Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front

MISSISSIPPI

in the CIVIL WAR

BOARD OF EDITORS Heritage of Mississippi Series

William F. Winter, chair John F. Marszalek, vice-chair Dernoral Davis Elbert R. Hilliard H. T. Holmes Peggy W. Jeanes William K. Scarborough Charles Reagan Wilson Christine D. Wilson

Heritage of Mississippi Series / Volume IV

MISSISSIPPI in the CIVIL WAR +THE HOME FRONT + Timothy B. Smith

University Press of Mississippi for the Mississippi Historical Society and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Jackson

Publication of this book was made possible through a grant from the Phil Hardin Foundation. www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2010 by the Mississippi Historical Society All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2010 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Timothy B., 1974– Mississippi in the Civil War : the home front / Timothy B. Smith. p. cm. — (Heritage of Mississippi series ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60473-429-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mississippi—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. I. Mississippi Historical Society. II. Mississippi. Dept. of Archives and History. III. Title. E568.S64 2010 976.2’05—dc22 2009036493 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

In memory of a brave Mississippian Corporal Blake Mounce, U.S. Marine Corps killed in action near Trebil, Iraq, July , 

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CONTENTS ix

Preface

1

Introduction “My Beloved Mississippi Is Being Overrun”

PART ONE The State in Military Conflict 11

Chapter One “Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

27

Chapter Two “The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

50

Chapter Three “The Arms and Military Property of the State”

68

Chapter Four “A Swath of Desolation”

88

Chapter Five “Patriotism Enough to Bear Such a Tax as This”

PART TWO The People in Social Conflict 101

Chapter Six “If Lincoln Should Continue to Work at the Mote in Our Eye”

CONTENTS

125

Chapter Seven “Her People Are Drifting to the Yankees”

143

Chapter Eight “Tears on Many a Dark Cheek”

160

Chapter Nine “I Have Borne It All Very Cheerfully, So Far”

181

Chapter Ten “Our Poor Country Is Getting into a Deplorable Condition”

196

Conclusion

199

Abbreviations

201

Notes

235

Bibliography

251

Index

viii

PREFACE This book has been a labor of love. As a seventh-generation Mississippian born in Meridian and growing up in Carrollton, most branches of my family lived through the ordeal of the Civil War. Some lines can be traced back to Alabama and Georgia, but most of my family lived in Mississippi during the war, and several members served in its armed forces. For example, five of my direct ancestors fought to defend Vicksburg. One escaped the surrender by marching away from Champion Hill with William Loring. Two others helped defend the famous Stockade Redan against two Federal assaults and weeks of siege operations. Another family member was in the little-respected Mississippi State Troops, who occupied a position in Vicksburg’s formidable defenses so strong that Confederate commanders realized that even they could probably defend it. And then one, sadly, was killed on the lines near the Stockade Redan only three days prior to the surrender. Countless other family members endured the hardships of war on the home front, but less is known about them. Thus the Civil War has been ingrained in my family’s history for generations, as it has in thousands of other native Mississippians. Unfortunately, the military aspects of the conflict get the most attention; relatively little study of the home front has surfaced within Civil War literature. But the home front was important, and that is why researching and writing this book has been such a wonderful experience. Modern Americans can go to battlefields and see where their forefathers fought or even obtain the military records of their ancestors, but much less information is available about Mississippians on the home front. There are collections of letters available that describe life at home during the war, and land records can tie certain plots of land to their historic inhabitants, but there is much less immediacy or compelling interest with the home front experience than with the military. Connecting with our ancestors’ lives on the home front, therefore, mostly has to be done on a generic level. I do not own any letters of my ancestors, telling of the sufferings of war. I do not own any land on which they struggled to survive during the conflict. But I do have access to the collective experiences of Mississippians, which more than likely is very similar to

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what my family experienced. The result of this research has not only opened my eyes to the little known world of my predecessors, but it has also helped me understand the Civil War more comprehensively. I can only hope the results are the same for the reader. This book seeks to examine the reasons for the Confederate defeat in an effort to tell the story of the people of Mississippi during the Civil War. By definition, it is a large subject, and thus the depth into any certain topic is limited at best. Despite a dearth of my own family’s information, there is truly an embarrassment of riches for the study of Mississippi’s home front in the Civil War. In fact, the subject of each chapter could make a volume in and of itself. The secession convention is a subject that has been treated in book form, but a modern analysis would be beneficial. A study of the state’s political workings during the war would reap large benefits, as would institutional volumes dedicated to the state’s infrastructure or its wartime economy. Likewise, books on Mississippi’s common citizens, Unionists, blacks, women, and culture in wartime are all needed, and the sources are all there. It is hoped that the present volume will be only the beginning of much fruitful research into these important topics. While looking toward the future, however, an acknowledgment to the past must also be made. Although Mississippi’s home front has not had anywhere near as full a treatment as the home front in states such as Tennessee and Virginia, with works by Stephen Ash, Benjamin F. Cooling, Daniel Sutherland, Brian Steel Wills, and Edward Ayers, this book stands on the shoulders of earlier historians who broke this fertile ground in the early twentieth century. John K. Bettersworth and Percy Lee Rainwater were gifted historians who produced works of lasting value. Yet they worked in a different era, and while their volumes are still important and beneficial, a wider net is now required.1 John K. Bettersworth’s Confederate Mississippi: The People and Policies of a Cotton State in Wartime will always be a standard source on the state’s wartime home front. Working off the earlier efforts of Percy L. Rainwater and even earlier writings of Horace S. Fulkerson, Bettersworth produced a solid volume in 1943, during an era of emphasizing “great man” history, consisting basically of political, religious, and military foci. This earlier view of history came from the top down. More recent innovations in the study of history have brought new methods of looking at old subjects, emphasizing, for example, social aspects of the masses rather than the political workings of the top tier. This bottom-up idea gained acceptance in the social revolutions of the 1960s.2 As might be expected from a book produced in that earlier era, Bettersworth’s volume contains large gaps. It is solid on politics, economics, and religion, but it spends a microscopic amount of time on women and blacks. Indeed, what material on women and blacks that does exist in Confederate Mississippi

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is mostly provided within the context of the top-down history mindset, or the examination of planters and male citizens. I determined early in the research and writing of this volume to fill in those gaps left by Bettersworth. Topics at which Bettersworth excelled, such as economics and religion, are given less attention. Conversely, I give much more focus, indeed full chapters, to women and blacks, subjects on which Bettersworth spent only a few paragraphs. In keeping with the bottom-up theory of history, there has also been a major effort to let the people of the state tell their own story. I hope this goal has been accomplished within the context and analysis of the larger issues of the war. I do not hope that the present volume will replace Bettersworth’s history, which is still very important in its own right. Conversely, I did not want to mirror his work and produce something so similar as to be of little use. In fact, believing that I possessed enough background knowledge of the subject to begin the research, I purposefully held off reading the entirety of Bettersworth’s book until I completed my manuscript. Readers will find numerous differences between the two books; still, it is hoped that the present volume will enhance Bettersworth’s groundbreaking work rather than replace it. Many people have aided me in the work on this book, but they should not be faulted for any factual or interpretive errors that may have slipped into the text. Initially, I must thank the members of the board of editors of the Heritage of Mississippi Series. Their expertise and enthusiasm for the project have been rewarding, and their comments on the book’s outline and organization, as well as the manuscript itself, have been very beneficial. Chrissy Wilson and Elbert Hilliard at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, who oversaw the organizational, contracting, and financial aspects, have made the process simple and uncomplicated. They also went through a draft of the manuscript and provided many useful comments. By far, the main driving force behind this volume has been John F. Marszalek, vice chair of the board of editors. He facilitated the beginning of the work and has been a constant adviser and supporter of the effort. In addition, he has long been my mentor and friend, from graduate school days until the present. John has had more influence on my professional career than anyone outside God and my family. The staffs of many different repositories have been very helpful and efficient. The staff of the Library of Congress and the National Archives, particularly Russ Weidman, Budge Weidman, George Briscoe, and Reggie Washington, greatly aided my research in Washington, D.C. The staffs of several university special collections departments also made the research enjoyable and easy, especially Janie Morris and Kelly Kennington at Duke University, Matthew Turi at the University of North Carolina, Yvonne Arnold at the University of

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Southern Mississippi, Mattie Sink at Mississippi State University, and the staff at Louisiana State University and the University of Mississippi. The professionals at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, particularly Anne Webster, Clinton Bagley, Jean Hudspeth, Joyce Dixon-Lawson, Grady Howell, and De’Niecechsi Layton, were extremely helpful, encouraging, and efficient. They made my many trips to Jackson profitable and enjoyable. Jenniffer Stephenson at the Carroll County Public Library System obtained books that I could not find in Tennessee. Colleagues at my academic home, the University of Tennessee at Martin, have aided this volume as well. The staff of the library, particularly the interlibrary loan department, greatly aided in the research. My department chair, David Coffey, has also been encouraging and supportive throughout the process. Deidra Beene, Sandy King, Jan Denbow, and Amy King have also been very supportive. Several other historian friends have also aided in the process. Michael Ballard, who is writing the military volume of Mississippi’s Civil War period for the Heritage of Mississippi Series, and Jim Hollandsworth were very helpful. Dr. Hollandsworth even loaned me some of his own books and alerted me to significant collections I needed to explore. He also read portions of the manuscript, particularly dealing with Mississippi’s U.S. Colored Troops numbers. Terry Winschel, at Vicksburg, read through the manuscript and offered many valuable comments, as did an anonymous reader for the University Press of Mississippi. Craig Gill at the Press has been very enjoyable to work with, as has copyeditor Robert Burchfield. My family has again been a great aid. Jeff and Valeria Walters, and their sweet little girls, Ella and Eva, opened their home to us during my research in Washington, D.C. Much of the research was necessarily done in Jackson, Mississippi, at the state archives, which is only about an hour or so south of my parents’ home in Carrollton, and I would use their house as a base for some dozen or so research trips. Their only payment in return was getting to see their newest granddaughter for several days in a row each trip. I hope they enjoyed our visits as much as we did. On those research trips, my mother and my wife would keep our daughter (normally at the mall) while my dad and I researched. He soon became proficient at research and archival work, and was extremely helpful in looking up and copying material and finding out-of-the-way sources. His help took months off my research schedule. He also met me in Oxford and Starkville and aided in the research at the archives there. In addition to the research help, he and my mom have always been supportive and encouraging. I thank them for

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PREFACE

all their love and for going the extra mile on this volume. My in-laws, Bennie and Barbara Castleman, have been most supportive as well. My wife, Kelly, and little girls, Mary Kate and newly arrived Leah Grace, have once again aided in the effort by making life extremely enjoyable during the process. They (all of them Tennesseans, mind you) put up with a lot of stories and anecdotes of Mississippians in the war, and happily let daddy work in his office for long stretches of time. They make my life complete, and I thank God every day for them, as well as the opportunity to do this kind of work, which I enjoy so much. One other Mississippian must also be mentioned. I have dedicated this book to the memory of Corporal Blake Mounce. Although a few years younger than me, Blake was a childhood friend, and we attended the same school and church. My dad, a minister, even baptized Blake as a child. Although in college, Blake volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps after September 11, 2001. Shipped off to Iraq, he died as a result of a roadside bomb in July 2005. Blake’s courage, dedication, and service are what make our nation so special and Mississippians so proud. Thank you Blake, and the Mounce family on the home front, for your sacrifice on behalf of our country at war.

xiii

INTRODUCTION “My Beloved Mississippi Is Being Overrun”

The people of Carrollton, Mississippi, saw little of the fighting and destruction of the Civil War. Tucked into the central part of the state just inside the hills bounding the vast Mississippi Delta, the little town did not sit on any vital waterway or railroad, thus sparing it any major Federal invasion. Yet its people were profoundly affected by the war. Carroll County sent hundreds of troops to the conflict in several companies, and a large number of them never returned. The economic and social problems of war, including shortages of food and supplies, inflation, and famine, also hit the citizens hard. And Federal raids penetrated the area, one of which occurred on February 19, 1864, when a portion of the Third Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops, on a raid near Greenwood, detoured to Carrollton and completely surprised the townspeople. “When we entered the town,” remembered one of the white officers leading the former slaves, “we found all the male population, including several rebel recruiting officers and numbers of rebel soldiers, assembled at the courthouse, where they had met to exchange congratulations on being spared a visit from us.” The officer continued to describe the odd situation, saying, “Their amazement, therefore, was great at our sudden appearance among them. The women were well-nigh paralyzed with fear, and the men stood speechless—dumbfounded in our presence.” “This was their first sight of the Yankees,” he noted.1 Such events occurred almost daily in Civil War Mississippi, and Carrollton’s ordeal, although extremely mild in relation to other towns’ suffering, is nevertheless illustrative of several important factors facing Mississippians during the conflict. In one sense, many citizens, even as late as 1864, were still supportive of the Confederacy and celebrating victories, no matter how small. In another, however, the fact that Federal raiders came upon the town entirely unnoticed even as the citizens celebrated their fortune of missing a raid highlights the ability of the Federal commands at this stage of the war to move almost totally unhampered throughout the state, in any direction they desired.

1

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps most important, the fact that these troopers were black demonstrated that major changes had come to Mississippi within the past three years. These Mississippians and countless thousands of others (354,000 whites as compared to 437,000 slaves and 773 free blacks) were primarily united in their effort to support the Confederacy, if not in support of secession itself, which was a completely separate issue. Once the die was cast against what many termed the “Black Republicans,” even those opposed to secession mostly gave their allegiance and support to the Confederacy. And that allegiance continued throughout the first half of the war. As the realization grew in the latter stages that the end was near, however, the will of many Mississippians began to weaken.2 Much has been written about the “lack of will” thesis regarding Confederate defeat. The authors of Why the South Lost the Civil War are perhaps best known for their arguments regarding the Confederate people’s inability to support the war effort. On the other hand, some revisionist historians such as Gary Gallagher have turned the discussion the other way, arguing that there was a definite will to win even to the end, with a secure Confederate nationalism feeding that will.3 In reality, Mississippians had a will to win, although it was severely challenged throughout the war, and many gave in to despair. Thus the lack-of-will thesis was not really an issue in Mississippi. Most Mississippians wanted to win the war and achieve their independence. As noted by historian James McPherson, however, the loss-of-will idea is applicable to Mississippi. Beginning the war full of courage and patriotism, many Mississippians were by the end of the war disillusioned about its results considering the amount of suffering required. As Federal efforts systematically dismantled all of the state’s political, economic, military, and infrastructural entities, the suffering of the people increased, and the will of the people to win declined.4 Much has been written concerning when the loss of will began and when it became critical. Many historians date it as early as 1862, but most argue that for the Confederacy as a whole, the twin defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863 were the impetus. Regarding Mississippi specifically, however, some disagreement appears. Yes, the decline became critical after the summer of 1863, but it was not totally because of the twin defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. While those two events had an enormous effect both on the Confederate military’s ability to wage war and the strategic balance of the war itself, most Mississippians on the home front were more concerned with daily life than this larger military strategy. The critical time for most Mississippians came when the war became personal, when their state was invaded and parts of it were overrun in May 1863. The loss of the state capital at Jackson and the

2

INTRODUCTION

flight of the state government critically affected how the citizens of Mississippi viewed the war. The invasion of the Federal armies and the fall of the capital hit the economy and infrastructure hard. The fall of Vicksburg served as a capstone to this major invasion. Until its fall, there was still hope that the invading Federal armies would be defeated and driven away, thus easing the personal suffering of large swaths of the state, at least at the direct hands of the invader. With Vicksburg’s fall coming on the heels of Jackson’s capture, however, Mississippians who were directly affected realized that the enemy was there to stay and their will began to erode quickly.5 The fall of Jackson and the loss of Vicksburg, however, were less important to most Mississippians on military levels than they were on human levels (in stark contrast to states such as Alabama and Georgia, which were not heavily invaded until after the summer of 1863). In the process of taking Jackson and Vicksburg, Federal armies burned and plundered, causing enormous devastation. And that was only the beginning. Raids large and small emanated from Federal strongholds now safely guarding the Mississippi River, taking the war to more and more citizens and driving down morale even further. The largest and perhaps most important of these raids was a test of total war itself on a march from Vicksburg to Meridian and back. Federal occupation also added a temptation for doubting Mississippians: to take the oath of allegiance and live peaceably and trade profitably with the enemy. Such actions not surprisingly drove down the morale of loyal Confederate citizens. At least in Mississippi, individual suffering seemed to play a larger role than the citizens’ awareness of defeated Confederate armies, thus challenging the idea of a comprehensive Confederate nationalism.6 Jefferson Davis himself wrote in July 1863, “In these times of disaster, when my relations and nearest friends are the objects of most cruel animosity, when my beloved Mississippi is being overrun by the invader, I deeply feel my want of that sustaining power which had in times past upheld the just cause, and given to the weak the power to defend the strong.” By the next month, Davis had recovered his will somewhat but realized that the Confederacy’s success was tied not just to victory on the battlefield. Confederate independence depended in large part on the people at home. “If our people now show as much fortitude as we are entitled to expect from those who display such conspicuous gallantry in the field,” Davis wrote in August, “we shall certainly beat the enemy and secure our independence.”7 Thus the major thesis of this book is the dual paradigm of Mississippi’s Civil War defeat. Mississippi’s military defeat and devastation was complete, with the enemy literally dismantling the state’s political system, infrastructure, economy, and war effort. And while the Confederate forces and the state itself

3

INTRODUCTION

were being overwhelmed militarily, there was a similar inward, and contingent, decline taking place. The people of the state, realizing that the enemy could run rampant over its entire territory, soon began to lose the will to continue the effort. Some white Confederates found they would rather go back into the Union than see more destruction come about in an effort to win a victory that was no longer within their grasp. Moreover, with the tide turning, Mississippi Unionists and African Americans became bolder in their effort to defeat the Confederacy. Therefore two examinations are offered in this volume: one looking at the results of defeat from outside sources, the Union army and navy, and the other focusing on the results of the inward loss of the will to win.8 That there was a loss or even a lack of will among citizens (not to mention the existence of groups of Unionists and thousands of Confederate deserters in Mississippi during the Civil War) flies in the face of some common perceptions about the war in general and the state in particular. The Lost Cause myth utilized the facade of a completely united Confederacy, and Mississippi was a prime example of this late-nineteenth-century mindset. One has to look no farther than the state’s immediate postwar action of changing the name of what John K. Bettersworth called “the state’s most disloyal county,” Jones County, to Davis County and the name of its county seat to Leesburg. More recent neoConfederatism has also produced a sentimentality that all white southerners were good Confederates and yielded only to overwhelming Federal numbers. In reality, there were many Unionists, deserters, and disloyal Mississippians during the war, and many of the loyal Confederates lost heart when their suffering became too intense. Mississippi was not the total symbol of Confederatism that it is so commonly argued to be today.9 This study can best be understood by thinking of the diagram of a wagon wheel. The hub of the wheel, indeed the center and the beginning place of all things concerning Mississippi’s home front during the Civil War, was the state secession convention, which took place in January 1861. This convention not only, and most famously, took the state out of the Union, but it also played many other major roles in setting up the state for the future war. In fact, every single major problem that would involve the state during the war was thought of and a remedy put in place, if sometimes only temporarily, at the convention. The convention set into motion not only the secession of the state but also the military, manufacturing, political, and economic structures that the new independent state would need. Historians have usually examined the convention only in terms of actual secession, but the role played by the delegates in setting up the mechanism of running an independent republic and then confederated government was perhaps the most important work of the gathering.

