devastation, prewar plantation families retained their land and position. Falling cotton prices throughout the late nineteenth century pushed many farmers into tenancy, but this was less pronounced in Union County than in other old plantation districts. Immigrants in the 1870s spurred a rise in black residents that exceeded the increase in the county’s white population. The newcomers forged new lives in the midst of the faltering cotton economy. Black land ownership at the turn of the century exceeded state averages. In 1870, Reverend Joseph Henry became the first pastor of the El Dorado Baptist Church, which became the largest black congregation in the county.

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