The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 broke the nation apart, and in May 1861 Arkansas became the ninth state to join the Confederate States of America. By the spring of 1861, most of the men in Helena were gone, most having enlisted in the Confederate army and a few in the Union army, while women who remained ran plantations, farms, and businesses and faced hardships unimaginable in 1860. Just over a year later, the Union army marched into Helena and never left, so the people of Helena and Phillips County lived under an occupation force with their civil liberties curtailed. Many who could afford to leave did so, as wealthy Confederate sympathizers sent family members and slaves to less vulnerable areas; the Hanks family, Quakers who owned Estevan Hall, stayed until 1864 and then sought refuge in Iowa, while others remained for practical reasons, as William F. Allen of the U.S. Sanitary Commission wrote of Mr. Coolidge that he was now a genuine Union man if for no other reason than because his interests were now that way. Seven men from Phillips County became high-ranking Confederate officers: Charles Adams, Archibald Dobbins, Daniel C. Govan, Thomas C. Hindman, Lucius Polk, and James C. Tappan, while General Patrick Cleburne, a shy Irish immigrant, earned the most lasting fame as one of the Confederacy's best field commanders and in 1864 advocated enlisting slaves into the army in exchange for their freedom.
