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By Bartee Haile -
On Mar. 18, 1861, a Lone Star Confederate asked Texas’ next-door neighbors to forsake the Union for the southern alliance, but President Jefferson Davis sent the wrong Reb to Arkansas.
Twenty-five years earlier, Williamson Simpson Oldham took the “Land of Opportunity” by storm. Arriving at Fayetteville in the fall of 1836, four months after Arkansas statehood, the Tennessean quickly became the most prosperous attorney in town.
As impressive on the campaign trail as in the courtroom, the confident newcomer easily won election to the General Assembly. The youngest member of the legislature, he decided against resting on his laurels and went on to be speaker of the Arkansas house before the age of 30.
Ruling the often rowdy body with a wisdom beyond his years, Oldham fared better than most of his predecessors. During a heated debate, a previous speaker had actually killed a belligerent lawmaker for refusing to take his seat.
Taking another giant step in his fast-paced career, Oldham advanced to the state supreme court in 1844. Believing three years was long enough to stay in one place and convinced that any Arkansas office was within his reach, he ran for congress.
The unexpected outcome was a shocking defeat. Dismissing the loss as a fluke, Oldham simply set his sights on a bigger prize, a vacancy in the United States Senate. But the result was the same.
Figuring a change of scenery might do him good, Oldham packed up and moved to Austin, Texas in 1849. Although he made money hand over fist in the capital crawling with lawyers, he could not wait to toss his hat in the ring.
Hoping to start from scratch as a lowly legislator, Oldham pressed the flesh in his humble comeback bid. But he misread the voters’ minds on the issue of public financing of the railroads and once again took it on the chin.
After three straight setbacks, Oldham felt positively snake bit. He waited four long, frustrating years before trusting the electorate with his bruised and battered ego.
He could not, however, pass up a shot at a senate seat and in 1857 jumped in the free-for-all to choose Sam Houston’s successor. This time he at least had plenty of company in a losing effort as the Texas legislature picked John Hemphill over six other candidates.
More angry than demoralized, Oldham waited only two years before putting his name back on the ballot. But a nobody named Waul went to congress leaving him to lick his wounds and to swear off politics for good.
The stampede toward secession soon brought Oldham out of retirement. His zealous contribution to the Lone Star withdrawal caught the eye of Jeff Davis, who worried which side Arkansas would take in the sectional stand-off. Evidently ignorant of the circumstances surrounding Oldham’s departure, Davis assigned him the task of bringing the state into the Confederate fold.
In his speech to a special convention at Fayetteville in March 1861, Oldham passionately implored former friends and foes to break with the Union. The agricultural South and the commercial North, controlled by fanatic abolitionists, no longer could coexist. Separation was the sole solution.
The majority of delegates undoubtedly agreed with the message. It was the messenger, a discredited dinosaur from their distant past, that they rejected. When the matter came to a vote, the Arkansans decided to stay in the Union.
Oldham was devastated. After such a bright beginning, how in the world had he wound up such a dismal failure?
The fact that Arkansas eventually answered the Rebel call to arms did little to cheer up Oldham. But in November 1861 his fellow Texans salvaged his self-esteem by electing the chronic loser to the Confederate Senate.
Even this surprising success soon turned sour. As the uncompromising champion of state rights in the southern government, Oldham was forever fighting a doomed and seemingly nonsensical battle.
His most bizarre stand was on the issue of conscription. Faced with a drastic decline in enlistments, the Confederacy resorted to the draft. Oldham, who did not oppose involuntary military service, vehemently objected on the grounds that it was up to the individual states not Richmond to replenish the ranks.
Although his oddball opinions brought his motives into question, no one was more committed to the Rebel war effort. To the bitter end, he refused to concede defeat and denounced reports of the Appomattox surrender as a pack of Yankee lies.
As if to prove his patriotism, W.S. Oldham rejected a post-war pardon. Returning to Texas from exile in Canada, he spent his last days as a defiant and disoriented recluse who would not even read the Reconstruction newspapers.
Vol. IV - “Best of This Week in Texas History” available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, 1912 Meadow Creek Dr., Pearland, TX 77581