THE SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS.
By G. B. Rose.
The Territory of Arkansas was created out of a part of the Missouri Territory in the year 1819. It was then almost a trackless wilderness. Its population, now nearly a million and a quarter, was estimated at fourteen thousand, composed of frontiersmen who had left the older States to find a congenial abode among its vast forests; of honest settlers seeking homes where they might carry on the pursuits of agriculture or commerce; of border ruffians, who found in the swamps, the woods, and canebrakes a safe asylum in case of pursuit, and of ambitious young men who had come to the new territory in hope of adventures and of the gratification of a restless ambition. It was a wild population, many of whom went armed, and with whom the blow followed quick upon the word. Among the gentlemen duels were frequent, while affrays and bloodshed were common with all classes.
The territorial government was organized by the Secretary of State, Robert Crittenden, then barely twenty-two years of age, and probably the most brilliant man that we have ever had among us. He was one who, had he not buried himself in the wilderness, would have achieved a national renown. Gifted with a remarkably handsome, refined, and intellectual face, that still looks down upon us from the walls of the Secretary's office, with a magnificent and glowing eloquence such as has never since been heard within our borders, he was regarded by all as a man of more ability and higher powers of oratory than his brother, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. But the obscurity of his field of action, and an early death, have robbed him of fame; and his wonderful orations at the bar and before the people are now only a tradition.
The seat of government was established at the Arkansas Post, a wretched village near the mouth of the river of that name; and there it remained until it was removed to Little Rock in 1821.
The Superior Court of the Territory was composed of three judges appointed by the President. Its written opinions, which are not numerous, were only published in 1856, when Mr. Hempstead gathered them up and included them in his volume of Federal decisions. Remaining in manuscript for so many years, they have had but little influence upon the State's judicial history. How ever, some of the ten judges who occupied the bench between 18 19 and 1836 are sufficiently notable to deserve mention.
The first presiding judge was Andrew Scott, who was born in Virginia on the 6th of August, 1788, but who in 1808 removed to St. Genevieve, on the Mississippi River, in the Missouri Territory. He was a small man, of blond complexion, gray eyes, and aquiline nose, with long hair falling about his shoulders, such as we still see in the far West. He is said to have been a man of considerable ability, but of a fiery and haughty disposition.
The first session of the court was held in January, 1820, at the Arkansas Post, which then contained less than a hundred inhabitants, dwelling in log-huts. Judge Scott presided. Of his capacity as a judge we can form no just conception from the little that has come down to us. He is remembered chiefly by the tragedies in which he was engaged.
In May, 1824, he and Judge Selden, one of his colleagues upon the bench, were engaged in a social game of cards with two ladies of Little Rock. Judge Selden made a remark, at which Judge Scott took offence and demanded an apology in such terms that it was refused. He thereupon sent a challenge to Judge Selden.