4

INTRODUCTION

From this central hub of activity emanated the spokes of the wheel, or those major areas of state function that had to be addressed by the convention and then later by war leaders. These spokes included the political framework of the state, which initially was an independent nation and then a part of the Confederate States of America. Another spoke was the military hierarchy that most Mississippians knew was required, given the hotly contested issues of secession and Union. The infrastructure of the state, the delegates realized, would need to reach its highest potential for Mississippi and/or the Confederacy to be able to function alone. It therefore constituted another spoke in the wheel. The state’s economy, another spoke, was also extremely sensitive as the state became independent. The delegates realized that a sound economic policy had to be developed to keep the state’s coffers full and the people happy. In retrospect, the delegates did not create end-all fixes for these problems, and in some cases set up only temporary patches. Nevertheless, the convention delegates looked ahead and, seeing potential problems, made at least some attempt to address any immediate issues that could cause major problems. And it must be remembered that despite taking on an awesome amount of power, the delegates opted to work through the normal political channels of the governor and legislature after their adjournment. If these spokes led from the central act of the state that began the process of separation and war, the outer rim of the wheel constituted the common citizens of the state. Basically the delegates and even the state government worked through these major issues of the economy, politics, military affairs, and infrastructure to try to keep a healthy citizenry that was productive, safe, and happy. The encircling social ring of everyday people was connected to secession and the war activities through the political, economic, and military governmental efforts. Chapter 1 deals with the hub, the secession convention, examining both the act of secession itself and, more important, what went on after the state seceded. The convention remained in session for several weeks after the initial act of secession and even returned for a short time in March 1861. Emphasized in this chapter and others is the postsecession work of establishing a system to handle this newly declared independence. Chapters 2 through 5 describe the spokes, emphasizing the systematic destruction that Federal military success dealt upon each area during the war, literally removing all support for the wheel, or the people of the state. Chapter 2 examines Mississippi’s political system during the war. Beginning the conflict with a haughty pride and convinced of an easy victory, those in state government soon realized the problems inherent in independence. The state government went into a frenzied mode, with sessions of the legislature trying to address

5

INTRODUCTION

a continually deteriorating situation. Amid the context of monetary, infrastructural, and military challenges, the state government also faced a full-fledged invasion of its territory in 1863 that literally sent the government packing. The capture of the state capital at Jackson was more than just a psychological blow to Mississippians; it set the state government on the run. The capital was moved among several cities in the state, with the legislature meeting in makeshift halls, churches, and educational institutions, while other state entities were taken entirely out of the state. With much of the state overrun and occupied by Federals, Mississippi’s judicial branch almost quit functioning as well. Mississippi’s military complex was also systematically destroyed during the war, as discussed in Chapter 3. Sending some seventy-eight thousand men to the war effort, Mississippi’s military might was mortally wounded by Federal success on the battlefields. At the same time, the state’s militia was never a major asset, and desertion from units reached massive proportions after the fall of Jackson and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. Federal armies dismantled Mississippi’s war capability to the point that few soldiers remained in 1865. The Federals also dismantled the state’s infrastructure during the war, including everything from mills, farms, and plantations to railroads, shipyards, and factories. As the Federals destroyed or occupied plantations and farms, fewer goods were available for either the people or the armies. As more and more communication and transportation entities were destroyed, the state’s ability to ship what goods that were left became increasingly problematic. As a result, as investigated in Chapter 4, Mississippi was increasingly unable to feed either its armies or its people, and destitution became rampant. Chapter 5 explores the state’s economy, which began the war in bad shape and only grew worse, especially in the latter half of the conflict. Issues such as speculation, inflation, and taxation ate away at the state’s fiscal health. By the mid part of the war, the state was deep in debt and had little means by which to pay for its actions or to aid its people. With Confederate money worthless and prices extremely high on almost everything, the legislature eventually opted for taxes in kind, which hurt the people as well. Thus the war and the Federal invasion systematically destroyed the state’s economy, which had not been on a firm footing anyway. Chapters 6 through 10 examine different parts of the outer ring, the state’s population, emphasizing how the war and the declining ability of the state to protect, defend, and support its citizens affected the population. Chapter 6 examines the loyal Confederate white citizenry, looking at their problems, experiences, and difficulties. In effect, these white loyal citizens who supported the war in the first years steadily became disenchanted and slowly lost the will to continue the fight as the war continued to affect them in such adverse

6

INTRODUCTION

ways. An investigation into the morale of the loyal people reveals that, much as in the governmental areas, the loss of will came with the Federal invasions in Mississippi and the fall of Jackson and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. By 1864 and 1865, reports of dissolution and discouragement were rampant across the entire state. With the loyal Confederate people of the state losing faith in the war effort by the latter half of the war, the small but powerful minority of Unionists, along with Confederate army deserters hiding out in Mississippi’s backwoods, only added more problems to the state’s commitment to the Confederacy. Chapter 7 shows how Unionists came in many varieties, but all were at least disloyal to the Confederacy, with some working actively against the state and the Confederacy. The effect of the Unionists’ activities on the morale of the loyal citizens was significant, with the illegal trading of cotton with the Federals the major source of discouragement for loyal Confederates. Another source of problems for a united Confederate Mississippi was the presence of hundreds of thousands of black slaves in the state, a situation examined in Chapter 8. Unquestionably Unionist, large numbers of these slaves did all they could to hamper and defeat the Confederacy, even taking up arms and rushing into battle when allowed to do so by white Northern politicians. When not in actual service, however, these slaves did all they could to hamper the Confederacy, committing acts of sabotage, guiding Federal units, and relaying important intelligence to Union commanders. A lack of labor also severely affected Mississippi’s agriculture as many slaves fled the plantations and followed Federal armies across the state. The year 1863, the turning point in so many other areas, was also the turning point for the slaves in that the Federals took large swaths of Mississippi, bringing freedom from bondage; that year many slaves also became soldiers, fighting for freedom for all blacks. Chapter 9 looks at the women of the state, exploring the often-held myth that Confederate women were totally united against the enemy. In reality, Mississippi women possessed varying degrees of loyalty to the Confederacy. The major Union invasions beginning in 1863 touched countless thousands of Mississippi women who were home alone with children while the men were in the army or hiding with the family’s valuables and livestock in a nearby swamp. Mississippians learned early on that the Federals were less likely to kill women and burn occupied dwellings. Thus the women of the state, not the men, met the enemy the majority of the time on the home front. But as these meetings became more and more frequent, the will of the women at home also began to fade. The final chapter, Chapter 10, examines the cultural entities of the state, including the religious, educational, and literary efforts of the citizens during

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INTRODUCTION

war. As seen in other chapters, the major downturn in these areas came with the Federal invasions of 1863. From then on, the culture of the state eroded steadily. The defeat of the Confederacy and the dismantling of the state had many causes—the arrival of the Union military forces, the destitution that ran rampant, and the loss of will among the state’s citizens. At the same time, Unionists and African Americans had been waiting for the right time to rise up and rebel. This complex cause-and-effect relationship concerning Mississippi’s defeat thus took the state and its people out of the war, and also devastated Mississippi for decades to come.

8

PART ONE + THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT +

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CHAPTER ONE

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea” The great hall was dead silent as the minister began his prayer. “Almighty God, We the people of the State of Mississippi, in convention assembled in the exercise of that sovereignty with which thou hast ordained us, have in this Solemn hour, reserved to ourselves the power delegated to the Federal Union,” began Rev. Whitfield Harrington immediately after the vote for state secession had been taken on January 9, 1861, in Jackson. It was a prayer more political than spiritual, and in that sense was befitting of what had just occurred in the House of Representatives chamber of the state capitol on State Street. A convention of one hundred delegates had met and hammered out an ordinance of secession, taking the state of Mississippi out of the Union. The act itself had been anything but celebratory, one member remembering that “over the entire Convention brooded a spirit of gravity and seriousness.” As the secretary of the convention called each delegate to vote, the tone became especially reverent. “As each member responded in tones vibrant with intense feeling suppressed, the murmur of conversation and the rustle of movement ceased, and a stillness as of death held the great assembly,” one writer reported. When it was done, the vote was announced, and “a profound silence for some time prevailed.” Then Rev. Harrington stood beside the president and offered his prayer for the new nation. “It was a scene of moral grandeur,” recalled one observer.1 The Mississippians would indeed need such prayers, for in their future lay four long years of brutal and bloody war. None of the suffering was yet evident that day in Jackson, however, as word quickly spread, cannons and bells broadcasting the news to everyone within hearing. Soon the news was also traveling across the continent like an electric wave. Another state had joined South Carolina in secession; Mississippi had left the Union.2 Had South Carolina acted alone, as earlier in the 1830s, little would have been made of this secession movement. But now another state had joined the procession, and others were sure to follow. Indeed, eventually eleven states in

11

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

all would depart. The crisis that was the national calamity of disunion was just as much a crisis on the local stage as well, however, as the people of Mississippi would face long years of suffering, and the state would become a war zone.3 The road to disunion had been long and arduous for Mississippi. Secession, to be sure, was not a new idea in the winter of 1860 and 1861. Almost as soon as the United States had been formed, the tug of war for state verses federal domination had begun, with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison first espousing the states’ rights mentality in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, which they drafted in response to the usurpation of power by the federal government in the Alien and Sedition acts under John Adams. Nearly two decades later, a commercially despondent New England threatened secession during the War of 1812. The Hartford Convention of 1814 did not produce actual disunion, but the sentiment was there.4 South Carolina soon became the standard-bearer for the states’ rights and secession issues. Its spat with Andrew Jackson in the early 1830s over nullification and threatened secession left a bad memory for South Carolinians and their hero, John C. Calhoun. Continually defiant yet practical, the state backed down in a compromise on the tariff issue, over which nullification had begun. To gain one parting shot, however, the state nullified the very Force Bill passed to force nullification’s end.5 By 1850, South Carolina was again pushing for secession, and even talked up the idea at a convention of Southern states in Nashville, Tennessee. Mississippi sent delegates, including future governors John J. Pettus and William L. Sharkey (Sharkey became president of the convention). “We have assembled together to confer with each other concerning your relation with the General Government and the non-slaveholding States of the Union on the subject of the institution of slavery,” the convention announced to the Southern people. But moderation prevailed as little sentiment for secession appeared in 1850.6 The violent decade of the 1850s and the election of the “Black Republican” Abraham Lincoln turned many white Southerners to the idea of disunion in 1860. Thinking that a president who publicly espoused the limitation of slavery and who was elected without even being on the ballot in most Southern states would no doubt limit their states’ rights, many Southerners who had been moderates in 1850 suddenly thought more about secession in 1860. Led by fire-eaters who continually agitated for disunion, South Carolina acted in December 1860 and left the Union. It would be a misstep if no other state joined it. As the days passed and the new year appeared, no state had. But then Mississippi acted.7 The leaders of the secessionist movement in Mississippi were led by the governor himself, fire-eater John Jones Pettus. Pettus had been a lawyer, planter,

12

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

state legislator, and governor for five days in 1854 before being elected to a full term in 1859. On November 26, 1860, Pettus sent a special message to the legislature recommending secession and calling for a convention to do so. Using biblical rhetoric, Pettus called the state to “go down into Egypt while Herod reigns in Judea.” Others in the fire-eater ranks were lawyer, professor, and former congressman L. Q. C. Lamar of Oxford; lawyer, judge, and former congressman Wiley P. Harris of Jackson; lawyer and Mississippi Supreme Court reporter James Z. George of Carrollton; and lawyer, former congressman, and Mississippi House of Representatives Speaker William S. Barry of Columbus.8 On December 20, in a special election in which only about 60 percent of those who voted in the presidential election in November actually cast ballots, the citizens of the state elected representatives from each county to serve as delegates to the secession convention. Although the vast majority of the counties did not require their delegates to vote certain ways, those elected certainly represented the interests of the majority of the population in those counties. The major secessionist delegates came from the southern and central portions of the state, with the Unionist sentiment strongest in the Mississippi River counties, the Yazoo Delta, and the northeastern sector of Mississippi.9 Historian Percy Lee Rainwater has argued that slavery was the first and foremost issue of the convention, set of course against the backdrop of Lincoln’s election. Almost all of those involved in the process were interested, he argued, in maintaining slavery, which he defined as “the mainspring of the convention’s action.” All but around fifteen of the one hundred members owned at least one slave, and those who owned only a few were interested in keeping the institution alive because they dreamed of becoming rich planters themselves. The only debate was how to maintain slavery: some desired to work within the Union, while others had determined that secession was the only means left. Thus the election of delegates and the convention itself broke along those lines.10 More recent research by Charles Dew has uncovered a plethora of slaveryrelated issues among the various commissioners sent to and from the various slave states. Mississippi welcomed these commissioners from slave states and sent one of its own commissioners to each of the states then contemplating secession. Such luminaries in Mississippi and Confederate history as Wirt Adams (Louisiana), Charles Hooker (South Carolina), Jacob Thompson (North Carolina), and Winfield Scott Featherston (Kentucky) all made fiery speeches in support of slavery and secession. Dew labeled these commissioners “Apostles of Disunion.”11 The majority of the delegates sent to Jackson were of the old Democratic Party, and they mainly favored secession, although there was some debate as to

13

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

the immediate or eventual leaving of the Union. The leaders of this group were the fire-eaters of the day, including Barry, Lamar, Harris, and George, all led by Governor Pettus. The Unionist group came mainly from the old Whig Party and included men such as lawyer and judge Jacob S. Yerger and lawyer and former state representative and U.S. senator Walker Brooke. Their unchallenged leader was lawyer, former state legislator, and president of the state’s levee board, James L. Alcorn. There were also differences of opinion within the Unionist group, such as among those who favored eventual secession if all options were exhausted and those who would never consent to secession. The latter was a small group indeed, but the election showed, according to Rainwater, that there was considerable Unionist sentiment within the state and among the delegates. Finally, there was a small group of independent delegates who claimed no party affiliation, but listed their politics as “A Mississippian,” “Opposed to Universal Suffrage,” “Extremely and Intensely Southern,” or “Disunionist per se.” Nevertheless, one delegate described the members as “the ablest, the finest, and the most opulent men in the State.”12 The result of the convention was pretty much a foregone conclusion by the time it met. One member, Thomas H. Woods, remembered, “The advocates of immediate and independent action were complete masters of the situation, and, from the first day’s meeting of that superb body, it was manifest to the most superficial observer that the die had been cast.” Those elected to go to Jackson met officially at noon on Monday, January 7, 1861, in the House of Representatives chamber in the state capitol. Only two members were missing from the opening session, and they soon arrived. There had already been quite a bit of backroom work, however, which pointed even more to what would occur. Those who desired separation from the Union, the majority, met in caucus before the convention officially came to order. There they decided who would be elected president of the meeting, who would lead the secession effort, and who would be placed on important committees. All the Unionists could do was to try and water down their colleagues’ enthusiasm for secession.13 The delegates turned to the business at hand immediately after the January 7 noon prayer by Rev. Charles K. Marshall, which asked the Almighty “to look down upon us in compassion and mercy, [and] vouchsafe to these Thy servants assembled in General Convention, the guidance and support of Thy Holy Spirit.” The roll of the counties was called, and each delegate registered his name. With the delegates seated, the convention turned to electing a president. Because of the earlier caucus, the election was a foregone conclusion, although the Unionist group was allowed to offer its candidate, James L. Alcorn. Needing a majority to win the position, the secessionists still needed three ballots in order for their preselected candidate, William S. Barry, to get the requisite

14

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

number of votes. Described as “in the prime of his physical and intellectual strength,” Barry would lead the convention firmly. In addition to Barry, the delegates elected F. A. Pope as secretary, Samuel Pool as doorkeeper, and W. Ivie Westbrook as sergeant at arms.14 One observer gave a detailed account of the proceedings, allowing the reader to vividly imagine the scene: At the north end of the apartment sits the president, upon a high platform occupying a recess in the wall, with two Iconic columns upon each side of him. Before him is a little, old fashioned mahogany pulpit, concealing all but his head and shoulders from the vulgar gaze. In front of this, and three or four feet lower, at a long wooden desk, sit two clerks, one smoking a cigar. . . . Upon one of the columns at the president’s right hangs a faded portrait of George Poindexter, once a senator from this State. Further to the right is an open fire-place, upon whose mantel stands a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence, now sadly faded and blurred, a lithographic view of the Medical College of Louisiana, and a pitcher and glass. On the hearth is a pair of ancient andirons, upon which a genial wood fire is burning.15 The first major order of business was a resolution offered by L. Q. C. Lamar that a committee be appointed to “prepare and report as speedily as possible, an ordinance providing for the withdrawal of the State of Mississippi from the present Federal Union, with a view to the establishment of a new Confederacy, to be composed of the seceding states.” Barry soon appointed the committee of fifteen, with Lamar at its head. Most of the committee was made up of Democrat secessionists, including Lamar, Harris, and George, but there were a few Unionists as well. Most of the Unionists who were appointed to the committee, however, were those who were moderates or who had already been swayed toward secession. Only a few diehard nonsecessionists made the committee, among them James L. Alcorn.16 Lamar seemed to dominate the proceedings, although at least one member of the convention was not terribly impressed with him, saying that he “proved himself no parliamentarian and a very dangerous debater.” Nevertheless, Lamar and his committee met the next day and hammered out a secession ordinance. In actuality, Lamar had come to Jackson from his home in Oxford with the ordinance already written. Most of the committee’s work was in tinkering with and amending Lamar’s original thoughts. By Wednesday, January 9, the ordinance was ready. The delegates met at 10:30 a.m., and, after routine business that included messages from Governor Pettus and the

15

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

seating of commissioners from Alabama and South Carolina, Lamar reported the secession ordinance.17 “The People of the State of Mississippi, in Convention assembled, do ordain and declare, and it is hereby ordained and declared as follows,” began the ordinance of secession. Four sections then spelled out what was being done, including the first, which stated: “That all the laws and ordinances by which the said State of Mississippi became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America be, and the same are hereby repealed.” The state, the delegates declared, “shall from henceforth be a free, sovereign and independent State.” The second section “abrogated and annulled” any oaths taken by state government officials, while the third declared that all still compatible rights, treaties, and laws made as a part of the United States were still in effect. The fourth section allowed the state to form another “Federal Union” with states that had likewise seceded. The document was short, but carried with it the weight of hundreds of thousands of the state’s citizens.18 To debate the ordinance, the convention members went into secret session. Little is known of what transpired in this, or any, of the secret sessions, but there was little doubt as to its importance. One member remembered: “The tremendous responsibility pressing upon the Convention was seen on every countenance. From Judge Harris, solitary, silent, introspective, and Mr. Lamar, brooding, abstracted and melancholy, downward through all ranks and classes was an air of fixed solemnity.” Another spoke of the seriousness of the situation and described “men and women on their knees in prayer; tears streamed from many eyes.” Still the issue was never in doubt. In fact, the secession opponents realized they could not stem the tide of secession and thus began to formulate a series of amendments that would stall secession until a compromise could be worked out between North and South. The Unionists met in caucus to discuss their options, which were few given the prevailing attitude, in Alcorn’s words, of the “body [being] steeped in treason” and favoring “the crime of secession.” They nevertheless decided on a plan of delay instead of defeat. When the convention met in regular session again at 4:00 p.m. that day, Alcorn and his Unionists began their work.19 Unionists offered three amendments that they hoped would delay secession. Jacob S. Yerger offered one that would “provid[e] for the final adjustment of all difficulties between the free and slave States of the United States by securing further Congressional guarantees within the present Union.” This was an attempt to halt secession based on compromises like those that had secured peace in 1820, 1833, and 1850. Even then, several potential compromises were in the works in Washington, D.C. Yerger desired more time before taking such

