The National Democrat of Little Rock plunges into Arkansas's fractious Reconstruction politics with Editor O.V. Meador's scathing indictment of what he calls a corrupt "junto" steering the state's readmission process. At the center: the despised politician Fishback, who Meador claims won election through "trickery" to a short-term Senate seat, traveled to Washington to claim his place, and was rejected by Congress. Now the state legislature is reconvening, and Meador warns that if they dare elect Fishback or "Parson Butler" to the long-term Senate seat beginning March 4, 1865, they will wreck Arkansas's chances of readmission. Governor Murphy, however, earns Meador's trust as a genuine patriot. The paper also reports a harrowing railroad accident six miles from Little Rock on Saturday night—a train from Devall's Bluff struck a herd of cattle and derailed, killing one man and injuring 12-15 others. The locomotive General Steele toppled but reportedly suffered minor damage. A lengthy analysis examines the bread crisis gripping Little Rock: flour prices have skyrocketed due to transportation shortages, forcing families to buy bread from bakeries at alarming markups—one loaf cost 25 cents despite weighing less than a pound.

This December 1864 edition captures the chaos of Presidential Reconstruction in its rawest form. With Lee's surrender just five months away, Arkansas—occupied and nominally reconstructed under Lincoln's lenient 10% plan—is struggling to form a legitimate government acceptable both to Washington and to its own fractured population. The bitter fight over Fishback and the legislature's composition reflects the deeper question tormenting the nation: Who decides the terms of readmission? Local politicians, Congress, or the President? Meador's fierce advocacy for merit-based leadership and his faith in Murphy hint at the moderate Republican position that would soon fracture into competing visions of Reconstruction. Meanwhile, the bread crisis speaks to the material devastation Arkansas had endured—a state where flour shortages and profiteering were more pressing than politics for ordinary families.

• The newspaper explicitly discusses 'ratophagy, or rat-eating' as a survival food strategy during the war, with the editor receiving a dozen fresh rats as a gift and complaining that they arrived uncleaned and musky. This reflects the genuine wartime hunger that persisted even after Union occupation.
• A railroad accident killed one person and injured 12-15 others when a train struck cattle six miles from Little Rock—yet the editor's primary concern is whether the powerful locomotive 'General Steele' suffered damage, suggesting military equipment was more valued than casualty counts.
• The paper's subscription cost was $3 per year or 10 cents per copy (roughly $50-55 in today's money for a yearly subscription), and single copies were sold by 'News boys' and at a bookstore 'a few doors west of the Anthony House.'
• An offhand mention that Michael W. Cluskey, 'formerly Postmaster of the House of Representatives,' was elected to the rebel Congress from Memphis after recovering from battle wounds—showing Confederate institutional continuity even as the war ended.
• The editor sarcastically thanks a Captain and Commissary for sending dead rats, then offers an elaborate recipe for rat pie with Madeira wine and oyster catsup, revealing both the grotesque diet of the era and the editor's educated, urbane sensibility.

• Editor Meador's obsession with bread prices—noting that flour costing $10-12 per barrel in St. Louis became bread sold at over 25 cents per pound in Little Rock—foreshadows the bread riots that would convulse European cities throughout the 19th century. Paris, which he mentions, would experience its most violent bread riots just six years later during the Paris Commune.
• Governor Andrew Murphy, whom Meador endorses as a patriot, was actually elected under Lincoln's reconstruction framework and would serve until 1868, making him one of the war's few Reconstruction administrators whom contemporaries of both parties respected—a rarity that explains Meador's fierce defense.
• Fishback, the despised politician Meador warns will never be admitted to the Senate, was actually James B. Fishback, a Kentucky-born lawyer who had shifted allegiances multiple times. His rejection by Congress vindicated Meador's prediction and reflected the Radical Republican suspicion of 'War Democrats' with ambiguous loyalty.
• The paper's motto—'The Constitution, The Equality of the States, and the American Union Forever'—attempted to thread a needle between Unionism and states' rights that was rapidly becoming impossible to reconcile in late 1864.
• Meador's reference to General Banks and the need for 'Government protection' to Union men in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia points to the military occupation infrastructure that would become the backbone of Congressional Reconstruction just months after this edition went to print.