Arkansas: A Different StateFor many people, the mere mention of the word "Arkansas" conjures up unflattering and certainly not very complimentary images. To suggest that Arkansas is "a different state" is to guarantee almost immediate agreement from a given audience, but such agreement generally focuses on the negative aspects of the state rather than those that actually make the difference. These negative aspects date back to the beginnings of the state. days of the territory. When Cephas Washburn was traveling to Arkansas in 1819 to serve as a missionary to the Cherokees, he stopped at present-day Vicksburg, Mississippi, for specific instructions about the territory, only to be told that "the way to get there” we didn’t know. »1 Other remarks regarding Arkansas are even less positive; it was declared that "Arkansas is not part of the world for which Jesus Christ died"2 and, as late as 1989, one author was still able to describe Arkansas as "the least known of the fifty states." 3 One of the most famous publications. who helped give Arkansas a negative image was On A Slow Train Through Arkansas by Thomas W. Jackson. Published in 1903, this book contained numerous descriptions of life in the state, including the pitiful account of a traveler who "stopped at a place where there were a doctor, two shoemakers and a blacksmith." The doctor killed a man. They didn't want to be left without a doctor, so they hanged one of the shoe makers. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun was the most memorable. In August 1921, his acid-tipped pen described the state of Arkansas as "a trail...... middle of paper ......kansas", Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (Spring 1979), 63.7 Ibid., 68.8 Harry S. Ashmore, Arkansas: A Bicentennial History (New York: WW Norton, 1978), xvii.9 Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist — the Facts of Daily Life in 19th Century England (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 75.10 Imogene Wolcott, ed., The New England Yankee Cook Book (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1939), 161.11 Ibid., xiii.12 Williams, et al. ., 9.13 Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (New York: The New Library of American Literature, 1963), 223.14 Ibid., 228-229.15 Ibid., 333.16 Helen McCully and Eleanor Noderer, eds., The American Heritage Cookbook and Illustrated History of American Eating and Drinking, II (np: American Heritage Publishing, 1964), 537.