The Arkansas Constitution is on tour in the weeks during the 150th anniversary of its writing, presentation and ratification. It stopped today at the 1836 Courthouse at Historic Washington State Park.
All four large pages could be seen in display cases on tables. The black handwriting on white parchment is fading, but it is the real document as it was developed in Little Rock in the summer of 1874 after a constitutional convention first gathered July 14th.
Brian Irby, assistant archivist with the Arkansas State Archives, described the journey the document has taken and its itinerary for the next few weeks: “We are taking it around the state. We visited the four corners of the state. Last week we were up in northeast Arkansas at Powhatan. This week here in Washington. Next week, we'll be up at the Shiloh Museum up in Northwest Arkansas [Springdale], and then Helena, at the Delta Cultural Center. And then on October 12, we'll be back in Little Rock and we'll be having a symposium about the history of the Constitution.” The anniversary of the ratification date will be October 13th.
He and Elizabeth Freeman, also an archivist, have been travelling with the constitution to destinations where they set up the several exhibit panels. These have texts and illustrations compiled by Irby and the curator of the Arkansas State Archives Julienne Crawford that provide a thorough description of the process of constitutional government in the state.
The panels tell the story and set the context of the several constitutions that governed Arkansas from the time of its early statehood in 1836 to succeeding documents produced in 1861, when Arkansas joined the Confederacy; 1864, when it rejoined the Union, made certain offices elected and abolished slavery; 1868, when it further defined the rights of African-Americans and then 1874, which came after a convention of former Confederates in the Democratic party and sympathetic Republicans gathered and wrote the constitution in two months. Hempstead County’s Grandison Royston was chairman at the convention.
The 1874 Constitution differed from that of 1868 primarily in its preference for power to be exercised by counties, for limits on the power of the governor and for more strict controls on spending and debt.
Irby noted that over the 150 years since, the 102 amendments made to the constitution have essentially doubled its original size. The sheer number of these was because of the way Arkansas’ constitution differs from the U.S. one. “The people who wrote our state constitution wanted to be as specific as possible,” Irby said. “So as a result, you have a lot of very specific provisions in there, things like setting the governor's salary. So when the governor was making $10,000 a year, or whatever it was, back in 1874, you're not going to find a governor that's going to want to make that now. They had to figure out ways to increase the salary, and they have to do that by amendment.”
Freeman said visitors to see the exhibit and the document have been gratified by what they’ve seen. “I think people today have enjoyed it. I think the kids mostly are interested in the handwriting and are interested in that, but the reactions have been welcoming,” she said.
