The Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836.[9] In 1861, Arkansas withdrew from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. On returning to the Union in 1868, the state continued to suffer due to its earlier reliance on slavery and the plantation economy, causing the state to fall behind economically and socially. White rural interests continued to dominate the state's politics until the civil rights movement. Arkansas began to diversify its economy following World War II and relies on its service industry, aircraft, poultry, steel, and tourism, along with cash crops of cotton, soybeans and rice.
The name Arkansas was initially applied to the Arkansas River and derives from a French term, Arcansas, the plural term for Quapaws,[11] a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking Native American people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century. This comes from an Algonquian term, /akansa/, for the Quapaws, and is likely also the root term for Kansas.[11]
The name has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of fashions.[c] In 1881, the pronunciation of Arkansas with the final "s" being silent was made official by an act of the state legislature after a dispute arose between Arkansas's two U.S. senators as one favored the pronunciation as ɔː/ AR-kən-saw while the other favored s/ KAN-zəs.[c]
In 2007, the state legislature passed a non-binding resolution declaring that the possessive form of the state's name is Arkansas's, which has been followed increasingly by the state government.[13]
