The public indignation following the receipt of the unsubstantiated rumor that Totten was to be reënforced seems to have compelled the action of Governor Rector in taking possession,[163] on February eighth, in the name of the state of Arkansas, of the United States arsenal at Little Rock; but, as a matter of fact, Rector needed only an excuse, and a very slight one at that, for doing more than he had already done to prove his sectional bias. Nor had he forgotten or neglected the Indians. Indeed, never at any time did he leave a single stone unturned in his search for inside and outside support; and, notwithstanding the fact that the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was not passed until the sixth of May, Governor Rector conducted himself, for months before that, as though the state were a bona fide member of the Confederacy. In all his audacious venturings, proposals, and acts, he had the full and unquestioning support, not only of his cousin, Elias Rector,[164] in whose honor Albert Pike had written the well-known parody[165] on "The Old Scottish Gentlemen;"[166] but of the leading citizens of Fort Smith and Little Rock, particularly of those whose previous occupations, residence, inclinations, or interests had made them conversant with Indian affairs and, therefore, unusually appreciative of the strategic value of the Indian country. Under such circumstances, it is not at all surprising that Governor Rector seized, as he did, the earliest[167] opportunity to approach the Cherokees. Fort Smith at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers was only eighty miles from Fort Gibson. Before taking up for special comment Governor Rector's negotiations with the Cherokees through their principal chief, John Ross, it might be well to retrace our steps a little in order to show how, in yet other ways, Arkansas interested herself more than was natural in the concerns of the Indians and made some of her citizens, in the long run, more than ordinarily responsible for the development of secessionist sentiment among the southern tribes. When David Hubbard, journeying westward as special secessionist commissioner[168] from Alabama to Arkansas, reached Little Rock--and that was in the early winter of 1861--he soon discovered that many Arkansans were not willing for their state to go out of the Union unless she could take Indian Territory with her. Hubbard's letter,[169] descriptive of the situation, is very elucidating. It is addressed to Andrew B. Moore,[170] governor of Alabama, and bears date Kinloch, Alabama, January third.