16

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

a monumental and potentially fatal step as secession. The delegates were in no mood for patience, however, and voted down the amendment seventy-eight to twenty-one (as presiding officer, Barry did not vote).20 Alcorn himself next offered a more conservative amendment to secession. He stipulated that Mississippi’s secession, which he viewed as a foregone conclusion, would not go into effect until Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana had all left the Union as well and “resume[d] their sovereignty.” In effect, Alcorn was delaying, but was also hedging the state’s bet on secession by tying it to the other states. He essentially did not want to leave unless he was assured that others did as well. Again, with no patience for delay, the convention voted down this amendment seventy-four to twenty-five.21 Unionist Walker Brooke of Warren County offered the third delaying amendment: “This Ordinance shall not take effect until the same shall have been ratified by the qualified electors of the State and to this end an election shall be held . . . on the second Monday of February 1861.” In effect, this move would not only delay secession, but it would also place leaving the Union before the people of the state, where it could theoretically have been defeated. Although gaining votes from the previous amendments, Brooke’s failed as well, seventy to twenty-nine.22 With all attempts to delay or circumvent secession defeated, Lamar’s report itself, the ordinance of secession, came to the floor for the vote. By this time all knew the results, although tension filled the assembly hall. One by one the secretary called the roll, and one by one the delegates cast their lot. Secessionist after secessionist voted aye as the roll call went on, and even a few of the ardent Unionists voted for the measure. When Walker Brooke’s name was called, he addressed the convention by stating: “Mr. President: I was elected by a large majority as what is known as a co-operationist, which means, as I understand it, one who was in favor of united Southern action for the purpose of demanding further guaranties from the North, or failing in that, the formation of a Southern Confederacy. I have, to the best of my ability, endeavored to carry out the views of my constituents in these respects. I have acted in good faith and with no desire to make factious opposition. I have failed.” Another member of the convention remembered Brooke’s soliloquy was given “in a tone of infinite sadness, and with bowed head.” Brooke went on, however, stating: “Influenced by considerations of this character, which I now cannot more fully express, I feel it my duty, painful as it may be, to part from those with whom I have hitherto acted, to assume the responsibility of casting at least one of the votes of Warren county for the passage of the ordinance as reported. I vote aye.” One of the members of the convention remembered years later “the wave of relief

17

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

and joy that swept over the Convention and [that it] broke into involuntary applause upon that momentous occasion. This was the solitary dramatic burst of eloquence and applause.”23 A similar dramatic moment occurred when James L. Alcorn, leader of the Unionists, cast his vote. “Mr. President: I have thought that a different course in regard to the settlement of this great controversy should have been adopted, and to that end I have labored and spoken. But the die is cast—the Rubicon is crossed—and I enlist myself with the army that marches on Rome. I vote for the ordinance.”24 As more and more Unionists voted for the ordinance, all in the assembly hall began to realize that secession was a firm reality. “The galleries and the floor of the Hall were crowded with spectators of the solemn scene,” one writer noted, reporting that “as the roll call made it manifest that the result would be largely in favor of the adoption of the ordinance, tears gathered into the eyes of nearly every actor and spectator.” In the end, the final vote was eighty-four to fifteen, with the most die-hard Unionists still voting against the move. A fire bell nearby first told of the vote, and soon cannons, bells, and steam engines spread the news as a joyous capital city celebrated. At the jubilation that night, “The Bonnie Blue Flag” was purportedly sung for the first time.25 Alcorn later remarked that “division in the Convention, it was feared by all of us, would encourage Federal aggression. The show of a united and unbroken front might stay the hand of bloody war.” Thus the Unionist leader voted for secession. Alcorn’s support of the final passage, however, is illustrative of the switch made by several Unionists, so the final passage vote does not totally reflect the Unionist sentiment within the convention or the state. A more accurate count of Unionist numbers, the only real one that is available, would be the Brooke amendment to allow the people of the state to ratify the ordinance of secession. That vote garnered twenty-nine supporters. Indeed, had that amendment succeeded, there would most likely have been even more Unionist sentiment evidenced within the larger population. Percy L. Rainwater, the foremost expert on Mississippi secession, predicted that the secession referendum would have passed the state, but with only a small majority.26 By January 15, six days later, the delegates were ready to sign the ordinance of secession. Governor Pettus himself was present for the impressive ceremonies, as was the legislature, which opened its session that day and was most likely the reason for the delay in signing the document. By then there were only two staunch Unionists who still refused to sign. Realizing that secession was a reality, most, having taken Alcorn’s conciliatory lead, signed the document. Nevertheless, John W. Wood of Attala County was absent that day, but he had missed most of the convention as well. He later stated he would not have signed

18

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

if he had been there. Dr. John J. Thornton of Rankin County had attended the sessions, but purposefully remained absent from the convention on January 15 so he could not sign the document. One member of the convention remembered Thornton “was constrained thereto by an immovable determination to do no act which might contribute to the secession of the State.” It is worth noting, however, that opposition to secession did not mean opposition to his state; Thornton was one of the first men to join the army in Mississippi’s defense.27 One by one the delegates signed with a gold pen brought in specifically for that purpose. The only member to use a different pen was James R. Chalmers, who stated he wanted to use his own, “which he intended to transmit to some of his posterity.” So the deed was done, ninety-eight of the one hundred delegates signing. Mississippi had left the Union. And it only took three days, with the signing on January 15 coming later.28 Yet the secession convention met until January 26 and completed a lot of work in the next two and a half weeks. Curiously, historians have almost totally ignored the remainder of the convention, with the actual act of secession gaining most of the attention. A detailed look at the remainder of the convention is absolutely necessary, however, in order to understand the importance of the convention, what issues were pressing for the state as it entered the war, and the resulting life on the home front in Mississippi during the war. Indeed, once the work of breaking away from the Union was done, the delegates began to work through the large amount of business that had to be completed to switch the state from one of many states to a sovereign nation. First and foremost, the state’s constitution had to be amended to reflect the change. Then political matters had to be attended to, including relations with neighboring states and nations as well as international relationships. Just as important, the military affairs of the state had to be considered, given the fact that war loomed on the horizon. Monetary matters were likewise no small concern, and the delegates began working on tax and tariff issues. With so much to do, soon the reality of what lay before them drowned out the enthusiasm and exhilaration of separation. In order to facilitate and organize work on the biggest issues, the delegates determined to appoint several standing committees, similar to those in legislative bodies, to oversee resolutions and ordinances on specific matters. On January 10, the day after the secession vote, President Barry appointed members to six standing committees that had been created. One group took the name Committee on Citizenship in Mississippi and oversaw the change of status of all those living in the state from American citizens to Mississippi citizens. A second was named the Committee on Federal Jurisdiction and Property, which dealt with and dispersed all former U.S. property within the state. A

19

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

third was the Committee on Postal, Financial, and Commercial Affairs, which dealt mainly with economic issues such as taxes and tariffs. The fourth was the Committee on the State Constitution, which was charged with amending the state constitution into one that reflected the recent action. Overseeing all military activities was the Committee on Military and Naval Affairs. The final standing committee, which one member described as “the most important in the list,” was the Committee on a Southern Confederacy, which would oversee the state’s association with other seceding states and the new Confederacy. In actuality, there were enough changes that premier Mississippi historian Dunbar Rowland has referred to the secession convention as the “Constitutional Convention of 1861.”29 The delegates, many of them boarding right across the street at the Bowman House, worked on the various committees throughout the days following the actual secession of the state. Much of the work was done in committee during the day, because a conflict emerged with the regular legislature of the state, which opened its session on January 15 to align all laws with the convention’s action. Despite some talk of moving the convention to Vicksburg, a compromise was soon achieved in which the Mississippi House of Representatives would use the chamber until 2:00 p.m. each day, leaving the remainder of the time for the secession convention to use the hall. Many of the sessions of the convention thus did not begin until 7:00 p.m., not allowing much time before adjournment for the night. In order to allow more time to meet, the convention first decided to assemble at the nearby Concert Hall but then opted to use the Masonic Hall in Jackson on January 21, working there until the legislature dismissed on January 22, when the convention moved back to the house chamber. Perhaps to make up for some of the lost time, the delegates met six days a week, only stopping on Sunday out of reverence. The other days were filled with work. Hugh R. Miller, a delegate from Pontotoc County, wrote his son, “I have been so pressed for time since I have been here that I could not write you,” and “I have been so much absorbed in the questions of the day that I have neglected my domestic affairs.”30 The deliberations of the convention delegates ranged from “Indian affairs” to postmasters to the slave trade. Much of the attention was focused on the other states, and the delegates officially recognized several commissioners sent from the various slave states to their convention. As each state seceded, the convention officially recognized the state as “a sovereign and independent nation.” Most issues were dealt with in an organized manner, some involving little debate. The committees would offer resolutions and ordinances, whereupon the entire body would debate and amend each as necessary. Any member

20

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

could offer an amendment, but the convention was primarily run by the wellknown lawyers, politicians, and planters such as Barry, George, Alcorn, Lamar, and especially Harris. In a later autobiography, Harris admitted, “I exerted much influence in the State Convention.”31 Several of the younger and more insecure members were almost in awe of the larger-than-life figures with whom they found themselves. Thomas H. Woods remembered, “It can be truthfully affirmed by the youngest and most inconspicuous member of our Secession Convention that in learning, in ability, in patriotism, and in nobility of individual character no such body had ever before, or has ever since, been assembled within our borders.” He went on to verify: The Mississippi Secession Convention was adorned, inspired, and largely controlled by its lawyer members. Judge Wiley P. Harris, then and until his death the recognized and unchallenged leader of the bar in Mississippi, was pre-eminently influential in the work of that epoch-making assembly, and his voice was regarded as the voice of an oracle. . . . Beside Judge Harris, there were Lamar, George, Brooke, Marshall, Yerger, . . . Barry, . . . Alcorn, with many another,—all accounted luminaries of the first magnitude in the legal firmament. Another fairly inconspicuous member, William R. Barksdale, was obviously delighted when he received the compliments of the leaders on an amendment he offered. “This morning I send you a paper containing the proceeding of the Convention on Thursday the 16th in which you will observe my name is made honorable mention of,” Barksdale wrote a friend, adding that he sent out thirty-two copies of the papers “to different persons of my acquaintance.” “My speech was highly complimented by all the big men of the Convention, especially Judge Wiley P. Harris, Judge James Z. George, Dowd and many others too numerous to mention,” he related with obvious excitement. Barksdale went on to say, “I do not expect to speak any more during the sitting of this convention. There is as much danger of a man speaking too much as too little. Some men in the Convention have already lost their influence and do not even get the respectful attention of the house while speaking because they have spoken so much.” Of course, when Harris, Lamar, Alcorn, or George spoke, the delegates listened intently.32 Several of the issues the committees and then the full convention worked through ultimately produced a political, social, economic, and military infrastructure that set the stage for the course of confederation and, in many cases,

21

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

would govern the state into and sometimes through the Civil War. The various committees debated and produced several ordinances that set in motion exactly how the home front would be defined and governed. The first needed action was to amend the state’s constitution to reflect the changes made on January 9 when Mississippi became a sovereign nation. The Committee on the State Constitution worked on the document and provided for the changes. The members of the committee also passed a catchall amendment that nullified any laws or provisions that were in conflict with the convention’s ordinances.33 Knowing a convention of all the seceded states loomed in the very near future at Montgomery, Alabama, in early February, the Committee on a Southern Confederacy presented an ordinance to send a delegation to that convention and also laid out the stipulations desired by the Mississippi convention. The resulting passage of the ordinance and the election of delegates to Montgomery on January 23 set in motion Mississippi’s association with the future Confederate States of America, to which it would remain loyal throughout the war and until both were vanquished by the U.S. military. All of that lay in the future, however, and there were exciting times in January 1861 as the convention voted on delegates to Montgomery. Not surprisingly, Judge Harris and President Barry were two, with delegates Walker Brooke, the lone Unionist sent, and Alexander M. Clayton also chosen. Although not delegates to the Mississippi convention, William S. Wilson, James T. Harrison, and Josiah A. P. Campbell were also chosen. The Mississippi delegation was advised to establish a “provisional” government “as speedily as possible” when they reached Montgomery.34 Perhaps the most important action, in light of future events, was the work of establishing the military system of the state. The Committee on Military and Naval Affairs totally revamped the state’s militia structure, creating a “Military Board” to be made up of the governor, a major general, and four brigadier generals. This board would have full authority and oversight of the military system and the defense of the state. As soon as the board was established, the delegates quickly turned to electing officers for the board. The vote for the major general was almost unanimous for Mississippi’s senior U.S. senator, Jefferson Davis. A West Point graduate who, as a colonel, had led the First Mississippi Infantry in the Mexican War, Davis received eighty-eight votes, with Reuben Davis and Earl Van Dorn each receiving one. The voting for the four brigadier generals was more lengthy. No one received a majority on the first two ballots, but Van Dorn was elected on the third. Charles Clark took the second position on the fifth ballot, with James L. Alcorn receiving the third slot on the sixth ballot. Christopher H. Mott was the fourth brigadier, elected on the eighth ballot.

22

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

Soon these men met and began formulating the military policy of the state, allowing the secession convention delegates to turn to other duties.35 The Committee on Postal, Financial, and Commercial Affairs also worked on several big issues, including establishing a postal system within the state, setting tariff rates, and deciding how to fund the state’s operations, especially the growing military budget. This last issue was the largest and caused the most debate, dealing as it did with the slavery issue. The convention allowed the governor to borrow money and issue bonds, but the tax issue was hotly debated. An across-the-board tax hike was passed, but James Z. George recommended a larger increase on taxes on slaves, saying, “they had brought on the war and must pay for it.” His effort was soon overshadowed by Samuel J. Gholson’s proposal of an even higher tax rate on slaves. A sly bit of political maneuvering then took place to defeat counteramendments, but the tax increase ultimately failed anyway.36 The convention offered several more resolutions and ordinances to hopefully place its action in the most favorable light with nations as well as other states. The convention unanimously stated “That the people of the State of Mississippi, recognize the right of the free navigation of the Mississippi River for commercial purposes, in time of peace, by all the States occupying its banks, and they are willing to enter into proper stipulations to secure the enjoyment of that right.” The convention obviously hoped their neighbors to the north would be like-minded. A more controversial effort was made to outlaw the slave trade, which brought a vocal protest from James Z. George and eleven other delegates that such a move was not needed. They argued that the resolution was not within the purview of the convention, that it usurped power from the legislature itself, and that it stated basically the same stance chartered by the state legislature, which was the governing legislative body both before the convention met and after it adjourned. George lodged the protest, which did nothing, but the group “obtained leave to have the same [protest] spread upon the Journal of the Convention.”37 The George issue and the slave tax were illustrative of how involved the slavery issue was at the convention. But the delegates were not finished and saw the need to explain their action in a little more detail. On the closing day the convention passed a special “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.” The document “declare[d] the prominent reasons which have induced our course,” and was centered firmly on slavery. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” the document read, “the greatest material interest in the world. . . . [A] blow has long been aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice

23

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.” The delegates went on to say, “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.” Such is convincing evidence of the causes of secession and war.38 It is not clear why the delegates thought they needed to add such a statement, but it reflects their stance on slavery and desire to keep it as a part of life in Mississippi. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” the declaration read in part. A list of abuses by the federal government was included, such as “It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.” Another argument was that the federal government “refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.” Yet another complaint was that “it advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.” Many historians argue, with some validity, that the Civil War was elevated to a crusade over the issue of slavery after the Battle of Antietam and Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in late 1862, but the delegates of the Mississippi secession convention argued that case as early as January 1861.39 With such a bold statement, harkening back to the Declaration of Independence by their forefathers, the Mississippi secession convention ended on January 26. But it had been a tremendously important three weeks. The Mississippi secession convention, in addition to actually taking the state out of the Union, pointed the way for the state in future years and set up the systems and policies that would govern the state through the crisis. In particular, the secession convention highlighted three distinct issues that would play heavily in the future. First, the convention and its debates and results placed Mississippi’s secession firmly on the shoulders of the institution of slavery. The fact that around 85 percent of the delegates were slaveholders, when coupled with the language, rhetoric, and debates of the convention and its commissioners, leaves little doubt about the reasons for secession. Nonslavery proponents have long argued that slavery was little cause for secession and instead argue that states’ rights was the chief reason. The state of Mississippi was indeed acting on its understanding of states’ rights and exercising that endowment in order to secede, but

24

“Then Go Down into Egypt While Herod Reigns in Judea”

a broader and more comprehensive examination of why the state exercised that right is necessary to understand the work of the convention. If the delegation, debates, and rhetoric of the state’s commissioners sent to other states were not enough, then the curious “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union” added all the evidence that was needed. The defense of slavery was the reason Mississippi seceded.40 Second, the results of the convention highlighted a fairly high degree of Unionism within the state that, given hard times, would only grow. In addition to setting the basic parameters of why the state was seceding and going to war, the secession convention likewise displayed disunity among Mississippians as to what course of action should be taken. Despite President Barry’s rhetoric regarding opposition that “a stiff limb and a strong rope vigorously applied will prove a panacea for the infection,” there were many in the state who did not agree. Many have long touted the almost “unanimous” action of the convention because nearly all delegates signed the ordinance. Still, two of the men did not sign, but a much more realistic breakdown is shown in the eighty-four to fifteen vote on the ordinance. But that vote does not do full justice to the opposition within the convention; Unionists Alcorn and Brooke voted for final passage. On some critical votes on amending the ordinance itself, the opposition reached as much as 30 percent, especially with Brooke’s referendum amendment, which garnered twenty-nine votes. There were still other less important votes that were split roughly half and half. That the president-elect as preordained by the caucus of secessionists that met prior to the opening of the convention had to wait through three ballots to be elected shows that a high level of opposition was present, even if it was not united enough (the opposition votes on the first two ballots were split among several candidates) to make a major difference. The net result shows a convention securely in the hands of the secessionists, but with a surprising number of Unionists and wavering secessionists also present. Most important, that substantial minority would become the core of Unionism in the state during the war, leading a significant backlash against the Confederacy and gaining more converts as harder times swept over the state.41 Third, and perhaps most important, the secession convention’s most significant contribution to the war-bound state, besides taking it out of the Union, was to set in place a mechanism for running all of Mississippi’s governmental offices, branches, and units. The convention worked to amend the state constitution and in fact became primarily the major governing body within the state, circumventing both the governor and the legislature. It even passed an

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

amendment to the constitution that abrogated any laws or portions of the constitution that were at odds with the rulings of the secession convention. Some delegates protested this gathering of power, but it did little good.42 Thus, with the convention’s important work done, President Barry, set to travel to Montgomery with Harris and the other delegates, gave a brief closing address on January 26. After reminding his audience that more work of the convention would come, namely the ratification of a Confederate constitution once it was shaped, Barry foreshadowed perhaps more than he realized. In congratulating the delegates on “the work of destruction,” he called them to greater efforts. “More is required of the future than has been in the past. . . . What lies before us will test the heroism, the higher, the nobler qualities of our race, inherited from revolutionary sires.” The next four years would indeed test the fortitude of the state’s people, and they would be anything but civil. But in the words of one member of the convention, “the die had been cast.”43

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CHAPTER TWO

“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State” Jefferson Davis’s heart was no doubt heavy when he rose to speak in the U.S. Senate on that chilly January 21, 1861. “I rise, Mister President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that . . . my functions are terminated here.” Davis spoke to a chamber full of senators and spectators. “I am sure I feel no hostility to you Senators from the North,” he stated, but that did not stop him from resigning his seat and returning to Mississippi in the days after his state had seceded from the Union. Mississippi’s other senator and congressmen did likewise, all returning home to take various posts in the new state and Confederate governments. Davis, of course, would get the prized position of president, garnering for Mississippi the highest office in the Confederacy. Most Mississippians left the capital joyfully, but Davis later confided that he saw ahead “troubles and thorns innumerable.”1 Despite Davis’s pessimism in Washington, Mississippi’s state government in Jackson began the war with high tones of sovereignty and masculine rhetoric. But few if any histories of Mississippi’s Civil War have dealt with the state government’s function during the war. Bits and pieces appear in such seminal works as Bettersworth’s studies on the state and even in more modern works. Some military histories touch on the state government as well, but none look exclusively at the state’s officials and the role they played in the war and in governing Mississippi during the conflict. A comprehensive and thorough examination of the state government during the Civil War, however, can offer insight not only into the home front but also into the causes and effects of defeat. An analysis of the function of Mississippi’s state government during the war can show us just how hard it worked, yet how futile the attempt was. Such exploration can also show in graphic form the decline of the government’s ability to wage war and simultaneously care for its people. Thus a study of the deterioration of the state’s political systems and its officials, including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, in conjunction with the concurrent decline of

