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DANIEL P. UPHAM (he preferred to be called D. P.) is one of the more neglected figures in Arkansas history. Many have never heard of him and little has been written about him.1 Yet Upham held several important positions during Reconstruction and performed valuable services for the state. A leader of the Republican party in eastern Arkansas, he served in the Reconstruction legislature representing Woodruff, St. Francis, and Crittenden Counties. And, as a key figure in the struggle against the Ku Klux Klan sometimes called the "Militia War," but perhaps better termed a police action, Upham distinguished himself by his. stern tactics in what may well have been the most successful counter-terrorism campaign waged by a southern state during Reconstruction.2
D. P. Upham was a native of Massachusetts. Obituaries suggest he was born in 1825, 1826, or 1827, but little information has survived as to his early life. Even his whereabouts remain uncertain. In 1850, there was a Daniel Upham living in Oxford Township, Worcester County, Massachusetts, where the family of the Arkansas Upham later maintained a home. But the age of this Daniel Upham (seventeen) does not correspond with the age Arkansas's Upham would have been, provided the obituaries were correct.3 At any rate, it is clear that D. P. Upham came to Arkansas in April 1865 in the company of Brigadier General Alexander Shaler, a commander of Federal troops assigned to DeVall's Bluff. Upham had apparently been one of General Shaler's business associates in New York City, and may have bought the general's bluestone business at the outset of the Civil War.4 But by 1865, his business was heavily in debt, and he needed funds. Upham arrived in Arkansas with no more than $10.5
Like many so-called "carpetbaggers," then, Upham came south looking for economic opportunity-well before black enfranchisement created the prospect of building a political career based on AfricanAmerican votes.6 In 1865, Arkansas, particularly cotton-rich eastern Arkansas, presented numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs like Upham. There was a general shortage of cotton on the market, and thus, cotton prices both in the North and in Europe were high by antebellum standards. Many plantations lay deserted and the pro-Confederate populace had hidden away a great deal of cotton. All it would take was the...