Augustus Garland, namesake of Garland County

KEN BRIDGES

Syndicated Columnist

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two parts on the life of Augustus Garland.

The study of American History is often neatly divided between the period of the Civil War and before and the period after the war. The changes that occurred in the nation due to the war were momentous, forever altering the course of the people and the government. In Arkansas, one of those important figures who created this shift was Augustus Garland.

Augustus Hill Garland was born in Covington, Tennessee, a community not far from the Mississippi River, in 1832. He was the youngest of three children. Not long after his birth, his father moved the family to Miller County in the far southwestern corner of Arkansas. His father hoped to run a store along the Southwestern Trail to serve settlers moving into Texas. But those dreams were dashed when he died just a few months later.

Garland’s mother remarried in 1836 and the family moved to Washington in nearby Hempstead County. Garland attended several boarding schools as a youth before he graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Kentucky in 1849. He returned to teach school for a brief time in Sevier County and began studying the law along the way.

Life moved fast for Garland. In 1853, at the age of 21, he was admitted to the bar and formed a successful law firm with his stepfather in Hempstead County. That same year, he married Sarah Saunders, with whom he would have nine children. Three years later, he moved to Little Rock to begin a law firm with Ebenezer Cummins, one of the most respected attorneys in Arkansas. This partnership, coupled with Garland’s own legal skills, brought him a lot of attention and respect in the state. He was even admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Garland was increasingly active in the political realm. As tensions between North and South intensified in the late 1850s, he began speaking out more forcefully in defense of the Union. In the 1860 election, he publicly supported and campaigned for former U.S. Senator and former cabinet secretary John Bell of Tennessee, who ran on the Constitutional Union ticket. The simple platform of Bell and his supporters was the preservation of the country and the constitution, no matter the cost.

Bell lost, the Civil War came, and Arkansas seceded. In spite of the feelings of many in Arkansas who favored secession, respect for Garland had only increased. In 1861, he was elected as a delegate to the Secession Convention in Little Rock. He fiercely defended the Union, and Arkansas initially voted to stay with the United States. After the fall of Fort Sumter in South Carolina to Confederate forces in April and President Abraham Lincoln’s call for troops, the secession convention was recalled into session. Garland still believed that secession was a mistake, but he accepted the inevitable and reluctantly voted for secession.

Though only 29, Garland was elected as one of three members of the Confederate House of Representatives, the youngest of all the Confederate Congressmen. The Confederate Constitution was similar to the U.S. Constitution in many ways, and Garland worked to establish a Supreme Court for the Confederacy and to preserve the legal right of habeas corpus in the South, even in wartime. In 1864, Garland was named to the Confederate Senate.

He realized by late 1864 that the war was lost. The Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, was under siege and Confederate forces were falling back on all fronts. In Arkansas, Confederate Gov. Harris Flanigan was attempting to negotiate a surrender while Union officials in Little Rock insisted on surrender without condition. Garland left Virginia in February 1865 and returned to Arkansas to help oversee the transfer of state records from the Confederate government in Washington to the Union government in Little Rock.

Garland’s next task was to help the state adjust to the new reality. Difficult years lay ahead for Arkansas. Though he stayed out of formal politics for the next few years, Garland would soon play a crucial role in shaping the post-war future of Arkansas and the nation as he would soon take the roles of governor and U.S. Attorney General.

Dr. Ken Bridges is a Professor of History and Geography at South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado. His columns appear in 40 newspapers across the state. He can be reached at [email protected].

Upcoming Events