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

the military means, the economy, and the state’s infrastructure, illustrates just how broken the state became during the war. Any examination of Mississippi’s wartime political efforts must begin with the secession convention that took the state out of the Union. It was there that the initial political structure was erected, and the political events that occurred later in the war resulted from the foundation put in place by the convention. One of the first efforts was to alter the state’s constitution, handled appropriately by the Committee on the State Constitution. This group returned an ordinance that was approved on January 26, 1861. The vast majority of the changes were to remove the words “United States” from the document. Amendment after amendment stipulated that those words “be stricken out.” There was also some change regarding the state’s representation in Congress. Adding a blanket statement that assumed for the convention enormous power, however, the delegates stipulated that anything else in the state constitution that did not agree with the convention’s work would be “abrogated and annulled to the extent of such conflict, but no farther.”2 The convention likewise passed an ordinance dealing with citizenship in the state. The Committee on Citizenship in Mississippi passed an ordinance on January 26 that made all whites “domiciled within the State” on January 9, the date of secession, citizens of the state. It went on to utilize the naturalization laws of the United States in such cases, but with the stipulation that citizens’ “oath of allegiance shall be taken to the State of Mississippi instead of the United States.” It also limited such naturalization to “free white persons born within the limits of the United States.”3 By far, the most pressing political matter was the state’s role in the upcoming convention of seceded states called for early February in Montgomery, Alabama. On January 22, the convention passed an ordinance written by the Committee on a Southern Confederacy that laid out the process by which Mississippi would enter into a new Confederacy. The ordinance allowed for the election of delegates to represent the state and contained instructions for those delegates. It also worked out the ratification of the new Confederate constitution by the convention, not the people of the state, which one member described as “the great question of the body.”4 The convention elected its delegates the very next day, January 23, without a nomination process. Needing a majority of the votes to win election, Wiley P. Harris was the only delegate chosen on the first ballot. Walker Brooke and William S. Wilson won election on the second ballot; Alexander M. Clayton on the third ballot; and James T. Harrison, President Barry, and Josiah A. P. Campbell on the sixth ballot. The ordinance admonished the delegates to push for a provisional government as soon as possible. Knowing some type of government

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

would be set up, the convention also stipulated that the sitting congressional delegation from the state in the U.S. Congress would automatically become the congressional delegation to the new Confederate Congress.5 When the convention adjourned on January 26, the elected delegation made its way to Montgomery, where it met with those from the other seceding states. Led by Harris, who became a major figure in the deliberations in Montgomery, the Mississippi group was described by some as “the most bragartish” of the delegations. Nevertheless, they pushed for a quick establishment of a government along the lines of the U.S. Constitution. Harris was especially fervent in his arguments about haste. He and the other Mississippians were also quite vocal, and ultimately successful, in their effort to elect Mississippi’s favorite son Jefferson Davis as provisional president of the new Confederacy. Years later, Harris would remember that he “contributed to the selection of Colonel Davis as the Provisional president by the Provisional congress. I was on the committee which drafted the Constitution of the Confederate States and also in the sub-committee.” With their work in Montgomery done, the successful Mississippians returned home to Jackson to report to the full convention, which had been recalled to deal with these further developments.6 Upon the call of President Barry, the Mississippi secession convention met again on March 25 at the capitol to ratify the Confederate constitution and to make any necessary revisions to be in line with the state’s new status as a member of the Confederate States of America. Only fifty-nine members met for this session, however, some of them having already gone away to organize companies for the perceived war effort. The major duty was to ratify the Confederate constitution, which was done on March 29. On March 30, the convention changed its representation in the provisional Confederate Congress from its sitting U.S. Congress delegation to its delegation to the Montgomery convention, with the exception of William Wilson. The convention approved a new flag and a coat of arms for the state on that day, as well as the transfer of Mississippi troops to the Confederate national service. The delegation also thanked the people of the state for their “prompt response” to the call for troops, which, they said, “deserves the highest commendation.” By March 30, the convention’s work was done, and President Barry dismissed the members with a word of thanks for “the great work for which you were assembled.” He assured the members that their work had been momentous, and “no man here need blush to the latest moment of his life.” Then he declared the convention adjourned sine die.7 With the secession convention’s permanent adjournment, politics in the state reverted back to the governor and legislature. The national political officers now reported for work first in Montgomery and then in Richmond rather

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

than in Washington. The state’s congressional delegation, at first silent in Washington assuming secession and then vocal in Montgomery and Richmond, worked hard in the state’s interests. Members such as Senators Albert Gallatin Brown, James Phelan, and John W. C. Watson and Representatives Ethelbert Barksdale, John J. McRae, Reuben Davis, and Otho R. Singleton, among others, held offices resulting from elections by the people in the case of representatives and the legislature in the case of senators.8 By far, the person with the most power over Mississippi’s politics was the state’s governor, of which Mississippi had two during the Civil War. The most famous and indeed the most critical was the first, John J. Pettus, who served two terms from November 1859 to November 1863. It was during Pettus’s terms that the state seceded, mobilized for war, was invaded, lost its capital, and was virtually taken out of the war. Charles Clark served the remaining years of the war as governor, but he oversaw a continually dying state throughout the final two years. By the time Clark came to office, there was little chance Mississippi and the Confederacy would win their independence.9 John Jones Pettus was a curious character who, like Davis as president of the Confederacy, was not altogether hailed as the best choice to lead the state in probably the most critical hours of its history. Pettus had been born in Wilson County, Tennessee, in 1813, but had moved to Kemper County, Mississippi, as a young man. There he rose to some wealth and distinction, owning a small plantation and around twenty slaves. He also became involved in the state’s politics, gaining election to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1846 and serving two years. In 1848 he was elected to the Mississippi Senate, where he remained until 1858. It was in his duty as president of the senate that he served as governor of the state for five days upon the resignation of Governor Henry S. Foote in 1854. Pettus held the office until the newly elected governor was inaugurated.10 Pettus ran for the governorship in October 1859 as an ardent secessionist and fire-eater, and he won amid the cloud of war forming all around the state. His inauguration took place on November 21, 1859, and he immediately began to move toward secession. He led the legislature in beginning to arm the state and in November 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, pushed the legislature to call a secession convention. With secession and the coming of war, Pettus began his tenure as a war governor.11 Not everyone was impressed with Pettus. He was seen as a rough-hewn backwoodsman; one English visitor described him as a “grim, tall, angular man [who] seemed to me such a development of public institutions in the South.” The visitor went on to wonder “within myself what manner of men they must be in the State of Mississippi when Mr. Pettus is their chosen Governor.” As an

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

example, the Englishman told how Pettus spit “a portentous plug of tobacco just outside the spittoon, with the air of a man who wished to show he could have hit the center if he liked.” The visitor’s description of the governor’s office was not much better. “The apartment was surrounded with some common glass cases,” he noted, “containing papers and old volumes of books; the furniture, a table or desk, and a few chairs and a ragged carpet; the glass in the windows cracked and broke; the walls and ceiling discolored by mildew.”12 In addition to the English visitor and Unionists who banded together at the secession convention to form an anti-Pettus party, other Mississippians were also less than thrilled with Pettus’s leadership. Horace S. Fulkerson, an arms agent trying to sell Pettus Belgian rifles early in the war, remembered, “Gov. Pettus was unquestionably a man of parts.” He was “a thinker, a man of strong and decided convictions, but not a man of affairs, in my judgement. He was too slow, too inapprehensive, too unimaginative for a war Governor.” Fulkerson’s account by itself might have simply resulted from the fact that Pettus was not quick to buy his guns and thus help him make money, but other contemporaries described Pettus in the same manner. Samuel G. French, a Confederate major general during the war and Mississippi’s first chief of ordnance early in the war, also told of Pettus being hard-headed and too singularly focused on certain issues. As French pushed for arming the state, Pettus was slow and methodical, causing French to wonder about his leadership qualities. French told of a plan Pettus had for arming the state’s militia with shotguns donated by the people. “He would ‘o’nights’ come to my room and tell me long yarns about how his father, or grandfather, once with a party armed with shotguns loaded with buckshot waylaid a band of Indians, and killed them all,” French related. He continued: “Elated with this legendary story, he wanted his army to be supplied with shotguns, so that he might annihilate the pestiferous Yankees, should they invade his domain.” French could only joke at the “wonderful collection of antique weapons as came in for the governor.” Reuben Davis also wrote of Pettus being lethargic. At one point in his memoirs he wrote that “Governor Pettus hesitated, but I persuaded him to adopt our measures.” At another point he wrote, “I also sent Governor Pettus a scolding by telegraph, because he had failed to send supplies and money.” Even Pettus’s private secretary complained of him: “He is so busy—from the fact that it takes him always to do a little thing—that I can scarcely catch him when he is not engaged at something.” The anti-Pettus Jackson Daily Mississippian was more brutal: “The fact is the Governor has fallen into the strange hallucination that he is a great man.”13 Pettus was especially prickly with his state’s sovereignty. French wrote about a couple of petty episodes in which the governor tried to assert his authority over Confederate officials. One day, Pettus, French, and Wiley P. Harris were in

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

the governor’s office in the capitol when in came a couple of scraggly escapees from a military prison. They told the governor they had been put under guard by a Confederate general in Tennessee and had escaped. Pettus told them, “Go back to your company, and tell Gen. [Gideon] Pillow that, notwithstanding you have been mustered into the Confederate service, you are by fiction of law supposed to be in the State of Mississippi, and still in my command, and not subject to his orders.” French also told of a company of infantrymen, armed with state rifles, who intended to go to Virginia. Pettus learned of the plan and ordered the company to turn over their rifles before they left the state. French officially told the commander the order would have to be obeyed, but unofficially told him to put his men on the next train leaving that night and be out of Pettus’s jurisdiction before anything could happen. French likewise was not appreciative of Pettus’s war plan, which was to “invite the enemy to invade the ‘sacred soil of Mississippi’ to gratify his desire to ambush them and kill them with shotguns.” French argued the plan “would have been ruinous to the Confederate cause” and noted that, unfortunately, Pettus got his wish in 1863.14 Although Pettus and his successor could be prickly at times about states’ rights, most often in regard to Mississippi’s state troops’ relationship to Confederate units and commanders, their actions never reached the levels of Joseph Brown of Georgia or Zebulon Vance of North Carolina. In reality, probably because the Confederate president was a Mississippian himself, Pettus never really quarreled with Davis to that level, and as a result, states’ rights was not as major an issue in Mississippi as it was elsewhere. Thus, while some historians argue that states’ rights was the death knell of the Confederacy, Mississippi’s preeminent historian John K. Bettersworth argues that historians should, “at least where Mississippi is concerned, beware of exaggerating the work of this evil genius in bringing about the ultimate collapse.”15 Pettus’s initial war actions caused an outcry and backlash against him, even among his own Democrats, during early preparations for his reelection in late 1861. Of particular disgust to the people of the state was Pettus’s calling of several regiments to organize themselves for war. The men had initially, after joining, been allowed to return home to plant their crops in the spring. Pettus then called them together in the summer and fall, during harvest time. Rueben Davis, one of Pettus’s chief lieutenants, remembered that “the order was denounced as an act of the most useless and wicked extravagance.” He also noted that “Governor Pettus and I were held responsible, and cursed with great heartiness from one end of the State to the other.” Obviously, there was in mid1861, immediately after First Manassas, a general feeling among Mississippians and Confederates that the war was nearly over and that large numbers of troops would not be needed. Such a feeling disappeared by the late fall, however, when

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

Federal movements began to occur and calls for more men to meet the crises developed. Davis remembered, “Our vindication had come at last,” and Pettus was able to win a second term fairly easily over former secretary of the interior Jacob Thompson in the October 1861 election. Thompson was actually not much of a threat, and Pettus’s only other real opponent had been detailed by the governor out of state, easily nullifying his candidacy.16 In addition to worrying about his reelection in the fall of 1861, Pettus also had personal issues that took his mind away from pressing matters of state. Foremost among these was the death of his son John at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in Virginia in September. Pettus also remarried in the summer of 1861, right in the midst of arming the state, running for reelection, and prosecuting a war. His first wife, Pamelia Winston Pettus, had died in the 1850s, leaving the governor with several children to raise. Pettus courted Susan Potts and married her on August 21, 1861.17 Pettus’s chief ally in guiding the state through the war was the legislature, with which he worked closely to defend the state and care for its people. Led by the president of the Senate, James Drane, and Speakers of the House William Lake, J. P. Scales, and Lock E. Houston, the Mississippi legislature was much busier than normal during the four years of war. Typically meeting only once every two years in November of each odd year, the Mississippi legislature now met a total of nine times instead of two between January 1861 and May 1865.18 The governor called the extra sessions only for specific purposes. The first of these called sessions was in January 1861, simultaneous with the secession convention. Calling the meeting for only a short time, January 15–22, Governor Pettus explained the reasons he “convened the Legislature in extraordinary session.” “Regarding it certain that the Convention, which is now in session, would dissolve the connection between the State of Mississippi and the United States,” he said, the change demanded “much ordinary legislation necessary to harmonize the statute law with the amended Constitution.” Trying to put the times in historical context, the governor told the legislators, “You meet under perplexing and novel circumstances, such as never surrounded any former session of the Legislature of this State.”19 Pettus then went on to explain what was happening and what needed to be done. He informed the legislature of efforts he had taken to arm and defend the state, asking that they “judge leniently the [extraordinary] acts of an Executive officer placed in so novel and trying positions.” The governor recommended that the legislature pass “more stringent laws . . . for the punishment of [the] crime of exciting Insurrection,” declaring that “law and order must prevail, or there is no safety for the ship,” on which, he said, they had “embarked upon a stormy sea.” Pettus also recommended some type of legislation that assured the

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

“people of the Northwestern States, that peaceful commerce on the Mississippi River will be neither interrupted [n]or annoyed by the authorities or people of Mississippi,” which the secession convention had already passed despite the fact that Pettus’s gunners had already shot at one Northern vessel as it passed Vicksburg. Still, Pettus was gearing up for war, ending his message with the admonition that “there will then be nothing left for Mississippi but to lay her lance in rest and cry God defend the Right.”20 The legislature responded with numerous bills that the governor signed into law. Chief among them was a bill to amend the state constitution as well as a plethora of relief actions for individual citizens. Among other bills was one that revised the 1860 military system of the state and another that prevented suits against “Southern soldiers.” The body also acknowledged the kindness of neighboring Louisiana in providing arms and ammunition for the state.21 It did not take long for the changes wrought by the war to necessitate a new session of the legislature, however, and Pettus called the members together again in late July 1861 to handle some pressing business that had developed over the spring and summer. Pettus reported the war going well, all four months of it, and he had good reason to say so considering the stunning news of a Confederate victory near Manassas Junction in Virginia just a few days earlier. “It affords me pleasure to announce to you that the revolution which you inaugurated last fall, has so far been prosperous and successful,” he told the members of the legislature.22 There was pressing business that had developed, however, and Pettus wanted the legislature to act quickly to relieve the situation. Most of the desired legislation was on the economic front. Pettus wanted an extension on payments to creditors to allow some time for those who owed money and were unable to pay because the blockade had shut off their income. He also wanted a tax increase to “to meet the extraordinary demands on the State Treasury.” “I can see no reasonable objection to this mode of increasing the revenue,” Pettus argued.23 The legislature, which met from July 25 to August 6, generally complied with Pettus’s requests; legislators levied a tax through the local “Boards of Police” so that each county supplied military clothing and equipment for its own men. The body also passed Pettus’s recommendation that all court proceedings regarding debts and contracts be postponed until twelve months after the war ended. This law, in effect, removed much of the workload from the judicial system of the state, leaving mostly criminal cases to adjudicate. The legislature also began to retrench in fiscal matters, cutting the funding for the state’s Geological Survey and adjutant general, for example. Other matters included beginning “Military instruction” at the state university and dividing the state into seven congressional districts.24 34

“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

The regularly scheduled session of the state legislature, fresh off the October elections in 1861, met in Jackson on November 4 and remained in session until January 29, 1862. After attending the funeral of Colonel Erasmus R. Burt, the state’s auditor who was killed in action in Virginia, the members of the legislature once more heard from the governor. This time the news was not as good as earlier. Pettus made several recommendations, including fixing the bad law they had passed in July levying a tax on each county to fund the war. Pettus argued that some poor counties that had many troops in the army were paying a much greater ratio than some richer counties with fewer troops. He noted that the law “operates unequally, and in some cases oppressively,” and recommended changing the quota to the state level instead of by individual counties. Pettus also recommended legislation that would allow cotton to be used as cash for bartering as well as paying taxes, and called on the legislature to prod the Confederate Congress to set up some type of national monetary system. Pettus called for repairing the state house and revamping the state’s military system. He argued that the state Military Board had run its course in “organizing and putting troops in the field,” and recommended “a less expensive and less complicated system of the administration of the Military affairs of the State.”25 In a regular session that included Pettus’s inauguration for his second term as governor on November 18, the legislature passed a military bill that ended the Military Board and set up a new system of electing the state’s general officers. The legislators also passed a bill authorizing the use of the “cotton money” Pettus had asked for and chartering the Bank of Jackson to issue the notes. The legislature approved $5 million in cotton notes, which were advanced toward the next cotton crop at five cents a pound. There was also a stipulation for a “military fund” of $2.5 million worth of treasury notes funded by bonds payable in ten years at 8 percent interest. Both the cotton money and military money were printed in Memphis. Pettus later applauded the work, saying it was “for the relief of the people and for supplying a sound circulating medium for the State,” and that it “accomplished all that its most sanguine friends expected.” In reality, the law made the cotton money the new currency in the state. Other legislative action included filling a vacated congressional seat, repairing the governor’s mansion, and even providing relief for “certain free persons of color, known as the Clark family.” Pettus saw fit, however, to veto a bill that chartered more currency issuing banks.26 The next scheduled session of the legislature was not for two years, but Governor Pettus called another special session in December 1862. By this time the war was drawing closer to the state’s borders, and the situation had become graver. Between the end of the regular session in January 1862 and the special session in December 1862, a portion of the state had been overrun. The Federals had defeated a grand Confederate concentration and offensive under 35

THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh, where Johnston himself had fallen. Then Corinth and its railroad crossing fell, as did Memphis. The Federal navy paid a visit to Vicksburg but was unsuccessful in taking it. A Confederate attempt to retake Corinth failed in the fall, and the Federals moved toward Vicksburg with masses of infantry in December. Governor Pettus was not exaggerating when he told the legislature, “Since your last session, Mississippi has become the theater of war. . . . Three sides of the State were exposed to the Northern plunderer.”27 There was some good news Pettus had to offer, however: the enemy repulse at Vicksburg, the gunboat Arkansas’s clearing of the river of Federal shipping for a time, and the sinking of “the foremost of their gunboat fleet,” the USS Cairo, which Pettus described as “a shattered wreck at the bottom of the Yazoo River.” Still, the governor had gloomy news for the legislature, admitting, “The struggle is now for her existence as a State.” He called the special session, Pettus informed the legislators, “for the consideration of matters of vital interest to the safety of the State.”28 With the wave of war now sweeping onto and over some portions of Mississippi, Pettus called for the maximum effort to repel the invaders. “I recommend that the entire white male population of the State from sixteen to sixty years of age, be enrolled in the militia, and that such as are deemed able to go into active service be called at once,” he counseled. He envisioned half of the militia in active service, with the other half going into a “reserve” that could be called on in times of necessity and could form into local defense companies that could patrol their home counties “and thus give a feeling of security to the people.” He also touched on the delicate issue of desertions, speaking of “the hundreds who are absent without leave, or on expired furloughs, or have recovered from disability and are now able to return to duty.” A contingent problem was law enforcement officers at home who were not rounding these men up and returning them to service. Pettus called for stringent measures to cause the “sheriffs, magistrates and constables” to catch and return these soldiers. “Heavy penalties, extending to even the dismissal from office,” should be punishment for those who refused to do so, Pettus declared. He also wanted a law that disfranchised anyone who failed to perform his military duties.29 Betraying the darkening situation in the state, Pettus also called for relief for the people themselves, particularly soldiers’ families. “Owing to the drought of the past season,” Pettus warned, “the number of destitute families will be greatly increased.” He called on the legislature to support these families, even going so far as authorizing the governor to conscript slaves from plantations to haul salt, corn, and wheat to the interior portions of the state. The transportation system was already weakened to the point that these areas of the state

