page_title: Brooks–Baxter War
section_title: Paying for the new infrastructure
hierarchical_section_title: Brooks–Baxter War / Background / Paying for the new infrastructure
caption_attribution_description: English: Arkansas scrip. One dollar note from Fayetteville, Arkansas. No serial number. Printer was Geo. H. Cole, New York. No signatures. This was good for five years after its date. Image of Native American in bottom left corner. Image of a woman on the right hand side. Image of a man on a horse next to a boy on a fence in the upper center of the note. Rothert number: 193-3. Rarity level: 6.
context_page_description: The Brooks–Baxter War was an armed conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the United States, in 1874 between factions of the Republican Party over the disputed 1872 state gubernatorial election. The victor in the end was the "Minstrel" faction led by Elisha Baxter over the "Brindle Tail" faction led by Joseph Brooks.
  It came at the end of a struggle between white Republican residents in the state before the war, known as scalawags, and newer Republican arrivals called carpetbaggers, over power in state government during Reconstruction after the American Civil War.
  The struggle began with the ratification of the 1868 Arkansas constitution, rewritten to allow Arkansas to rejoin the United States after the Civil War. Congress's 1867 Reconstruction Acts required rebel states to accept the 14th Amendment – establishing civil rights for blacks – and enact new constitutions providing suffrage to freedmen while temporarily disenfranchising former Confederate Army officers. Some conservatives and democrats refused to participate in the writing of the constitution and ceased participation in government.
context_section_description: Clayton used various tactics to pay for the needed infrastructure changes in the state. Most of the South was in desperate need of infrastructure and was behind the rest of the country in this respect. He raised taxes, tried to fix the state's bad credit by repaying and issuing bonds, and flooded the state with paper scrip. All of these tactics failed and drove up the state debt.
  Introducing more taxes proved to be hugely unpopular among both Democrats and Republicans, and the people of the state simply did not have that much money to give. Bond issues generated controversy and were the source of scandals in the administration. All of the old railroad and infrastructure bonds, including the controversial Holford bonds which had already been declared illegal by the Arkansas Supreme Court, were gathered into a funding act and passed by the legislature. Many bonds were issued for roads and railroads that were never built, or were constructed and then torn up and rebuilt in another direction. Some projects even received the same amount of funding from different bonds, such as embankments built for railroads where roads were funded to be built by a different bond. One of the most controversial bonds involved the purchase of slate for a state penitentiary roof, which was diverted for the construction of a mansion of a Republican official J.L. Hodges, who eventually served jail time for the incident. Promissory notes, or scrip, were issued to raise money. The money was used for construction projects, and invested in public infrastructure. Article VI, Sec 10 of the new constitution stated that the credit of the state could not be loaned without the consent of the voters, making these promissory notes illegal. Their introduction also caused actual currency to go out of circulation.
  The Radical Republicans did create some improvement within the state. Levees were constructed and railroads were built. Also, Arkansas' first public school system was created. The administration and its supporters formed the Arkansas Industrial University, the basis for the future University of Arkansas in Fayetteville; what would become the Arkansas School for the Deaf; and the Arkansas School for the Blind, which relocated from Arkadelphia to Little Rock. However, state debt increased dramatically. The state had a budget surplus when Clayton came to office, but by the end of his term, the state debt had increased to $5 million.
caption: In order to pay for the new infrastructure, Governor Powell allowed the state to be flooded with paper scrip. This is an example of a one dollar note from Fayetteville, Arkansas issued in 1872 worth one dollar for five years after its printing date.
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