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Museum lecture recounts Little Rock Arsenal crisis and the February 1861 surrender of weapons to the governor
Summary
At a museum presentation, Dr. David Sesser outlined how telegraph-fueled rumors, volunteer militias and tense correspondence between Gov. Henry Rector and Capt. James Totten culminated in the February 8, 1861 entrustment of arsenal weapons to the governor ahead of a secession vote.
Dr. David Sesser, an associate professor and library director, told a museum audience that the Little Rock Arsenal crisis in February 1861 grew from overlapping elections, new telegraph communications and competing authorities in Little Rock City.
Sesser said the federal post at the Little Rock Arsenal held hundreds of weapons — about 1,300 percussion small arms, roughly 54 rifles, smoothbore muskets and four pieces of field artillery — and that the arrival of a U.S. Army battery commanded by Captain James Totten (about 76 men) in December 1860 placed a small federal garrison in a politically tense southern city.
“The telegraph connected Little Rock to the Eastern Seaboard, and with it came rumors,” Sesser said, describing telegraphed reports attributed to U.S. Attorney John M. Harrell that…
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