History of Mississippi

Native Americans
was part of the in the early part of the ; descendant  tribes include the  and. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and gave their names to local towns) include the, the , and the.

The first expedition into the territory this became Mississippi was that of, who passed through in 1540. However, the first settlement was that of (or Old Biloxi), settled by  in 1699. In 1716, was founded on the Mississippi River (as ); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. After spending some time under Spanish, British, and French nominal jurisdiction, the Mississippi area was deeded to the after the  under the terms of the.

Population

 * The 2000 Census reported Mississippi's population as 2,844,658 . 2004 estimates show the population as having risen to 2,902,966.

Territory and Statehood
The was  on, , from territory ceded by  and ; it was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the  and. Land was purchased (generally through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes from 1800 to about 1830.

Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union, on,.

Ante-Bellum
When during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners&mdash;especially those of the  and  regions&mdash;became increasingly wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil and the high price of cotton on the international market. The severe wealth imbalances and the necessity of large-scale slave populations to sustain such income played a heavy role in both state politics and in the support for secession.

Civil War
See the main article .

Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union on, ; it joined six other cotton states to form the in February.

Reconstruction
After the defeat of the Confederacy, President appointed a temporary government that repealed secession, ratified the 13th Amendment, and wrote new  giving the African American  an inferior legal status (and no votes.) The Black Codes never took effect, however, and the legal affairs of the  came under the control of sympathetic  representatives. Most of them were former Army officers; many stayed and became political and business leaders (and were called "". The Johnson governments quickly enacted "", effectively giving freedmen only a limited set of second-class civil rights, and no voting rights. The state's black codes have been summarized:
 * "Negroes must make annual contracts for their labor in writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was required of them they must present licenses (in a town from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of police of the beat) citing their places of residence and authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to be arrested and carried back to their employers. Five dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro catchers. It was made a misdemeanor, punishable with fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave his employer, or to feed the runaway. Minors were to be apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal punishment as a father would administer to a child might be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the sum, they were to be hired out to service until the claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do. It was an offense, to be punished by a fine of $50 and imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the lowest bidder.…

The Black codes outraged northern opinion and apparently were never put into effect in any state. Congress responded in September 1865 by refusing to seat the newly elected delegation. In 1867 it put the state under U.S. Army rule. The military governor general  deposed the civil government, enrolled black men as voters, and did not allow 1000 or so former Confederate leaders to vote or hold office. Ames had himself elected Senator and the state was readmitted to the Union on,.

The rich planter was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865 but, like all southerners, was not allowed to take a seat. He supported suffrage for and endorsed the, as demanded by the Republicans in Congress. Alcorn became the leader of the, who comprised about a third of the in the state, in coalition with  and Freedmen. He was elected by the Republicans as governor in 1869, serving, as from 1870 to 1871. As a modernizer, he appointed many like-minded former Whigs, even if they were now Democrats. He strongly supported education, including public schools for blacks only, and a new college for them, now known as. He maneuvered to make his ally its president. Radical Republicans opposed Alcorn, angry at his patronage policy. One complained that Alcorn's policy was to see "the old civilization of the South modernized" rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution. [Quoted in Eric Foner, Reconstruction (1988) p 298]

Alcorn resigned the governorship to become a  (1871–1877), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African American senator. Senator Alcorn urged the removal of the political disabilities of whites southerners and rejected proposals to enforce social equality by federal legislation (Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 246-47); he denounced the federal cotton tax as robbery (Ibid., pp. 2730-33) and defended separate schools for both races in Mississippi. Although a former slaveholder, he characterized slavery as "a cancer upon the body of the Nation" and expressed the gratification which he and many other Southerners felt over its destruction (Ibid., p. 3424).

Alcorn led a furious political battle with Senator, the carpetbagger who led the other faction of the Republican party in Mississippi. The fight ripped apart the Republican party. In 1873 they both sought a decision by running for governor. Ames was supported by the Radicals and most African Americans, while Alcorn won the votes of conservative whites and most of the scalawags. Ames won by a vote of 69,870 to 50,490.

New South: 1877-1940
Mississippi was considered to typify the during the era of. However, at the same time, Mississippi became a center of rich, quintessentially American music traditions:, , , and all were invented, promulgated, or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians. Mississippi was noted for its authors, including, , , , , and.

recorded some of its rich musical history for the, including a very young. He also recorded convict blues songs and field chants at at.

