At the point of intersection of two major transportation routes—the Military Road and the Ouachita River–Rockport became a well-known landmark in Arkansas’s early days. Named because of the distinctive rocks embedded in the Ouachita River, the small Hot Spring County town became the county seat in 1846. There was a post office, court building, tavern, general store, doctors’ offices, law offices, blacksmith shops, and saloons, in addition to the homes of local residents. Among those who made their way to the town in 1848 was a man who would later serve as governor during the tumultuous years of the Civil War–Harris Flanagin.

Harris Flanagin was born in New Jersey in 1817. He moved first to Pennsylvania and then to Indiana before settling in Greenville in 1839, then the county seat of Clark County, where he began practicing law. In 1841, he became a deputy sheriff, and in 1842, was elected state representative and served one term. In 1848, he campaigned for a seat in the state senate from a district that included parts of Clark, Dallas, and Ouachita counties.

Another of south Arkansas’s attorneys and leading citizens of the middle and late-1800s sought the office as well. Hawes H. Coleman settled in the eastern part of Clark County in 1844. Born in 1812 in Virginia, he grew up in Kentucky, and then attended Miami University in Ohio. There he met and studied under William Holmes McGuffey, author of the popular textbooks called “McGuffey’s Readers.” Coleman served as a postmaster and Dallas County Judge, and even became an ordained Baptist minister in 1848. He was among the first to preach in the Arkadelphia First Baptist Church, serving there during its earliest years. According to some who knew him, he had “sparkling blue eyes and wore his gray hair rather long; a vivacious person who had ‘rather talk than eat’ and who discussed in flawless English any subject introduced. He paid little attention to style in clothing and went about without a tie and with shirt-collar always open.”

The senate race between Flanagin and Coleman proved to be a close one. In the election held on August 7, Flanagin received 249 votes to Coleman’s 177. However, according to reports, the votes from two townships were rejected for “informality” in the returns. This cut in to Flanagin’s numbers, leaving him with only a tiny eighteen-vote lead.

While visiting Rockport, Flanagin wrote to then-governor Thomas Drew on September 4, 1848, regarding the election. Flanagin reminded Drew, who was nearby in Hot Springs at the time, of the letters both Flanagin and Coleman had previously sent to him in Little Rock about the contest. Flanagin urged action by the governor, stating that “the interests of the district perhaps require attention.”

Flanagin assumed office and served only one term in the state senate, but his success as a political figure did not end there. Following Arkansas’s secession from the Union in 1861, Flanagin joined the Second Arkansas Mounted Rifles and was commissioned a captain. The company saw a great deal of active service. Arkansas’s new constitution provided for the election of a governor in 1862. Even though he continued his military service during the war and was out of the state, Flanagin was elected governor of Arkansas, defeating incumbent Henry M. Rector. Harris Flanagin returned to Arkansas and took over the helm of state government until the end of the war. In 1874, as Reconstruction came to a close in Arkansas, Flanagin became a member of the Constitutional Convention and was selected chairman of the Judicial Committee. While in Little Rock working to form the state’s new constitution, he became ill and returned to Arkadelphia a sick man. He died in 1874.