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

were not getting enough commodities, he said, and that meant “putting the means of living beyond the reach of many of our poor citizens.” Obviously, Pettus painted a darkening picture of affairs in the state in December 1862, but he hoped remedies passed by the legislature might alleviate some of the people’s sufferings. And he still felt assured of military success. “I have an abiding confidence,” Pettus declared, “that, after a few months more of suffering and trials, the God who loves justice and rewards devotion, will bless our land with independence and peace.”30 Meeting between December 17, 1862, and January 3, 1863, even as Ulysses S. Grant was making his way southward toward the capital and William T. Sherman was landing near Vicksburg, the legislature responded with numerous bills, including a law allowing Pettus to issue over $1 million in treasury notes. The body also passed a militia law in which all males between the ages of eighteen and fifty were declared a part of the militia, with those eighteen to forty years of age being summoned to camps for training. The legislature also passed laws that allowed army officers to arrest deserters, to spur the production of arms, and to impress slaves for military efforts. The diligent legislature even met in full session on both Christmas and New Year’s days.31 There was one particularly special day during this legislative session— December 26, 1862. It was on that day that not only the Confederate departmental commander, Joseph E. Johnston, attended the body, but so also did the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Davis and Johnston were on a tour of the western theater, making several stops in Mississippi such as at Vicksburg and Grenada, where they met with the local commander, John C. Pemberton. On their way back through Jackson, Johnston merely tendered his thanks for the invitation to speak while Davis addressed the legislature for an hour and fifteen minutes. Davis told his friends: After an absence of nearly two years I again find myself among those who, from the days of my childhood, have ever been the trusted objects of my affections, those for whose good I have ever striven, and whose interest I have sometimes hoped I may have contributed to subserve. Whatever fortunes I may have achieved in life have been gained as a representative of Mississippi, and before all, I have labored for the advancement of her glory and honor. I now, for the first time in my career, find myself the representative of a wider circle of interest; but a circle in which the interests of Mississippi are still embraced.32 The first few months of 1863 looked brighter for Mississippi, with the Jackson Daily Mississippian editorializing that “our independence is an established

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fact, and the strength of our vengeful foe is very nearly spent.” Indeed, Sherman had been driven back from the Vicksburg area, and Grant had been blunted in his sweep southward through the center of the state. Numerous other threats had been parried in the first three or four months of the year. The tide turned, however, in April and May. First, a cavalry raid swept through the state in April, Pettus telling the legislature that “the State had been traversed from one end to the other.” Then came the big blow. Ulysses S. Grant put the Union Army of the Tennessee across the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg and began to fight and march his way northward toward Vicksburg, Jackson, and the railroad that linked the two. A befuddled John Pemberton was caught completely off guard and had little to offer Grant in terms of opposition. An aghast Jefferson Davis in Richmond sent Joseph E. Johnston back to Jackson from middle Tennessee to deal with the situation.33 Matters were already out of hand, however. John C. Pemberton sent word to Pettus on May 2 that the capital city was in danger. “I think it would be well to remove the State archives from Jackson,” Pemberton wrote. “The enemy has or is crossing nearly his whole force. It is likely he will move on Jackson.” An alarmed Pettus ordered the various departments to begin packing that day, but watched through the next few days as the enemy drew closer and closer. On May 3 he called for “five hundred negroes” for a week “to fortify the city of Jackson,” stating that he was calling on the “patriotism of the people” to provide the laborers, and that “the names of those who fail to respond to this appeal will be handed to me.” The mayor and aldermen of Jackson also called on the citizens to form into companies and serve in the city’s defense. By May 5, Governor Pettus had seen enough to give orders for all the state departments to have their records ready to move within “half an hour’s notice.” He also issued a proclamation to the state’s people, calling on them to assemble together in militia companies to repel the invader. “Recent events, familiar to you all,” Pettus wrote, “impel me, as your Chief Magistrate, to appeal to your patriotism for united effort in expelling our enemies from the soil of Mississippi.” He further urged, “Let no man capable of bearing arms with hold from his State his services,” declaring those who did would “hereafter wear the disgraceful badge of the dastardly traitor who refused to defend his home and country.” Pettus called for all citizens to meet in their counties and organize into companies, sending their “musket rolls” to the governor’s office for orders. “Awake, then— arouse, Mississippians, young and old, from your fertile plains, your beautiful towns and cities, your once quiet and happy but now desecrated homes, come and join your brothers in arms,” he called.34 Despite such rhetoric, the government began evacuating the capital on May 6. Absalom M. West reported to his wife that he and the governor planned

38

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to leave the city for Meridian on May 6 and that “the people [were] in a perfect panic.” The preparations were chaotic to say the least, one observer noting in his diary, “the people despondent and alarmed.” The actual evacuation was not much better. Luther Baechtel, a clerk in the Treasury Department, accounted in his diary that the train on which those in the Treasury Department rode jumped track three times on the way to Meridian. Meanwhile back near the capital, a small fight at Raymond, just south of Jackson, on May 12 and the Federals’ subsequent arrival at Jackson on May 14 confirmed to Pettus that he had been correct in ordering the evacuation. The governor later described the situation: “The advance of heavy columns of the enemy upon the city of Jackson . . . , at a time when we had no adequate force for its protection, rendered it necessary, in my opinion, to remove the archives and public property of the State, as far as I was able, from Jackson.”35 In this “confused state of public affairs,” Pettus and the Confederate commanders removed all they could from the capital, including the archives and the treasury. The state’s treasury went to Mobile, Alabama; judicial records were removed to Selma, Alabama; the archives went to Demopolis, Alabama. The state’s military equipment remained in state, being sent to Meridian. Considering the chaos, it was a remarkable withdrawal. The quartermaster general, in fact, reported that “we have been quite fortunate in saving nearly everything with the exception of a few articles of camp and garrison equipage, and sacks, and some office furniture.” Before he left, General Johnston destroyed all cotton in the city, as well as what rolling stock of the Mississippi Central Railroad that could not be saved. The state penitentiary was the major problem. The superintendent told Pettus there were twenty-five inmates who were “unfriendly to our cause” and would join the Federals if they had the chance, they being “Lincolnites of the deepest dye.” Pettus contacted the governor of Alabama and sent the prisoners to Wetumpka. The few prisoners who said they would fight for the Confederacy received a pardon from Pettus and were mustered into service. The remaining prisoners, some too old to fight, were “turned out without pardon.”36 As feared, Jackson fell to the Federals on May 14. Pettus had few troops, mostly one state four-gun battery and a motley assortment of militia, to defend the city, and Joseph E. Johnston and what Confederate regulars he could gather had fallen back with hardly a fight. Pettus and the government thus left their capital to the Federals, who quickly took control. Moving as swiftly as possible, Captains Cornelius Cadle and Lucien B. Martin, staff officers in Marcellus M. Crocker’s Federal division, climbed atop the capitol and unfurled a U.S. flag on its copper dome. Their commander was justifiably proud. These two officers, he reported, “planted the flag of the Fifty-ninth Indiana on the dome of

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

the capitol of the State of Mississippi.” Crocker’s explanation was unneeded, however. Anyone gazing that day at the capitol, the very building in which the secession ordinance had been passed just two and a half years earlier, knew what it meant. Jackson had fallen. The state government was on the run.37 General Grant himself signed the register at the Bowman House and occupied the room Johnston had used the night before. In the state house, the Thirty-first Iowa camped in the senate chamber while other soldiers occupied and held a mock session of the legislature in the very house chamber where the ordinance of secession had been passed and where Jefferson Davis himself had addressed the legislature just a few months previously. They passed legislation to pay Federal soldiers with Confederate money. Most units were not so fortunate, and had to live and work out of doors. A member of the Thirtieth Illinois wrote home that his regiment camped in the “Public Square at Jackson Miss.” The Federals appointed a military governor of the city and placed a brigade as provost guard, their commander setting up shop in the state house. Troops destroyed railroads, bridges, Confederate warehouses and factories, and the penitentiary. The state’s Institute for the Blind was “greatly injured by the shot and shell during the investment and bombardment of the city, and [was] entirely destitute of furniture, or movables of any kind.” The Lunatic Asylum was also damaged. Individual family dwellings were sacked, with some of Jackson’s foreign families suffering as well, including a “subject of Victoria Queen of Great Britain and Ireland” who lost his cotton despite his “strict neutrality.” A French family was likewise harassed, telling one observer “they had been much ill-treated, notwithstanding their French nationality.” “They showed me their broken furniture, and they assured me that they had been robbed of everything of value,” he noted. In all, English traveler Arthur Fremantle described the city as “a miserable wreck” and having “a deplorable aspect.” Fortunately, the governor’s mansion and state capitol were not destroyed.38 The Federals ultimately left Jackson and went to Vicksburg. Governor Pettus and at least a portion of the state government, though not all, returned to Jackson in early June and resumed work at the capitol, although Pettus insisted that he was a target of the Federals and crossed the Pearl River each night to camp in safety on the east side. There were other Confederates in the city as well, including Joseph E. Johnston and his army intending to relieve Vicksburg. It was during this time that the famous Bowman House burned, almost taking the life of Louisiana general and later governor Henry W. Allen, who was staying in the hotel at the time. From Jackson, Pettus watched in horror as Vicksburg’s time drew short and the city then surrendered on July 4. An uninformed Jefferson Davis inquired as late as July 8 about the fate of Vicksburg, and Pettus wrote a gloomy note in cipher on July 9, saying, “Garrison at Vicksburg

40

“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

capitulated on the 4th for want of provisions.” He explained that the men would be paroled and exchanged, and then made a bold statement: if the exchange could be done rapidly and arms could be procured, Pettus said, “Mississippi may yet be saved.” Obviously, the governor had his doubts.39 When members of the state workforce returned to the capital city, they realized that the decision to move the seat of government had been a good one. Nearly everything was either destroyed or heavily damaged. One Treasury Department clerk remembered the scene in his boarding room, which he had locked before he left, naively hoping that such precaution would keep the enemy out. “The Yankees broke into my room, broke open the boxes, [and] stole my flute,” he reported, along with other articles such as a case of drafting instruments, clothes, and boots. They left only his books, which were badly damaged. Although Jackson was not capable of serving as the capital, Pettus did remove and salvage as much of the remaining state property as he could. His men salvaged a steam engine and some copper, which he sent to a manufacturing plant to use in making percussion caps.40 Unfortunately for Pettus and the Confederacy, the Federals were on their way back to Jackson in mid-July, after capturing Vicksburg. The governor again evacuated the city, this time for good. Confederate reinforcements arriving in Jackson took exception to the governor’s flight, one writing, “We found the Governor’s family gone, his mansion deserted, the entire machinery of his government removed, and we, who had come well nigh a thousand miles to assist in defending that government, were left without the assistance, support, countenance, or even the presence of its head.” But Pettus’s departure was a wise move, for right on his heels was the Federal army, which retook possession of the city in mid-July after a small fight in which one Federal general reported to his wife, “we threw a thousand shells into Jackson.” Entering the city, the Federal generals had a “beautiful supper and union of the generals of this army” at the governor’s mansion, according to William T. Sherman, while causing more destruction before removing to permanent quarters at Vicksburg. Pettus was so wary of the proximity of the enemy at Vicksburg that he would not send the government back again. He first established a temporary capital at Enterprise, then moved on to Meridian, and finally to Macon, where he found “the convenience of suitable buildings for offices.” Portions of the state government also operated out of Columbus during the remainder of the war.41 When the state legislature met again in regular session in November 1863, it did so in Columbus “on account of the exposed condition of the city of Jackson.” Not surprisingly, Pettus had grim news. “Mississippi has been made the theatre of a continued war,” he told the legislature, and went on to describe the damage. “A large portion of her territory has been overrun by the Federal army,

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

and much of her property has been destroyed and large quantities carried away.” The capture of Jackson and having his government on the run seemed to take something out of Pettus. No longer did he tell the legislature that victory was assured; he ended his message with, “May God who favors the just cause and blesses with success fidelity, patriotism, and courage, preside over your deliberations and direct your council.”42 Pettus also relayed to the legislature a list of items that needed the body’s attention. One concerned buying horses to mount militia. With the recent cavalry raids through the state, the governor believed “that Mississippi can be protected only by mounted men.” Another item was to “prevent the negro men from falling into the hands of the Federal authorities.” Pettus lectured the legislature: “Every able-bodied negro man that falls into the hands of the enemy is not only a laborer lost to the country in the production of supplies for the support of our armies in the field, but he is also, under the present policy of the United States government, a soldier gained to its army.” Pettus wanted a law that removed these able-bodied slaves from “more exposed districts of the State,” with compensation to the owner. Pettus also wanted an extension of the militia law that had been passed at the last session, despite opposition to it from “a part of the press of the State.” The governor warned of the dire situation confronting the state and recommended that “no consideration of dollars and cents should stand in the way of the amplest preparation.”43 Part of Pettus’s pessimism could have been the result of his two terms being up. As soon as the legislature opened its session, the new governor was inaugurated. Pettus seemed to be sad upon leaving his post, mentioning “this my last message” to the legislature. Still, Pettus would not give up and later entered the service of the state as a soldier. The reins of power, however, had been transferred to a new leader, Charles Clark.44 Clark was everything Pettus was not. While Pettus was a semicommon man, Clark was a member of the elite class. While Pettus was a civilian, Clark was a general. Pettus was dogmatic, Clark was careful. Pettus was disorganized, Clark was calculating. In truth, Clark was what the state needed as a wartime governor, but his ascension to the governorship came too late to do much good. By the time he took office in November 1863, the war was decided for all intents and purposes. Clark would basically oversee Pettus’s sinking ship.45 Charles Clark had been born in Cincinnati, but moved to Mississippi at a young age. He served as colonel of the Second Mississippi Infantry during the Mexican War, during which his men presented him Mexican General Santa Anna’s spyglass after his capture. He was one of the original brigadier generals on the Military Board elected by the secession convention. Clark was also a planter, owning a large plantation in Bolivar County. He was also involved

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

in state and national politics, serving in the state legislature and in several national groups, such as a party delegate to nominating conventions. With war, he soon entered Confederate service, rising to the rank of major general. He was wounded at Shiloh leading a division, and was more seriously wounded in the hip at Baton Rouge in August 1862, necessitating the use of crutches. By the fall of 1863, Clark had recovered to the extent that he was able to win the governorship. He defeated Absalom M. West and Reuben Davis, both former Military Board members as well, quite handily in the October 5 election. Clark’s election was seen as a shift toward moderation, away from secessionist Democrats who had held office previously.46 Clark was inaugurated in Columbus on November 16, 1863, with the full legislature in attendance, along with Colonel William S. Barry and his Thirtyfifth Mississippi Infantry, among other troops. But Clark had some problem getting used to the eastern portion of the state, much preferring Jackson as the seat of government. With that impossible, Clark had to live among what he deemed the less hospitable people of the eastern portion of the state, prompting one of his friends to note that if the governor were not in the region, “it would not be a pity for them to have a visit from the Yankees to teach them a lesson. Then they would know how to treat refugees.” Despite such social differences, Clark addressed the legislature in Columbus and frankly admitted the “distressed condition of the State and its people.” Still, he counseled firmness, saying resolution of the conflict was not an option. “There may be those who delude themselves with visions of a reconstructed Union and a restored Constitution,” Clark boiled. “If such there be, let them awake from their dreaming!” In fact, he argued it would be better to die than live in defeat: “let the last of our young men die upon the field of battle, and when none are left to wield a blade or uphold our banner, then let our old men, our women and our children, like the remnant of the heroic Pascagoulas, when their braves were slain, join hands together, march into the sea and perish beneath its waters.” He thus called on the legislature to do all in its power to defend the state. He also called on a higher power: “Let us exert all the powers that God has given us, and humbly, yet confidently, trust to His just Providence for the result.”47 In addition to taking care of the issues surrounding the change in the governor’s office, the legislature, meeting from November 2 to December 9, 1863, at the courthouse in Columbus, had numerous administrative issues with which to deal. The seating of members and the election of officers were two issues, along with the election of Lock E. Houston as Speaker. When Houston left the session at one point due to a family emergency, James L. Alcorn filled in as speaker pro tem. Yet another pressing item was the election of a Confederate senator to represent the state in Richmond. The legislature even took on

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

strategic military work, with one proposed bill advising the state’s representatives in Richmond to call for the removal of John C. Pemberton and Mansfield Lovell from command “so that our army may not hereafter be endangered by their blunders.”48 The legislature turned out a vast array of legislation, mostly relief for individuals. There were several relief bills for larger groups as well, such as the Mississippi State Troops who had surrendered in Vicksburg. There was an even larger overall bill to help the destitute families of soldiers throughout the state. In addition, the legislature funded the repair of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad not only for military purposes but also to help transport goods to the suffering people of the state. Realizing the need for divine intervention, the legislature passed a law creating a “day of fasting, humiliation and prayer.”49 Much of the session’s work dealt with larger economic needs, however, such as amending the charter for the Bank of Jackson as well as several other banks to allow the issuance of currency. In addition, there was a law that allowed an extension of time to collect taxes that were unpaid from earlier fiscal years. The legislature also took care of other items such as establishing the Southern College of Medical Surgery and issuing a “resolution of confidence” in President Davis. Clark had to veto one bill, however, due to an open-ended time period for the charter of the Meridian Manufacturing Company.50 Governor Clark called four special sessions of the legislature before the end of the war. He called the representatives together in March 1864 to discuss mainly economic matters. The session lasted only from March 24 to April 5 and met in Macon at the “Female Institute,” most likely because of Federal activity near Columbus. There, Clark recommended an overhaul of the state’s finances. He reported that the bonds passed in the last session were practically worthless and that taxes had not been collected in several years. He also recommended changes concerning the militia, whiskey production, and repair of the capitol and governor’s mansion in Jackson. The new and perhaps somewhat naive Clark put a positive spin on the war effort, in part because of the turning back of Sherman’s columns in what would become known as the Meridian campaign. Sherman had not actually been turned back; he was simply marching back to Vicksburg. Clark told the legislature that “a brighter day is dawning upon us. The Almighty favors our cause. His arm has lately been manifested in our behalf. He has confounded the counsels of our enemies.”51 The legislature responded with a plethora of bills in this short session, including efforts to fund the treasury notes then in service. In order to relieve suffering, the legislature passed bills to supply salt to the state’s inhabitants and to relieve destitute families. Concerning military matters, the members transferred several state units to Confederate service and amended the state’s

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“The Struggle Is Now for Her Existence as a State”

constitution to allow out-of-state Mississippi soldiers to vote in elections. They also passed legislation authorizing public works, such as a toll bridge across the Pearl River.52 In reality, a brighter day was not dawning, and Clark had no other recourse but to call another special session of the legislature in August 1864. He had bad news on many fronts. The treasury was empty, the number of destitute families was increasing, and efforts to fill the military ranks were failing. “The office of constable has suddenly become desirable,” Clark complained, betraying a waning support of the war among men able to fight. Many of the county officials were exempt from service, and Clark saw what was happening. “A vast number of vacancies in office have been discovered,” he complained, “and no difficulty in finding men to fill them.” Sheriffs, he wrote, “have been besieged by applicants.” The governor wanted a law that said sheriffs could have only one deputy. Still, Clark remained upbeat, telling the legislature, “we may confidently trust our cause to the justice and mercy of the Omnipotent and righteous God, in whom we believe and whom we worship.”53 Meeting from August 3 to 13, 1864, at the Calhoun Institute in Macon, the legislature responded by passing several laws, most of them dealing with people who were destitute. Other issues were also economic in nature, such as authorizing the issuing of more treasury notes, $2 million in state bonds, and new 8 percent bonds for “calling in and taking up the notes issued by law for military defense.” The members also mandated a law “organizing and disciplining the militia,” and repealed its earlier charter for the Bank of Jackson. One act that Governor Clark would not sign dealt with exemptions from military service. The legislature’s law allowed certain ministers who were not pastors of churches, some physicians, and members of local law enforcement to be exempted. Clark thought the law was too liberal and vetoed it, but the legislature overrode his veto.54 Clark had to call still another special session, this time in February 1865. The number of those who were destitute was increasing endlessly, Clark said, and there were many who “have hoarded supplies and will not sell.” The enemy’s raids as well as supplies for the Confederate army had taken so many provisions out of the state that they had “drained the country and raised the prices to fabulous rates.” Additional problems were that transportation in the state was a wreck and that the “public officers, charged with supplying the destitute, are not as vigilant and pertinacious as the speculators.” In addition to the destitute, Clark reported that “the country is filled with deserters and marauders. Crimes are daily committed and the offenders escape punishment.” Times were bad.55 Desperate times called for risky actions, and Clark reported to the legislature that he had attended a meeting of governors in Augusta, Georgia, in