1945-2000
Mississippi was a center of the. Few white leaders in the state supported the effort to secure voting and other rights for, the vocal opposition of many politicians and officials and the violent tactics of a few members and sympathizers gave Mississippi a reputation as a reactionary state during the 1960s.

The state was the last to repeal and to ratify the, in 1966 and 1995 respectively.

On, ,  hit the Mississippi coast killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).

Since 2000
On, , caused even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles of Mississippi Gulf coast from Louisiana to Alabama.

Mississippi in recent years has been noted for its political conservatism, improved civil rights record, and increasing industrialization. In addition, a decision in the 1990s to permit has led to economic gains for the state. However, an estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following 's severe damage to several s in August 2005. Gambling towns in Mississippi include the Gulf coast towns of and  and the river towns of  and. Prior to Katrina, Mississippi was the second largest gambling state in the Union, after and ahead of.

Surveys

 * Busbee, Westley F. Mississippi: A History (2005), good survey
 * Gonzales, Edmond, ed. A Mississippi Reader: Selected Articles from the Journal of Mississippi History (1980)
 * Krane, Dale and Stephen D. Shaffer. Mississippi Government & Politics: Modernizers versus Traditionalists (1992)
 * Loewen, James W. and Charles Sallis, eds. Mississippi: Conflict and Change (1974)
 * McLemore, Richard, ed. A History of Mississippi 2 vols. (1973)
 * Skates, John Ray. Mississippi: A Bicentennial History (1979)
 * Swain, Martha H. ed. Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (2003). 17 short biographies

Specialized studies

 * Ballard, Michael B. Civil War Mississippi: A Guide (2000)
 * Bolton, Charles C. Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi (1994)
 * Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (1992)
 * Crespino, Joseph. Mississippi as Metaphor: State, Region, and Nation in Historical Imagination Southern Spaces, 2006.
 * Cresswell, Stephen. Multiparty Politics in Mississippi, 1877-1902 (1995)
 * Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1994)
 * Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1957) sociological case study of race and class in 1930s
 * Garner, James Wilford. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901) reflects
 * Harris, William C. The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi (1979)
 * James, Dorris Clayton. ''Ante-Bellum Natchez' (1968)
 * Key, V.O. Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949), has famous chapter on Mississippi, pp 229-53.
 * Kirwan, Albert D. Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics: 1876-1925 (1965)
 * Lesseig, Corey T. “ ‘Out of the Mud’: The Good Roads Crusade and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Mississippi.” Journal of Mississippi History 60 (Spring 1998): 51–72. (not online)
 * McLemore, Nannie Pitts. "James K. Vardaman, a Mississippi Progressive," Journal of Mississippi History 29 (1967): 1-11
 * McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (1989)
 * Morris, Christopher. Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life, Warren County and Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1770–1860 (1995)
 * Nelson, Lawrence J. "Welfare Capitalism on a Mississippi Plantation in the Great Depression." Journal of Southern History 50 (May 1984): 225–50. online at JSTOR
 * Olsen, Christopher J. Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830-1860 (2000)
 * Osborn, George Coleman. James Kimble Vardaman: Southern Commoner (1981).
 * Owens, Harry P. Steamboats and the Cotton Economy: River Trade in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (1990).
 * Peirce, Neal R. The Deep South States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Seven Deep South States (1974) see chapter 4 on Mississippi in 1970s
 * Polk, Noel. Natchez before 1830 (1989)
 * Ownby, Ted. ''American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty & Culture, 1830-1998 (1998)
 * Silver, James W. Mississippi: The Closed Society (1963)
 * Smith, Lewis H. and Robert S. Herren, "Mississippi" in Richard P. Nathan, Fred C. Doolittle, eds. Reagan and the States (1987), pp. 208-30.
 * Sydnor, Charles S. Slavery in Mississippi. (1933).
 * Wayne, Michael. The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860–1880 (1983)
 * White, Douglas R., George P. Murdock, Richard Scaglion. Natchez Class and Rank Reconsidered. Ethnology 10:369- 388. (1971) study of the kingdom of the Natchez people before the French-Indian wars of the 1720s.
 * Willis, John C. Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta After the Civil War (2000)