Benjamin Taylor DuVal (1823–1905)

Benjamin Taylor (Ben) DuVal was a Fort Smith (Sebastian County) lawyer and a Democratic politician who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1858 to 1861 and again in 1895. In 1858 and in 1895, he served briefly as Speaker of the House. As a member of the thirteenth General Assembly in 1861, he proposed the legislation that authorized the Arkansas Secession Convention.

Born on January 21, 1823, in Wellsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), Ben DuVal was the second of William DuVal and Harriet Tabitha Doddridge DuVal’s six children. His older sister Catherine DuVal married Elias Rector, who was a U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas and Indian Territory. His younger brother Elias Rector DuVal became a prominent physician.

In about 1825, the family moved to Fort Smith, where Ben DuVal received his early education from private tutors. After graduating from St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1843, he studied law under Judge Jesse Turner and Albert Pike. Admitted to the bar in 1847, he practiced law in Fort Smith.

In 1845, DuVal married Ellen Judith Field of Little Rock (Pulaski County), who was the younger sister of the wife of Governor Henry M. Rector. The couple had no surviving children. In 1888, after his first wife’s death, he married Rose Scott of Fort Smith. The couple had one daughter.

Entering politics in the early 1850s, he served as the chief clerk for the state House of Representatives in 1851 and as a presidential elector in 1852. In 1851, he authored the bill that created Sebastian County.

In 1858 and 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, he was elected as a state representative from Sebastian County. A political ally of secessionist U.S. Representative Thomas C. Hindman in 1860, DuVal argued that Arkansas’s “prosperity [could] only be secured through separation…from Republican rule and union with the Confederate states.” Passed in January 1861, DuVal’s convention bill authorized a special election to elect delegates to a state secession convention. In May 1861, following the firing on Fort Sumter in April, the convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of Arkansas’s secession from the union.

In 1861, he was appointed the paymaster-general for the Arkansas Confederate troops. From 1862 to 1865, he served as quartermaster under Confederate general James F. Fagan. He saw action at the battles of Helena, Marks’ Mills, and Pilot Knob, and in General Sterling Price’s Missouri Campaign.

After the war, he returned to his law practice in Fort Smith.

In the election of 1872, many Democrats, including DuVal, supported reform Republican candidate Joseph Brooks for governor, attracted by his promises to limit the power of state government and re-enfranchise former Confederates. As part of Brooks’s reform ticket, DuVal ran unsuccessfully for attorney general. Aware of widespread election fraud, Brooks challenged his loss to the regular Republican candidate Elisha Baxter. The Brooks-Baxter War of 1874 ended with the federal government recognizing Baxter as Arkansas’s legitimate governor.

He served in the Arkansas House of Representatives again in 1895.

On September 5, 1905, DuVal died in San Diego, California, where he had traveled because of his health. The major-general of Arkansas’s United Confederate Veterans eulogized him as “one of Arkansas’s most honored and distinguished citizens.” He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Fort Smith.

For additional information:
“Ben T. DuVal Died Tuesday.” Arkansas Democrat, September 7, 1905, p. 2.

Benjamin T. DuVal Family Papers, 1816–1957. Special Collections. University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Finding aid online at https://uark.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/258 (accessed October 10, 2024).

“Col. Ben T. DuVal Died in California.” Arkansas Gazette, September 7, 1905, pp. 1, 2.

“Democratic Meeting in Sebastian County.” Fort Smith Weekly Herald, March 21, 1851, p. 2.

Herndon, Dallas Tabor. Outline of Executive and Legislative History of Arkansas. Little Rock: Arkansas History Commission, 1922.

Johnston, Ben DuVal. “Sketch of Benjamin Taylor DuVal Prominent Citizen of Arkansas.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 7 (Spring 1948): 53–56.

“Letter from Col. Ben T. DuVal.” Fort Smith Southron, March 26, 1861, p. 2.

“Thirtieth General Assembly Convened.” Arkansas Gazette, January 15, 1895, p. 1.

Thomas, David Y. “Calling the Secession Convention in Arkansas.” Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly 5 (December 1924): 246–254.

Woods, James M. Rebellion and Realignment: Arkansas’s Road to Secession. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987.

Melanie K. Welch
Mayflower, Arkansas