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THE STATE IN MILITARY CONFLICT

October 1864, and that they had decided it was time to arm the slaves. He made it clear, however, that he did not “favor the granting of freedom to slaves or of offering it as a boon.” Although he argued that slaves “can be made effective soldiers,” perhaps Clark knew the end was near. Only supernatural power could save the Confederacy by the spring of 1865, and President Davis himself was not above calling for that action. He called for a “day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, (with thanksgiving) for invoking the favor of Almighty God.” For the first time, however, Clark did not tell the legislature to confidently look toward victory. He simply stated, “let us put our trust in Him, and thus confiding renew the battle.” Perhaps Clark knew it was over.56 The legislature sat in session at the Baptist Church in Columbus from February 20 to March 10, 1865, and passed a number of laws. They made military appropriations, authorized the issuance of $150,000 in treasury notes funded by 8 percent bonds, appropriated money to repair the capitol in Jackson, and called on the Confederate government to pay the troops in the field, something that would raise morale but was also virtually impossible to do. Still, it was clear that the end was near. Resignations innumerable were forwarded to Governor Clark in these days.57 By the time the legislature dismissed in March, the war was indeed almost over. With the surrender of Mississippi’s military department in May, which Governor Clark attended, a major change emerged in the state’s politics. Governor Clark issued a proclamation calling on all Mississippians to reenter the Union peaceably. He also called one more special session of the legislature in May 1865 to facilitate this transfer. Illustrating how destitute the state was that spring, Clark had the state quartermaster general round up supplies and food for the legislators. Despite the effort, and the fact that it was the first meeting of the legislature in Jackson since January 1863, the session lasted less than one hour on May 20, the legislature being broken up by the U.S. Army. Apparently, Governor Clark never had time to give his full address to the legislature, in which he planned to alert the legislators, “We must begin to build anew. A great work is before us; it is upon us.” One observer noted that the legislators, being warned by the Federal officer in charge of the city that warrants for their arrest had been issued, “did not stop to give him a vote of thanks, or even to adjourn sine die, or wait for a benediction, or farewell remarks from the presiding officers; but in an astonishingly short time they got a move on them, and in the direction of the highways leading out of Jackson.” The members had time only to pass a few resolutions that condemned the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and authorized a delegation to meet with President Andrew Johnson to discuss how to return the state to the Union, as well as a bill to call a convention of delegates to begin that process.

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The delegates were to be elected in a statewide election on June 19, with the convention to assemble on July 3.58 The same Federals who scattered the legislature informed Clark that they would not recognize the current state government, or its new convention, and requested all state property be turned over to them. Clark did so on May 22, despite telling the Federal commander, “I must protest against your demand.” Protest would help little, however, and Clark peaceably turned over the state’s property with no conflict. In fact, he wrote the Federal commander, thanking him for the “courteous manner in which you have discharged a delicate duty.” Thanks got Clark little aid from the higher-ranking Federals, however, who ordered him captured and imprisoned for a short time at Fort Pulaski in Savannah, Georgia. Former governor Pettus went into hiding in Arkansas to escape capture. The Federal authorities took over the state archives and installed Unionist William L. Sharkey as provisional governor until new elections could be held and a period of reconstruction could begin. With the imprisonment of the governor and the disbanding of the legislature, Mississippi’s Confederate government ceased to exist.59 By this time, the governor and legislature were the government, because the third branch, the judiciary, had long since stopped functioning. Like the governor and the legislature, the state’s judicial branch under Attorney General Thomas J. Wharton had been on the run for much of the war and actually performed less service than the other two branches. As the war progressed, particularly as the Federals took more territory, the judiciary almost ceased to operate in some places, as illustrated by the turning out of inmates from the state penitentiary in May 1863. Specifically, state and local courts went lax, particularly county courts. By 1864, Clark reported that “the courts were seldom holden, and the civil law was almost a dead letter.” By the end of the war, he complained that deserters committed crimes that went unpunished, and recommended to the legislature that “a more vigorous enforcement of the criminal laws should be provided for. In some counties near the enemy lines, the courts cannot be held; in others, the judges neglect their duties.” The state’s highest court, in fact, the High Court of Errors and Appeals, decided only nineteen cases during the entire war. The court did not even meet in 1862 or 1865.60 One local state judge, Robert S. Hudson, described the problems he had holding court. “The courts in many counties are irregularly held,” he reported, “and when held, are not able to reach these characters [criminals] as they should be reached.” In May 1864 Hudson wrote that “I have deemed it unsafe to hold the ensuing term of the Yazoo Court, and shall therefore omit it.” His personal safety was also in question as he toiled against criminals and deserters roaming the counties. In speaking of deserters to Governor Clark, Hudson

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wrote: “Some of them have been arrested and shot and they charge me with having it done, or causing it to be done. Hence, I am threatened so fiercely, and may lose my life by them—You have but a faint idea of the rotten hearted men and women of these counties and their boldness.”61 The Confederate judicial system was also problematical in the state. Mississippian Alexander M. Clayton sponsored the bill creating the Confederate judicial system in the provisional congress and then took a position as a district judge with the idea that he would get a seat on the Confederate supreme court, which was never established. In his work as a district judge, however, he made the famous ruling that the Confederacy could not punish people where it could not protect them, which caused some complaining that Confederate courts were not held close enough to occupied territory to cover all citizens. Clayton described some of the problems and effects of his term in a letter to Jefferson Davis, responding to the complaints that the Confederate courts were held too far away from enemy lines and thus covered only a minuscule part of the state, particularly later in the war. There was also a complaint that the judicial courts and the military did not cooperate, which is somewhat borne out by one department commander telling Judge Clayton to “go back home and tell your people to be quiet.” Clayton described how his court had been normally held in Jackson, but after the spring of 1863 that was impossible. He set up court at Macon, but was able to get only three of twenty members of a grand jury to attend. He noted that members were not brought in because the deputy marshal himself was not even present. Also, members chosen for the grand jury were hesitant to pass judgment on their neighbors, often fearing retaliation. Clayton eventually turned to appointing “Commissioners of the Court” in each county. Thus some judicial work was able to go on; it just depended on the county and how close it was to enemy territory. Clayton summed it up well, however, saying he “confess[ed] that I do not think either the law, or the interest of the country requires me to run into the jaws of the enemy.”62 In addition to the political problems throughout the war, there was also at work against the state a group of opposition leaders who as early as July 1863 were talking with Union leaders about forming a new state government loyal to the United States. William T. Sherman reported to Grant in July 1863 that “Judge Sharkey, Dr. Poindexter, and Mr. Yerger, with many other very intelligent and influential men, have consulted me as to moving in the matter of organizing the State to submit to the lawful authority of the United States. They admit themselves beaten, subdued, and charge their rulers and agitators with bringing ruin and misery on the State.” By January 1865, Tishomingo County was operating a Union government with the full confidence of the Federals. By April, citizens of Newton, Neshoba, Leake, and Kemper counties had met

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together and requested permission to form a government “to submit to the laws of the United States.” Even the soldiers got wind of these meetings. One soldier noted in his diary, “Union meetings are being held, even in Mississippi, and submission is openly advocated, and the further prosecution of the war is bitterly denounced.” He admitted that “I have the ‘blues’ this morning.”63 The progress toward chaos and defeat is thus easily seen within the realm of Mississippi state politics during the Civil War. The state began the war confident, but with continual Federal success in the state, defeat of the state’s armies, and drooping morale, Mississippi became increasingly incapable of sustaining its own government, much less its war effort. By the end of the war, the governor was in prison, the legislature had been disbanded by force, the judicial system was not functioning, the state was overrun with the enemy, and the people were destitute; chaos reigned supreme. Any examination of Mississippi’s role in the Civil War, and in particular any study of the state’s home front during the war, must consider the implications of Mississippi’s capital city falling to the enemy. Major economic, strategic, logistical, and psychological problems developed with the fall of Jackson, causing no small problem for the state government and its ability to wage war. An even larger and more important issue, encapsulating the fall of Jackson, was the function of the state government as a whole during the war. Like the microcosm of the capital’s repeated fall, the state government also went through repeated crises and spent the latter half of the war on the run and thus impotent. Perhaps the best solitary example of this collapse was Governor John J. Pettus himself. Although beginning the war in confident tones, as time passed he became less and less confident in his messages to the legislature, a tone that would accompany Clark’s messages as well. After leaving office, Pettus served in the state’s forces until the end of the war when he found himself a wanted man, “dead or alive,” with a refused pardon request. His family later claimed he had plans to meet Jefferson Davis west of the Mississippi River and escape to Mexico, but with Davis’s capture, Pettus was on his own. He had to leave his beloved Mississippi and actually hide out after the war in Arkansas, “in the swamps of the Mississippi River without even a tent,” his daughter wrote, leaving his new wife and children to wonder about his condition and write such diary entries as “no news yet from Mr. Pettus.” They were eventually reunited in secret in Arkansas, but the war-worn governor had given his health to the cause. He died in seclusion in Arkansas on January 25, 1867, never having returned to the state he had led into the den of war.64

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CHAPTER THREE

“The Arms and Military Property of the State” The state of Mississippi aimed to make a point. Just two days after seceding from the Union, Mississippi gunners atop the tall bluffs at Vicksburg fired the state’s first shot in anger. On January 11, the peaceful steamer A. O. Tyler, based in Cincinnati, passed Vicksburg flying the U.S. flag. Governor Pettus had earlier sent a conglomeration of militia and volunteers to defend the hill city, and this “trigger-happy ragtag force,” in the words of historian Michael Ballard, let loose on the vessel as it passed harmlessly by. Nothing much came of the affair, beyond the fact that northwestern states were put on guard that one of their favorite transportation arteries was threatened. Nevertheless, Mississippi had entered a war that did not yet even exist, and with a resounding boom, no less.1 This first shot fired by the newly independent state of Mississippi, barely two days after it had left the Union, was quite a foreshadowing of what was to come. In fact, Mississippi itself would become a major battleground, one of the main reasons being the Mississippi River itself. The Tyler would return to Vicksburg, this time armed and part of a powerful and decisive naval fleet of ironclads, gunboats, and transports. But the Mississippi River was not the only avenue of invasion; the Tennessee River swept down and bordered the state in the north. Mississippi also lay on the great Gulf of Mexico, which afforded the powerful Union seagoing navy an approach from that direction. The state was also endowed with several major railroads that would eventually act as daggers into its heart. In short, Mississippi was wide open to Federal thrusts, and the leaders of the state realized very quickly that they must secure any and all arms, supplies, and men to defend the borders.2 Few studies of Mississippi during the Civil War examine the home front issues and decisions that fed the state’s war effort. Most studies examine battles, leaders, and units, but an examination of the state’s military structure, how it functioned or failed to function, and the results of this effort can lead to

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monumental conclusions about why the war developed as it did and how it affected those Mississippians who remained at home in the state rather than marching off to war. The initial military defense of Mississippi and the policies that governed it resulted from the state’s secession convention. On January 10, the day after the secession ordinance passed, the convention looked into the “propriety of erecting batteries at Vicksburg, Natchez, Mississippi City, or at such other points on the Mississippi River as may be thought best.” Governor Pettus responded by sending a battery to Vicksburg, which ultimately fired that first shot. On the same day, President Barry appointed the Committee on Military and Naval Affairs. Chairing the committee was James R. Chalmers, who would go on to become a Confederate general. Among the members was William F. Brantley, also a future Confederate general. This committee hammered out an order entitled “An Ordinance to Regulate the Military System of the State of Mississippi,” which created a “Military Board,” based on a prewar organization, to govern the state’s military assets. The committee began to meet early in the convention and reported its progress often. By January 14, the convention, in committee of the whole, debated the ordinance and made several changes, whereupon it sent the ordinance back to the committee. The convention later requested the committee to “ascertain and report to the Convention the number and character of arms now owned by the State, and the additional arms necessary to equip and prepare for the field all the troops proposed to be raised for its efficient defense, and the probable cost thereof.” On January 22 the convention again took up the ordinance and made more changes, finally passing it the next day, January 23, 1861.3 The “Military System” ordinance set in place the initial military policies of the state. It called for the raising of eight regiments of infantry, with additional cavalry and artillery as well, the soldiers of each regiment to be taken from counties within districts covered by that particular regiment. The regiments would be formed into two-regiment brigades, which would make up a four-brigade division. Four brigadier generals were allowed to command the brigades, with one major general to command the division. Together, the brigadier generals, the major general, and the governor would make up a “Military Board,” which would “make all needful rules and regulations not contrary to law” and have “entire control over all the arms and military property of the State.” The troops would be organized into companies and regiments, but would “be considered as on furlough, subject however to be drilled at such times and places within their respective counties as their company officers may order, until called out for drill or actual service by their Major General.” The ordinance also dealt with pay, rank, exemptions, and disabilities.4

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In addition to the major military ordinance, the convention passed several other measures such as “An Ordinance to Raise Means for the Defense of the State,” “An Ordinance to Provide for Surveys and Fortifications of Military Sites within the State of Mississippi,” and “An Ordinance to Provide for the Purchase of Arms, Munitions and Military Equipments, and for other purposes.” The delegates were concerned with the “protection and defense of the Sea-coast of the State of Mississippi, and the Islands contiguous thereto”; with building an arsenal at Vicksburg; with pay for U.S. officers who resigned and joined the state’s military; and with “a Military Academy similar to that of the United States at West Point.”5 The most lasting role the convention played regarding the military, however, was electing members of the Military Board itself on January 23, placing Jefferson Davis as the major general and Earl Van Dorn, Charles Clark, James L. Alcorn, and Christopher H. Mott as the brigadier generals. The board soon met, in late January, and began to hammer out details, many of which were minute and time consuming. They initially appointed Richard Griffith as adjutant general, Samuel G. French as chief of ordnance, and former congressman William Barksdale as quartermaster, all three later Confederate generals. The board also published Orders of the Military Board of the State of Mississippi, which laid out the process of militarism in the state. Covering everything from organization to logistics, staff to tactics, rules to uniforms, and equipment to arms, these orders became the basis of the state’s early military effort. Excruciating detail went into such provisions as the uniform epaulets, sashes, and chevrons. The orders also instituted the organizational aspects dictated by the “Military System” ordinance by which Mississippi’s eight regiments were organized into four brigades and given to the four brigadier generals on the board. Major General Davis was to serve as the division commander; the division would be the backbone of what the board styled the “Army of Mississippi.” In order to raise more troops, the board made provisions for additional companies to organize themselves, elect officers, and be organized into additional regiments.6 The board was faced with other decisions, with which the reassembled March convention helped. The convention passed ordinances dealing with a hospital at Vicksburg, volunteer companies, and, reflecting Mississippi’s new status as a Confederate state, “An Ordinance to Authorize the Governor of the State of Mississippi to Transfer Volunteers to the Service of the Confederate States.” Some of the board’s actions were not so immediately critical, such as creating and printing muster rolls for the units and appointing various staff officers, although each effort was necessary and helpful in making the system run smoothly. Some of the actions were extremely crucial, however, especially

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“The Arms and Military Property of the State”

decisions on buying rations for the troops and obtaining guns, ammunition, and horses for the units. Other aspects of the board’s work ranged from ordering gunboats to defend the coast to facilitating the transfer of troops to the new Confederate War Department.7 The members of the Military Board faced several difficult problems as they worked. Travel throughout the state required a lot of time from the board members, often delaying board meetings. Each brigadier was to canvas a specific territory, and not all the members made all the meetings. “The Governor having called a meeting of the Military board at the Head Quarters of the Army of Mississippi for Monday the 18th Inst and none of the members being present except the President and Brig. Generals Griffith and Mott no formal meeting was held and no action taken,” read one entry in the minutes in March 1861.8 Another of the major obstacles the board faced was massive turnover, which began immediately after its inception. In early February Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as provisional president of the Confederacy, leaving the major general position open. Earl Van Dorn filled the spot, but he soon departed to take a commission in the regular Confederate army. Clark then became major general, but likewise soon left for the national army. Meanwhile, C. H. Mott departed to raise a regiment of infantry. To fill the vacancies of Van Dorn, Clark, and Mott, Richard Griffith, Absalom M. West, and William Barksdale each became brigadiers, but Griffith and Barksdale also later left to raise regiments. Finally, John W. O’Ferrall and Charles G. Dahlgren filled the vacancies.9 The filling of the major generalship was more complicated and caused some heated political exchanges. When Clark left with a Confederate commission, Governor Pettus was faced with the idea of promoting the ranking brigadier, James L. Alcorn, to the position. Pettus was far too much a Democrat to appoint the Whig Alcorn, and Alcorn’s opposition to secession in the recent convention was another point of contention between the two. In some political maneuvering, Pettus named Reuben Davis of Aberdeen, one of Mississippi’s congressmen before the war and colonel of the Second Mississippi Infantry during the Mexican War, to the post. According to Davis, Pettus had contacted him upon Clark’s resignation and told him to come to Jackson. “For Alcorn Governor Pettus entertained bitter dislike,” Davis remembered. Upon an offer of the major generalship, however, Davis refused, saying Alcorn was entitled to it and that he would accept one of the brigadier positions. “Governor Pettus promptly refused this, and insisted that I must take his first offer,” Davis wrote. “You may as well accept now, for I will never promote Alcorn,” Davis remembered Pettus as saying. Davis then went straight to Alcorn, who replied that he would resign. Soon Davis talked Alcorn out of leaving, and Alcorn

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talked Davis into taking the position. So Reuben Davis, no relation to Jefferson, became major general and led the board in the infrequent meetings in the latter part of 1861. “As soon as the board adjourned,” he boasted, “my authority became absolute. The convention had made no provisions for controlling my action.”10 Even as the political acts of governing the military were moving forward, mobilization of the state’s men for the war effort also went on. Yet there were numerous problems. Almost everyone, North and South, believed that this would be a short war. This helps explain the rush to join in fear of missing the entire affair. To the politicians in the state legislature, however, the conviction that the war would be short led to a desire to limit the waste of mobilizing huge numbers of men. Major General Davis later wrote how the legislators “suggested the propriety of disbanding these troops, giving as a reason that the last battle of the war—meaning the Battle of Bull Run—had been fought, and that no possible necessity for these troops now existed.” There was even a bill drawn up in the House of Representatives taking away Davis’s authority. General Davis responded that he would “regard them as traitors, and bring a regiment to disperse, and perhaps hang them.”11 The other problem with the early mobilization was that there was so much initial excitement over the possibility of war that the state could not handle all the volunteers. Governor Pettus had to report to the Confederate officials that he had so many volunteers that he could not possibly arm and equip them all. On May 3, in fact, Pettus wrote Jefferson Davis that he had around eighty companies that had volunteered, enough for eight full regiments, but no money to arm, equip, and pay them. He also notified the legislature in the special session that summer that the sixteen thousand stands of arms acquired to that date “[have] not, by thousands, supplied the demands of Volunteers,” and that “this deficiency of arms has been a source of much regret to the people, and none more so than myself.” Chief of Ordnance Samuel G. French wrote that upon assuming his post, “I found the State destitute of all military supplies and without arms.”12 The status of the state’s arsenal was indeed somewhat pathetic, illustrating the problem Pettus had in arming all his volunteers. One soldier stationed in Corinth early in the war wrote, “we have a full supply of guns but no ammunition except what we brought with us.” The “full supply of guns” was not the case on a larger scale. An adjutant general’s report of January 18, 1861, showed only two howitzers, six six-pound field guns, and 6,582 small arms of all kinds, mostly “altered percussion muskets.” As early as January, the Military Board requested that Pettus open negotiations with the state of Louisiana for machinery to make rifles. Pettus did not get what he requested, but he did get from

