January 18, 1895

James Paul Clarke was inaugurated Arkansas’s eighteenth governor. Described by Joseph Taylor Robinson as a man whose “physical courage was primitive, at times almost savage,” Clarke had a fierce temper and once pulled a pistol on W. R. Jones, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who had opposed Clarke’s attempted regulation of the railroad corporations. He was an advocate of the silver monetization crusade associated with the William Jennings Bryan wing of the Democratic Party. He was also a defender of white supremacy as the key doctrine of his party.