EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two parts on the life of Augustus Garland.
The Civil War was over, but now Arkansas and Augustus Hill Garland had many decisions to make about the future. Like the land his family adopted, Garland had a promising future but lost everything with the end of the war and had to rebuild.
Garland, who had spent several years building a successful law practice in Little Rock in the 1850s, had risen to become a Confederate Congressman and Senator during the war. As the Confederacy collapsed, he returned to an Arkansas bankrupted and ruined by years of neglect and warfare. Not only was Garland’s ability to practice law in doubt, but he could not even be sure he would avoid prison for his service in the Confederate government. Many Union officials and northern politicians, incensed at the immense losses suffered by the nation during the Civil War, were calling for the imprisonment of all Confederate officials and senior officers.
Not long after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson unveiled a conciliatory Reconstruction policy for the South that offered full pardons to many Confederate officers and politicians. As a result, Garland received a full pardon in July 1865. Garland quickly resumed his law practice. In one case, he tried to contest the constitutionality of congressional Reconstruction acts and won a case that allowed him and others to continue appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court in spite of an injunction against Confederate officials and veterans.
Garland had earned the respect of Arkansans across the political spectrum for his integrity and dedication to the state. Though a Reconstruction government was in charge in Arkansas, one hostile to secession and to everything the Confederacy represented, the legislature nevertheless elected Garland to represent Arkansas in the U.S. Senate in 1867. However, the Senate refused to let Garland take his seat as Arkansas had not yet regained its rights as a state as part of Radical Reconstruction. In 1873, though only 40 years old, legislators named the newly created Garland County after him.
As a result of the disastrous 1872 election, two factions of the state Republican Party fought over the results of an election riddled with ballot box stuffing. The dispute eventually erupted into the Brooks-Baxter War. Nearly three weeks of street fighting, demonstrations, and court fights in 1874 left nearly a dozen dead and the people desperate to end the violence and corruption. Garland led a call to create a whole new state constitution. The 1874 Constitution that resulted is the document used by Arkansas today.
Garland was the sole choice for governor after ratification, and the Democrat was inaugurated in November 1874. The state faced a debt of $17 million ($360 million in 2017 dollars), $13 million of which had been run up since 1865 from years of corruption and mismanagement, a sum crushing Arkansas. Garland immediately unveiled a plan of spending cuts and a board to renegotiate the interest on state debts, bringing the debt crisis under control. He was a strong supporter of the state’s new universities in Fayetteville and Pine Bluff as well as the new public education system. He ensured that schools got the funding they needed as part of his attempts to bring new people and new investment to Arkansas.
In 1877, the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. As a Senator, Garland was a strong supporter of civil service reforms and anti-corruption measures. He supported federal aid for education to help improve the growing school and college system in Arkansas. He also successfully pushed through a bill giving the Mississippi River Commission the ability to build and maintain levees, a desperate issue for flood-prone eastern Arkansas.
In 1885, after the election of President Grover Cleveland, Garland was named attorney general. He was one of only two Arkansans to ever serve in a presidential cabinet.
Though Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, he lost the electoral college. Garland returned to Arkansas and retired from politics. He began writing and resumed his law practice. He continued up to the end. In January 1899, Garland collapsed as he argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and died shortly afterward at the age of 66.
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].