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“The Arms and Military Property of the State”

the governor of Louisiana, Thomas O. Moore, all the arms he could send from the captured Baton Rouge arsenal. “The interests of the two States are so intimately associated in the common cause of the South,” Moore wrote, “that I deemed it my duty, not from considerations of courtesy to a sister State, but in further execution of my duty to Louisiana regarding the approaches of Federal troops from above, to comply with his request.” Louisiana sent five thousand flintlock muskets, three thousand percussion muskets, a thousand rifles, cartridges, powder, and six twenty-four-pound cannons to Mississippi. This shipment greatly aided Pettus, but was not nearly enough. With only sixteen thousand stands of arms available by the end of July 1861, the Military Board called on citizens “willing[ly] to surrender for the defense of the State” any shotguns or hunting rifles, and recommended setting up “depots” to classify and repair them. The response was less than stellar. As late as August 1861, the state’s adjutant general, William H. Brown, reported, “Efforts have been made to collect arms in the different counties, but with what success I am unable to say, as no reports have been made to the ordnance department.” Eventually, some arms did come in, but French described them as “a wonderful collection of antique weapons.”13 Inexplicably, a gentleman offering to sell “the finest machinery for manufacturing small arms then in America” was turned away from the secession convention. He had prepared the machinery under contract with the U.S. government and said he had time under his contract to copy the machinery for the original contract. Obviously, he was willing to give Mississippi the first copy. Nothing ever came of this, however. Chief of Ordnance French also learned that a firm in New Orleans had offered to furnish arms from England and Belgium, but the proffer was also mysteriously declined. Another possibility, as told by Horace S. Fulkerson, was from an arms manufacturer in Belgium, with whom he had opened correspondence and obtained a sample of guns. Fulkerson met with the Military Board and told of how “they admired my guns.” He also told how “after adjournment, the Governor, an old hunter, and I shot away much ammunition trying to hit an imaginary Yankee at long range.” The board initially turned Fulkerson down, doubting that there would be much of a war. Pettus also turned down a “machine for molding lead balls with die for all caliber of small arms” for a “moderate sum.” Fulkerson described the board’s action as “apathy,” and told of Pettus being more interested in telling “his best bear stories” than arming the state. In fact, Fulkerson later remembered that after unsuccessfully meeting with the board again, a few days later, “the Governor and I went down on the commons to shoot some more Yankees!” The Military Board did later contract with Fulkerson for a shipment of seven thousand Belgium rifles, which Fulkerson described as “a sorry trifle” that “reflected

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the idea of peaceable secession,” but the Federal blockade stopped the ship on which they were carried at the mouth of the Mississippi River. These weapons never reached the state, first going to Cuba and then being sold to officials in Louisiana. Another shipment of weapons from Philadelphia was seized by Federal authorities in Baltimore.14 Much of the Military Board’s actions were thus in search of arms, powder, and equipment, including machinery to convert flintlocks to percussion cap and smoothbores to rifles. French found the state of military industry so bad that he had to personally “teach the women” how to roll cartridges. He also found raw materials scarce, even using wallpaper to roll cartridges. French could only shake his head in amazement, “so dependent were the people of the South for most of the manufactured articles in common use.”15 The scantily armed and organized regiments, somewhat dependent on the charity of the citizens, nevertheless soon began to form and move to the front. The first organized and armed Mississippians were ordered to Pensacola, Florida, on January 11, 1861, intent on helping in the siege of still-Unionheld Fort Pickens. Another armed force “took forcible possession of the works and engineer property” on Ship Island off the Mississippi coast on January 20. These early troops were mustered for only a very short time period, however, a matter of around thirty days, and they were soon mustered out of service and sent home.16 More formal and substantial units were in the works, however, and mobilization came quickly, the companies concentrating at four large rendezvous areas in Iuka, Corinth, Grenada, and Enterprise near Meridian, all along rail lines for quick movement to where the units needed to go. Men and boys from all across Mississippi met as localized bodies and formed themselves into companies, whereupon they were ordered to the mobilization centers for combination with other companies to make regiments. The departure from their local town almost always consisted of a program that included speeches and the presentation of a flag made by local women. Likewise, in almost all cases, the journey to the induction centers such as Meridian or Corinth was one of excitement. William Pitt Chambers of the Forty-sixth Mississippi remembered several nice moments in his journal. He told of “a fine dinner [that] was prepared at this place, to which we did ample justice, and after which we marched away. . . . Many sweet faces of old Covington’s fair daughters bade us a tearful farewell.” On the way to Meridian, Chambers told of his first train ride: “I was seated at a window and as the train was moving away, a beautiful young lady, standing near the track, handed me a small Confederate flag. To this was fastened a slip of paper, on which was penciled: ‘Compliments of Anna Collier to a Soldier. This represents Mississippi. Hurrah for the Confederacy and Davis!

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May an ever watchful eye be over thee! Anna Collier. Near Brandon.’” Chambers remembered, “we were frequently cheered by persons along the road, and when ladies cheered, I waved my little flag.”17 Once the raw recruits reached camp, however, the fun stopped. Chambers and the companies of what would later become the Forty-sixth Mississippi went into camp at Meridian, where the Thirty-sixth Mississippi was already located. In the days ahead, the men were organized, armed, and trained. “For the first time ‘drilling’ was attempted,” Chambers remembered, and later he told of larger and larger formations trying to figure out how to work together. “I guess we are an awkward lot, both men and officers,” he decided. Drill was not the only eye-opening experience. Chambers told of many deaths long before the unit ever reached a battlefield. “I saw a coffin being taken to one of the Companies in our rear this afternoon,” Chambers reported. “Some soldier died away from home and most likely without the gentle ministrations of a mother or a sister.” On another occasion, immediately after Shiloh, Chambers remembered “one old gentleman, from Scott County, [who] had a coffin, containing the body of his son, who fell in the fight of Sunday.” Chambers suddenly became very interested in religion.18 James Judson Kirkpatrick of the Sixteenth Mississippi encountered a similar entrance into the army. His company formed in Crystal Springs early in 1861, where they were “presented with a beautiful flag by the ladies of Crystal Springs and vicinity.” Kirkpatrick remembered in his diary that the event “was honored by a numerous attendance and a fine dinner. The affair was terminated by a ball in the evening.” The company left on a train for Corinth soon thereafter, but not before “a most fervent and appropriate prayer,” Kirkpatrick remembered. “All along the way,” he continued, “we were greeted by the waving of handkerchiefs, hats, miniature flags and by vociferous cheering.” Just like Chambers, however, Kirkpatrick found camp life not quite so exciting. “Our camp duties at first seemed very arduous,” he reflected. “Rising so early for roll call, doing guard duty, etc., but especially drill merited extreme dislike from all.” The Sixteenth Mississippi would need that drill, however, because soon they were on the cars headed for Virginia, where they would see many a bloody battle.19 The original eight infantry regiments, first organized under the secession convention’s order and the Military Board’s governance, began to be filled early in 1861, but some of these eight regiments of first state troops turned Confederate regiments lagged even into the fall of 1861 in their full organization. The members were sent home from their early camps, contingent on a call to assemble again later. Governor Pettus did this to allow the men to get their spring crops in the field and to take some pressure off the Military Board,

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which was strapped to its limits providing for other volunteers anyway. Nevertheless, some of the regiments were completed sooner than later, with most fully organizing in the early fall. The Second Mississippi was completed first and sent to Virginia in May to help meet the crises developing there. Some of the regiments in Virginia named their encampment “Camp Pettus.” Other regiments, particularly the Fifth and Eighth Mississippi of O’Ferrall’s brigade, fought more among each other than with the enemy. Camped near Enterprise, these two regiments endured a “discord . . . between the two regiments to such an extent as to threaten actual conflict.” Most of the trouble was instigated by one captain, who was court-martialed and drummed out of camp. Partly due to this trouble, no doubt, these and the other early units, holding the first numerical numbers of the Mississippi regiments, were actually not put into the field until the fall, by which time other later regiments were already organized and sent away. The Ninth and Tenth Mississippi Infantry regiments, for example, were organized in March 1861 and sent to Pensacola under Charles Clark, well before the lower-numbered regiments went into full service. Convention delegate James Chalmers commanded one of them.20 Other regiments began to appear all across the state, mostly in response to calls by the Confederate government. President Davis’s first call for troops from Mississippi, a total of eight thousand in two requests, came in April after the crisis at Fort Sumter. The state organized and sent the Eleventh through Eighteenth regiments in response. Calls for five more regiments came in June, which resulted in the Nineteenth through Twenty-third regiments. Other regiments were also organized and sent forward, bearing regimental numbers into the twenties. County after county thus sent away their companies, leaving proud women, children, and old men behind. “Hurrah for Mississippi,” one of those left behind wrote, “and above all for the Great County of Copiah. She has nearly two thousand men in the army.” By September 1861, so many men had joined the army that Judge Wiley P. Harris wrote Jefferson Davis that “the country appears to be deserted. There are not more men left than the demands of society and the police of the slave-holding country actually require.”21 Yet there was more enlistment to come. Another round of calls by the government in early 1862 resulted in regiments numbered in the thirties and forties as well as the reorganization and reenlistment of the twelve-month units for three years or the war. Many of the colonels commanding these regiments were Mississippi’s best, such as secession convention delegates William Barry, Marcus D. L. Stephens, Bruce Colbert, and John J. Thornton. Thornton had refused to sign the secession ordinance yet was one of the first men to raise a regiment to defend the state. Military Board generals William Barksdale, Christopher H. Mott, and Richard Griffith also left that service to organize regiments.

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Mississippi would ultimately provide for the Confederate government roughly forty-six regiments of infantry as well as several battalions, with cavalry and artillery in addition. In all, the state reported it sent around seventy-eight thousand men to the war.22 These Confederate troops saw action in all the major battles of the war, some of them in Virginia and the East. The aforementioned Second Mississippi, as well as several other regiments, arrived in time to engage at First Bull Run, and some eleven more regiments, two battalions, one legion, and two artillery batteries would follow to Virginia, making up roughly three Mississippi brigades attached to the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. These brigades would see the famous fights at Antietam, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg before the remnants were surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865. Some of the state’s most famous commanders led these troops, including Richard Griffith, Carnot Posey, future governor Benjamin Humphreys, presidential nephew Joseph Davis, and William Barksdale, who was mortally wounded leading his troops at Gettysburg.23 Most of Mississippi’s troops, some thirty-three infantry regiments in all, plus numerous cavalry and artillery organizations, saw action in the western theater and eventually settled into roughly five brigades led by luminaries such as Winfield Scott Featherston, Jacob H. Sharp, Mark P. Lowrey, Claudius W. Sears, and William F. Brantley. These troops saw action from Fort Donelson and Shiloh to Vicksburg and Chickamauga and on to Atlanta and Franklin. In addition, unlike in the eastern theater, Mississippians such as Samuel French, Edward C. Walthall, Charles Clark, and Earl Van Dorn went on to command larger organizations, mostly divisions. Van Dorn commanded an army for a time, and of course the state sent the Confederacy its foremost commander, President Jefferson Davis.24 Not all the soldiers from Mississippi fought in the Confederate service, however. The state also fielded several organizations of state troops and militia units. The first of these were the eight infantry regiments of the original Army of Mississippi, provided for by the secession convention. By the fall of 1861, however, these troops had been appropriated by the Confederate War Department and became the first eight designated infantry regiments from Mississippi. To replace these state troops, upon the call of Confederate western theater commander Albert Sidney Johnston in September 1861, Governor Pettus and the Military Board called for ten thousand men to serve sixty days to meet the perceived crisis at hand. These troops would be styled the “Army of Ten Thousand.”25 The plight of the Army of Ten Thousand was flawed from the start. The legislature provided $500,000 for the troops, which were to mobilize at

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Corinth and Grenada. At Corinth, Major General Davis organized the new recruits while Alcorn met the troops at Grenada. The men were quickly formed into regiments and brigades, led by Davis and Alcorn. They were haphazardly armed and equipped. In fact, upon joining, the recruits were told to bring whatever arms they had at home, including shotguns and hunting rifles. Major General Davis later remarked that these weapons “when handled with skill and care, [were] shooting about once in ten snaps.” The men were also to bring all their own blankets, cooking utensils, and clothing. Before all the men could be organized and completed into companies, however, the five regiments and a battalion, plus several other unattached companies, were ordered north to meet the crisis.26 Davis and his two regiments and a battalion, some two thousand men, traveled quickly to Bowling Green, Kentucky, arriving in December. Alcorn led his three regiments and the assortment of other companies, some eighteen hundred men, to the Columbus, Kentucky, vicinity. In Kentucky, they saw no action, which was probably fortunate due to their untrained status and shoddy armament. The weather, which Davis remembered “exceeded anything I had ever known,” took a drastic toll on the men, however. Quickly assembled and susceptible to disease, many of the troops died from sickness and the extremely hard winter, to which they were not accustomed. “Day by day the cold became more bitter, the storms grew darker and wilder, and the roads became more desperately bad,” Davis remembered. “Our men bore their sufferings heroically,” he noted, “but it was a fearful time.” By February, the terms of enlistment had run out, and the unfortunate history of the Army of Ten Thousand ended, somewhat mercifully. Many of the surviving troops would later join regular regiments, however.27 During the debacle in Kentucky, in which much of the Military Board was out of state, that system itself began to crumble. Eventually, the Military Board played itself out altogether, as most of the state’s troops moved on to Confederate service and a more streamlined operation was needed to govern the militia. The board itself realized as much. James L. Alcorn addressed the state legislature in November, “recommending the continuance of some military organization upon some more economical plan.” The legislature agreed, although not everyone was delighted. Major General Reuben Davis, who had bragged about his absolute authority, remembered the situation more derisively. “Having nothing of importance to engage their attention, they [the legislature] determined that they would amuse themselves by remodeling the whole system provided by the convention,” he muttered. Nevertheless, the Military Board ended its governance of the state’s military, its last meeting being held on November 23, 1861.28

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After the Military Board system went away, the state next turned to its old militia to fill the need for state troops, with the general officers elected by the people. In an election on March 10, 1862, the citizens elected Tullius C. Tupper as major general and Micajah F. Berry, Charles E. Smedes, Richard H. Winter, and Benjamin M. Bradford as brigadier generals. Throughout the summer and fall of 1862, with the Federals moving ever closer to the interior of the state, the various militia companies were called on to organize into regiments. Enough men joined to make five regiments and four battalions of infantry and one battalion of cavalry. These troops were obligated for six months’ service and were styled “Minute Men.” They held several garrison posts throughout the state but saw little action, prompting many to complain that they should be at home gathering their crops. Two of the units, however, were present at Vicksburg when it surrendered. Afterward, some units, particularly cavalry, remained in action under the overall command of Brigadier General James Z. George until he left the state troops to organize a Confederate cavalry regiment, whereupon Governor Pettus appointed Samuel J. Gholson to lead the effort.29 Governor Clark tried to bring a change to the militia, telling the legislature in his inaugural address that “the day of militia play-time has passed.” A second wave of state troops was thus called for in 1864, netting some three regiments and one battalion of infantry and four regiments and three battalions of cavalry, plus some unattached companies. The call for troops asked for everyone between the ages of sixteen and sixty. One commander of these troops was John J. Pettus himself. Having vacated the governor’s office, he now led state troops as a colonel although he had earlier enlisted as a mere private. Another leader was James L. Alcorn, who Governor Clark appointed as colonel to organize the militia in his home county and those surrounding it. Obviously, Clark was trying to use well-known leaders to whip up support for militia duty. These troops again saw little action, but did provide guard and garrison duty throughout the state. Most were pulled into central Mississippi to combat Sherman’s Meridian raid in early 1864. In addition, there were a few more home units styled as “reserves,” which were mostly small units of mounted men, and “local defense companies.” By the fall of 1864, only fifteen companies of cavalry were still in state service, the rest having been transferred to the Confederate army. So few state troops were around, in fact, that Governor Clark called on the legislature to dispense with the general officers in state service, they being no longer needed.30 While on paper, and in many areas in truth, these militia and reserves provided good service, they could also be almost as destructive to the people as the enemy. Numerous accounts mention their plunder of farms and plantations. One Mississippi judge reported to Jefferson Davis: “The cavalry sent among

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us to arrest conscripts and deserters have been a nuisance to the cause and country in large degree. They spend a large part of their time in gaming parties, drunkenness, marrying, horse-racing, and stealing.” He also related that “men are enlisted in the State reserves under false names and places, who are deserters from the general Confederate service, or are conscripts liable to the service, and this is the case, in part, with the State militia. The infantry is deserting to the cavalry.”31 Mississippi also provided one regiment of white Unionists for the Union army, the First Regiment Mounted Rifles. Organized at Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1864, the unit served until June 1865. There were 903 soldiers on the rolls of the regiment, which saw little action but did participate in a number of raids and expeditions during the latter part of the war. Out of the slave population, the state also gave to the Union as many as thirty thousand U.S. Colored Troops, which will be examined later. The argument that Mississippi and the Confederacy fielded many black Confederates as soldiers has been almost totally disputed and does not require much comment. It is clear, however, that many slaves accompanied their masters to the field, especially early in the war. If these body servants, not soldiers, are included, the number of African Americans attached to either side’s armies grows even larger.32 Any quantitative analysis of the state’s military troops, including totals of soldiers, deaths, wounds, and desertions, is difficult simply because of the sheer numbers involved; the disorganization of the units, particularly the state troops; and the lack of adequate sources. What sources that are available are so mammoth that one could spend a lifetime studying the numbers and still be in no position to make a formal and accurate statement. In 1860 the state was credited with 70,295 men of military age (eighteen to forty-five). The best numbers that are available regarding how many actually served came from James L. Power. In 1864 the state legislature created the position of Superintendent of Army Records, and Governor Clark appointed Power to that position. His best estimate was that around seventy-eight thousand troops were sent to defend the state during the war, although there were only seventy thousand of military age (eighteen to forty-five) in 1860. More modern research resulting from the digitization of soldiers’ records has indicated that Mississippi has a total of 174,838 different soldiers’ records, although this includes men who served in multiple units, some two, three, and four different units during the war. As a result, a legitimate guess as to how many soldiers there were from Mississippi is just that, a guess.33 Individual regimental and brigade numbers can tell some of the story, however. Power made intricate rolls of part of the regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia in the latter stages of the war. (He was unable to finish due

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to the surrender.) Of seventy companies he fully tabulated (all of Humphreys’s and part of Davis’s brigades), he came to the total of 9,407 men enrolled. Of those, only about 915 were present for the surrender. Power verified that 1,246 had died of disease, 1,344 had died of battle wounds, 2,037 had been discharged or retired (presumably due to being wounded), 652 had been transferred, and 1,257 had deserted. Of the 2,746 remaining on the rolls, two-thirds were absent at the surrender.34 Other quantitative studies bear out these numbers and observations of massive loss. A recent regimental history of the Eleventh Mississippi Infantry, which fought in Virginia throughout the war, has offered a plethora of statistics. As far as numbers go, the regiment totaled 1,570 men throughout the war, with 431 of them dying during the conflict. Another 504 were wounded, with 103 captured unwounded. A total of 240 were discharged or disabled, with 30 men listed as deserters. In total, the author tabulated a casualty rate of 70.2 percent in the regiment.35 A more contemporary study of numbers in certain individual companies also illustrates the massive losses. An 1865 report of seven companies of Wood’s Cavalry Regiment, known earlier as Wirt Adams’s Regiment, which fought in the western theater, showed 778 total men, with seventy deaths from all causes, sixty-five deserters, and 256 “loss from all causes.” A study of ten random infantry, artillery, and cavalry companies showed even greater loss. Of 1,524 total men, 222 deaths were recorded, with 227 desertions and 829 “loss from all causes.” Location, length, and branch of service all factored into casualty rates, but most units suffered at least one-third losses, with many of the more engaged and active units suffering well over half its numbers in losses, with some even higher.36 According to Power’s tabulations, well over one-third of the soldiers Mississippi sent to the war effort died either of disease or battle action. The severity of the combat is borne out by numbers from the various battlefields. The Sixth Mississippi, for example, lost 70 percent of its strength at Shiloh in April 1862. William Barksdale’s brigade lost 50 percent of its sixteen hundred men, including its leader, while engaged at Gettysburg in July 1863. At that same battle, the Eleventh Mississippi lost as many as 89 percent of its men. At Perryville in October 1862, the Thirty-fourth Mississippi sustained 50 percent casualties. And more men died of disease than as a result of battle. These massive numbers weakened the units themselves, but spread throughout the entire armies, they weakened the Confederate forces to the point that by the end of the war, they could no longer resist. The massive numbers of dead also put a major strain on the home front, because each of those soldiers who died had been a part of the society, culture, and economy back home. Moreover, most of the soldiers left

