Col. John M. Harrell, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.2, Arkansas
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[10] men should be allowed peaceably to move out of the arsenal with the property of every character belonging to them, and leave the city when proper transportation could be secured for them, he would evacuate. He was induced to this course, he said, by unwillingness to bring bloodshed and destruction upon friends and neighbors, and did not surrender a trust confided to him, but evacuated for want of instructions from his superior officers. He withdrew to a camp on the river, below the city, accompanied by quite a procession of citizens who admired his manly deportment, and who presented him with a beautiful sword as a token of their appreciation and friendship. If there was any deeper feeling than these becoming courtesies, it was only temporary, as those who so greatly honored the discomfited but considerate officer soon confronted him in battle with the most illustrious gallantry.

The governor took possession of the arsenal, with the arms and munitions and stores it contained, except the property of the Second artillery, February 8, 1861, and placed the Phillips Guards, of Helena, in charge, under Captain Otey, who was a son of the Episcopal bishop of Tennessee. The residence and grounds were put under control of Maj. T. C. Peek (who had married a niece of the governor), as military storekeeper. The spacious grounds became a convenient rendezvous and camping-place for volunteers. Those grounds were brightened by the animated scenes of social diversions, engaged in by the young officers and society belles of the city, thenceforward. It was not then known that the incomprehensible man who had been elected President of the United States, as they were then misnamed, did not intend to abate one jot of the authority which he should assert as such President, when called to take his seat in the chair at Washington. He, no doubt, honestly believed that he was a representative of the people, chosen by them according to the forms of law—law, however to be disregarded in the