Mississippi

PRIORTOTHE arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans had lived in Mississippi since the 11th century, if not earlier. The expedition of Hernando de Soto in 1540 was the first by Europeans into the region, which was later settled by French beginning in 1699. In 1798 the Mississippi Territory was created from land that had been part of Georgia, and South Carolina, with additional land acquired from Native Americans, often through unequal treaties. Mississippi was admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817.

The first elected governor of Mississippi was David Holmes, who had been governor of the Mississippi Territory since 1809. Originally from Pennsylvania, Holmes had ended the intense factionalism that had divided the residents of the territory from soon after its organization. Holmes completed one term as governor, and in common with many first governors, went on to be elected as a senator to the U.S. Congress. His successor, George Poindexter, a Democrat as was Holmes, then held office for two years. For most of its history, Mississippi strongly supported the Democratic Party, and until 1992 only one governor was a Whig, and three, just after the Civil War, were Republicans.

Most of the early governors of Mississippi served only one term, although Gerard Brandon, who first became governor in November 1825, when the incumbent, Walter Leak, died, was elected in 1826 and held office for six years. David Holmes succeeded him, managing to get elected to another term as governor, although he was forced to resign after six months owing to ill health. The only Whig governor of Mississippi was John A. Quitman, who took office in 1835, was governor for just over a month. He was to return as governor from January 1850 until February 1851, serving his second term as a Democrat.

By the 1830s, the major issue dominating Mississippi politics was that of slavery, with much of the economy of the state relying on cotton plantations. The wealth made from cotton resulted in a number of important business interests controlling the economic and political life of the state. To avert the possibility of a civil war, in 1850 Henry S. Foote, one of the U.S. senators for Mississippi, managed to secure support for the Compromise of 1850, which allowed California to be admitted as a free state, and the Fugitive Slave Act to be passed requiring all U.S. citizens to assist the return of runaway slaves. Foote was elected as governor of Mississippi in 1851, taking office in 1852 on a Union-Democratic ticket. However, extreme tensions remained, and in 1858, John J. Pettus was elected for a full term as governor (he had previously served in the office for five days).

Pettus was one of the “fire-eaters,” men who proclaimed that they would rather be forced to eat fire than sit down at the same table as Yankees, and he vigorously opposed the Republicans in the 1860 U.S. presidential election. John Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats easily won the state with 40,798 votes (59 percent), to 25,045 votes (36.2 percent) for John Bell of the Constitutional Union, and 3,282 votes (4.7 percent) for Stephen Douglas of the northern Democrats; Abraham [Page 419]Lincoln and the Republican Party were not on the ballot in the state.

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