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some type of dependents—whether parents, wives, or children. Their absence would, in some cases, be felt for generations.37 Typical concern for a dying soldier’s family was seen in one sad episode told by William Pitt Chambers of the Forty-sixth Mississippi. During the siege of Vicksburg, W. J. Manning of his company was mortally wounded by a Minnie ball “through the chest.” Realizing his wound was mortal, Manning asked Chambers to relay messages to his family: “Tell my old father, Pitt, when you see him, that I died at my post. Tell him I tried to discharge my duty as a soldier. Tell my mother, I loved her to the last. And my dear wife and little children, Pitt, remember me to them, and tell them how gladly I would have seen them before I died. Take a husband’s and a father’s blessing, it is all I have to leave them!” Chambers similarly told of stopping at a home after the surrender of Vicksburg. “That night we stopped with a Mr. Catchings whose unfeigned and unstinted hospitality was touching to us,” Chambers remembered. He continued: “It was also a house of mourning. Two noble boys had gone forth at the call of duty, and both had fallen in Sunday’s fight at Shiloh. May God bless both the Father and the Mother!”38 The wounded were another matter entirely. Superintendent Power estimated some nineteen thousand Mississippi soldiers were discharged, resigned, or retired, most of them due to wounds. The return of most of these wounded to the state added an immense strain to the family members and communities who were having a hard time making ends meet anyway. Now with another person to feed who in return was not able, in many cases, to help produce goods, crops, or services, many Mississippi families found that the joy of having their loved ones return home alive also included the necessity of caring for them until they could either return to the army or begin to help earn their keep.39 In addition to individual families that cared for the wounded, at times entire cities such as Vicksburg, Jackson, and Corinth became huge hospitals after great battles. Such was the case at Corinth after Shiloh. The wounded completely overwhelmed the available medical facilities there, and the surgeons converted virtually every building into a hospital, including hotels, churches, and even houses. The college west of town held many wounded soldiers, as did the Tishomingo and Corinth hotels downtown. To further compound the problem, due to the less than sterile situation, many soldiers became sick in succeeding weeks after battles. Kate Cumming, a nurse from Mobile who treated the sick in Corinth, noted that she had seen “a whole Mississippi regiment sick,” and “that nearly all had a cough.”40 Dissatisfied soldiers were also a problem. One soldier perhaps spoke for many when he wrote, “There is a large portion of our army that is miserably

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officered and it is owing altogether to the incompetence of those high in position both military and civil.” Another noted late in the war, “They [soldiers] are utterly despondent, and would hail with joy, the prospect of peace on any terms.” Being stationed in Mississippi, the soldier also noted that the citizens of that state as well as others “are in favor of peace on any terms, no matter how ignominious they may be.” Yet another soldier described the Confederacy by 1864 as “a toad saving himself from being swallowed by a snake by blowing himself up.” Zeroing in on when much of the dissatisfaction began, one South Carolina soldier stationed in Mississippi wrote, “Some 2 to 3000 Mississippians left for their homes after the evacuation of Jackson.” He went on to lament: “Poor fellows, they are greatly to be pitied. Their homes, with their wifes & children, were left unprotected & exposed to the savages of the Abolition foe. . . . God forbid that my country should ever call upon me to turn my back upon my wife & children, & leave them to the mercy of [the enemy].”41 This dissatisfaction most often resulted in desertion. Some fugitives did not go back to Mississippi, but most did. Superintendent Power estimated that no more than twelve hundred of the eleven thousand listed as deserters actually went over into Union lines. There were in this group, to be sure, a percentage of thugs, bandits, and outlaws who made an already difficult existence even harder for Mississippians. Large numbers of these deserters, however, were family men who left the army to care for loved ones, plant crops to support their loved ones, or to defend their homes in the event the Confederate and state governments were unable to do so, which became increasingly the case as the war developed.42 The case of Private James Franklin Pierce of Newton County is perhaps as illustrative as any of many Mississippians’ concern for matters at home. Living near Chunky, the twenty-five-year-old Pierce was one of the men who joined the “Army of Mississippi” in the fall of 1861. His company became a part of the Third Mississippi Infantry, doing some duty on the coast early in the war. He fought in the Vicksburg campaign, and operated around Jackson for the rest of the summer and fall. Pierce’s records indicate he was absent without leave during July and August 1863. Corresponding family records indicate his wife was home about to have a baby. So close to home, he could not resist leaving the army and caring for his wife. Unfortunately, the baby died, and Pierce returned to the army. He later faced the same concerns when his unit retreated in front of William T. Sherman’s advancing army in the Meridian campaign. Retreating right through his home in February 1864, and knowing the Federals were coming right behind and that planting time was near, Pierce left the army for good.43 Some deserters did so for more sinister reasons, but the state and county authorities looked on all with the same contempt. When Pierce returned from

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his first departure in 1863, he was punished by being put in a “bull pen” and being shot at, there being no intent to kill him, of course. After his second leave, Pierce had to hide out to keep from being returned to his unit. In fact, all across the state, local authorities rounded up what deserters they could and sent them back to the army. The sheriff of Chickasaw County left detailed records of the deserters he rounded up and returned to service.44 The desertion problem, in addition to the normal administrative issues of discharges, leaves of absence, and furloughs, caused quite a conundrum for the state and Confederate authorities. Official policy wavered from execution for desertion to amnesty offered to all men away from the ranks. Governor Pettus even tried patriotism, issuing a proclamation during the crisis of May 1863 that the issue was now “the safety of Mississippi,” and adding that “all those belonging to the State service should without delay return to their commands.” Conversely, Governor Clark sought to use the county officials to remedy the situation, telling the various sheriffs to do something about the desertion problem, reminding them, “You are the chief executive officers of your county.” At least one sheriff, G. W. Bradley of Perry County, admitted that his work was tedious at best. In referring to taxes, he informed the governor in 1864 that “it will be at the risk of my life to collect.”45 In addition to the problems caused by death, wounds, and deserters, one other military mobilization debacle also helped drive down numbers of men for the army and morale at home. In April 1862 the Confederate Congress passed “An Act to Further Provide for the Public Defense,” commonly called the First Conscript Act, with an amending act following in September 1862. These laws made all able-bodied men of military age, first between eighteen and thirty-five and then up to forty-five, subject to the demands of conscription. It likewise made the conscripts subject to service for “three years from the date of their original enlistment, unless the war shall have been sooner ended.” It further stipulated that all twelve-month regiments would be extended to three years or the lifetime of the war. One of the most obnoxious parts of the act, however, allowed conscription of those “who are not legally exempted from military service.” The exemption of workers needed on the home front caused little controversy, for farmers, machinists, factory workers, and many other occupations were required to keep society and the state functioning. The portion that allowed exemption for owning a certain number of slaves and substitution for a certain amount of money rankled many Mississippians, however. “There was a great hue and cry over the act,” one Confederate agent noted, “and it gave emphasis to the popular phrase, ‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’” The law also diminished the manpower available to the army, because substitutes going in place of others were thereby not available for service themselves.46

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All these factors put together produced a military machine that was grinding to a halt in the later years of the war. From his data, in October 1865 Superintendent of Army Records James L. Power drew several pertinent conclusions about the decline of the state’s military forces. “Our reverses for the last two years of the war,” he began, “the despondency, speculation, and extortion of many of our people at home, the inability of the government to pay the troops promptly or to furnish them with anything like adequate supplies of food or clothing, the absolute destitution of many families of soldiers, and, toward the last, the seeming hopelessness of the struggle, all conspired to depress the soldier’s heart, and caused thousands to retire from the contest when there was greater need for their services.”47 Power’s sentiments, stated in 1865 no less, seem remarkable in their candid approach and attention to truth. Such a statement flies in the face of later Lost Cause mythology, which argued that the South was united in its effort but overwhelmed by superior numbers. In actuality, the state’s military prowess was shot to pieces, literally, and could not stand up to the rigors of war and defeat. On the other hand, that emerging defeat coupled with the disastrous events at home worked to undermine any patriotism and nationalism the soldiers had left in the final years of the war. The Confederacy’s hopes were pinned on its army, and the lifeblood of a sovereign Mississippi ran out with the demise not only of the army but also of the will to fight that underpinned that army.

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CHAPTER FOUR

“A Swath of Desolation” By 1864, William T. Sherman was tired of waging war in Mississippi. He had battled Confederates at Corinth, Chickasaw Bayou, Steele’s Bayou, Jackson, and Vicksburg, and the enemy had at times gotten the best of him. Realizing that the destruction of all the Confederate armies was well-nigh impossible in pitched battle, he now opted for a more destructive type of warfare waged not against armies but against the industrial, agricultural, and transportation infrastructure that supported those armies. The first test of this “total warfare” would come, not surprisingly, in Mississippi. In February 1864 Sherman marched from Vicksburg to the railroad crossing at Meridian, laying waste not only to the countryside through which he traveled but also to the vital Confederate center in the eastern portion of the state. But Sherman had a larger goal in mind: he was waging psychological warfare. He wrote that his march had left “a swath of desolation 50 miles broad across the State of Mississippi, which the present generation will not forget.”1 Mississippi’s Civil War infrastructure was heavily tilted toward agriculture, but had enough industrial and transportation entities to offer prime targets to Federal commanders. The 1860 census showed just how tilted the state was toward agriculture. Mississippi’s more than fifteen million acres of farmland, at an average of 370 acres per farm, produced more cotton that any other state in the Union. Other crops were grown as well, but cotton was king. On the opposite side, the state’s 976 manufacturing establishments paled in comparison to the states of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, each of which had more than 22,000 manufacturing establishments in 1860. Mississippi ranked fourth from the bottom among manufacturing states in 1860, with the frontier states of Florida, Arkansas, and Texas alone below it. Moreover the state’s largest industry was lumbering, which was a form of agriculture itself. Still, there was industry, and, although relatively few in number, these factories and shops would nevertheless be the industrial plant the state and the Confederacy depended on to wage war. And it was these establishments that would become prime targets. Thus, just like the economic, military, and political realms of the

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state, Mississippi’s industrial, transportation, and agricultural infrastructure was literally devastated during the war and had almost ceased to exist by the end of the conflict.2 Numerous events and activities fell under the infrastructure umbrella, including many items with which the secession convention itself dealt. Knowing certain federal services would be curtailed with secession, the convention began the process of setting up a state system on the federal plan. Such was the case with the postal service. On January 12 the convention passed an “Ordinance to provide for postal arrangements in Mississippi,” with the goal of “avoid[ing] as far as practical any disturbance of existing arrangements and contracts for carrying, delivering, and distributing the mails.” The convention even set up the state office of Post-Master-General of Mississippi. The delivery of mail in Mississippi was taken over by state and Confederate authorities, along with some $34,000 in federal funds and property in the state, but the delivery was never a calculated science, and mail was often late or never delivered at all.3 Another infrastructural issue the convention dealt with was that of federal lands within the state. These sites ranged from forts and lighthouses to hospitals and arsenals. The convention stipulated that all U.S. land was “hereby resumed and vested in the State of Mississippi.” With just the power of a piece of paper, it was as if Mississippi was daring the federal government to come and take the land back.4 In examining Mississippi’s wartime infrastructure, however, the state’s major assets can be considered within three basic areas, one of which was industrial production, including factories, foundries, shipyards, and mills. Ranging in numbers from only a few shipyards to literally hundreds of mills in every nook and cranny of the state, most all of these were systematically destroyed or at least temporarily disabled during the war. Second, agricultural production was also drastically affected, whether it was on large plantations or small farms. Third, the vital transportation network was extremely important in getting those goods produced in the state to markets, buyers, and local citizens, but Mississippi’s railroad- and ship-borne transportation was also totally wrecked during the war. In almost all cases, the hand that caused the destruction of the state’s infrastructure was the Union military. To be sure, there were natural disasters such as crop failures and weather-related problems, but by and large the major entity halting Mississippi’s internal production and transportation system wore Union blue. The state of Mississippi spent the first year of the war relatively unscathed. By May 1862, however, the war hit home in the northeastern portion of the

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state, ironically one of the stalwart areas that had opposed secession in the first place. In May, after the bloody affair at Shiloh a month earlier, several combined Union armies under Major General Henry W. Halleck advanced toward Corinth, the critical railroad crossroads in the northern portion of the state. By the end of May, the town was in enemy hands, and soon a ripple of events also placed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad in Federal hands all the way to Memphis. As the summer of 1862 wore on, the Federals held their ground in north Mississippi but also began to creep northward from New Orleans and the Gulf region. In the fall a bloody but abortive attempt by the Confederates to retake Corinth ended in failure. That set the stage for the initial efforts of the Vicksburg campaign, in which Ulysses S. Grant led or sent several assaults toward Vicksburg. Columns moved southward along the Mississippi Central Railroad, toward Chickasaw Bayou, through the Yazoo Pass, and into Steele’s Bayou, but all attempts to reach Vicksburg failed. Then Grant repositioned the campaign south of Vicksburg, from which he marched inland, captured Jackson and Vicksburg, and set up shop in the western portion of the state. The Federals permanently maintained their hold on the northern portion of the state, chiefly along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and the western edge along the Mississippi River, which was controlled by the Federal navy. From these strongholds, Union commanders sent numerous raids throughout the state, most notably William T. Sherman’s Meridian campaign. Other cavalry raids led by William “Sooy” Smith and Benjamin Grierson also wreaked havoc on interior portions of Mississippi. By the end of the war, Federal units roamed at will around the state. Obviously, the growing presence of the Union military had a drastic effect on the state’s infrastructure. With the advent of William T. Sherman’s theory of “total war,” first tested on a large scale in the Meridian campaign in Mississippi, the negative effects of war for civilians became much clearer. First using total warfare on a large scale in Mississippi, Sherman would go on to make more famous marches to the sea and through the Carolinas. Attempting to take the war to the citizens, whom Sherman believed were the foundations for the Confederate war effort, his and others’ campaigns against the civilian, transportation, and production infrastructure helped sweep the foundation from under the Confederate military’s ability to wage war as well as the citizens’ willingness to support the war. Destruction would thus come to describe almost every area of Mississippi. The attrition rate was enormous within the mechanized production entities such as mills, factories, foundries, and shipyards. By far, the most numerous of these were mills, which numbered literally in the hundreds and included everything from sawmills to cotton gins to gristmills on almost every water

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course in the state. Normally water driven, although steam had made inroads into the power plant of the state by this time, these mills and gins were frequently located at the junctions of watercourses and roads and thus were ripe for destruction by roving Federal units. The steam-powered mills were more frequently in larger cities and were larger than the common country mills. Much of the state’s population, as well as the Confederate quartermasters, depended on these common mills for food. As a result, these mills became prime targets.5 The Official Records are full of examples of Federal units destroying mills as they operated in various portions of the state. The 1862 Union advance into northern Mississippi and the resulting garrisoning of the area led to many episodes of destruction as raids went out frequently from Union lines. Making a raid near Iuka, one Union cavalry commander “learned from a reliable source that the mills called Crippled Deer Mills . . . was supplying the rebels with a quantity of corn meal each week.” The officer reported, “I concluded the easiest and surest way to prevent these supplies going into the hands of the enemy was to disable the mill by breaking the machinery, which was accordingly done.” Another raid, this time out of Memphis, netted the Federals not only the destruction of a lengthy stretch of trestle on the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad on the Coldwater River but also “the saw-mill at which the lumber was sawed.”6 Ironically, sometimes the destruction in northern Mississippi was the result of Confederate actions attempting to deprive the enemy. Confederate general Patton Anderson ordered one of his colonels to send some men to burn a cotton gin and corn mill during the engagement at Farmington in May 1862. Realizing the buildings were of use to the enemy, Anderson ordered that a careful account of their worth be noted. In all, a “gin-house, machinery belonging thereto, cotton-gin, and corn-mill, [and a] quantity of baled and loose cotton” were destroyed. In the retreat from Corinth in October 1862, the Confederates crossed the Hatchie River at Crum’s Mill and set the mill afire. James B. McPherson, leading the Federal pursuit, reported that when he arrived, “the bridge and a large mill at the end of it [were] on fire and mostly destroyed.”7 As the Federal forces penetrated deeper into Mississippi in late 1862 and eventually to the heart of the state in 1863, destruction of mills and gins became even more common. At Vicksburg itself, several Federal cannons were positioned specifically to take out a gristmill. “They [cannons] are used daily in trying to destroy the mill, where, it is said, the enemy grind all their corn,” reported one Union engineer. One Federal general, sent on an excursion up the Yazoo River from Vicksburg during the siege, reported, “I destroyed every grist-mill in the valley.” Another Union officer noted, “I caused to be destroyed

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on Spanish Moss Bend from 12,000 to 20,000 bushels of corn, one mill and cotton gin, used by the rebels for grinding corn.” Other operations during and after the siege netted more production facilities, such as E. O. C. Ord’s burning of “one mill and a large quantity of lumber at Hazelhurst and Brookhaven.” Meanwhile, the raids in northern Mississippi did not let up just because the scene of major fighting had moved south. One Federal cavalry commander near Panola reported his men burned “at Pope’s Station one flouring-mill, one saw-mill, with a large amount of stock, 50,000 bushels of grain, and 400 bales of cotton.”8 As the war dragged on, Federal units moved almost at will across the state. During the Meridian campaign, one Federal general told of his handiwork: “We also destroyed the railroad depot at Quitman, the large and elegant hospital buildings, recently erected, one large steam flouring mill, and one large steam saw-mill.” A Federal colonel on the expedition reported that “at Madisonville I found a steam saw-mill and grist mill. The saw-mill had been used by the Confederates to saw timber for . . . [a] pontoon bridge. . . . I deemed it proper to destroy this saw-mill, and acting without orders on the subject I effectually destroyed it by breaking the saws and machinery to pieces.” The Federals did show some compassion on the citizenry at times; the Federal colonel noted, “The grist-mill I left in running order.”9 The state’s factories were less numerous, with only four major clothes-producing plants at the beginning of the war, but they were of almost equal importance to the war effort and the citizenry at home. And they were targeted just as heavily as the mills. The Federals explored parts of northern Mississippi as they ventured into the area in May 1862. One Confederate scout reported, “Six Yankee scouts had been at Bay Springs Factory on Thursday, looking at the cotton there.” The factory was not destroyed then, but it did not last the summer. One Federal general stated he “returned by way of Bay Springs, disabling the cotton factory at that place in such a way as to require a communication between this country and New England in order to effect repairs.”10 As the Federals moved deeper into the state in 1863, more factories were torched. One Federal unit “burned a large cotton factory” at Woodville and captured “a beautiful 6-pounder gun, French manufacture, and said to have been used by General Jackson at New Orleans.” Of course, the major concentration of industry was in the state capital at Jackson. When Grant took the city on May 14, he personally directed the destruction of a cloth factory. He and Sherman, Grant said, “did not seem to attract the attention of either the manager or the operatives, most of whom were girls.” After a few minutes of watching the production, which turned out tent cloth with “C.S.A.” stitched into it, Grant told Sherman “they had done enough work.” The factory was

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soon ablaze. Sherman also reported the destruction of this “very valuable cotton factory.” Sherman wrote: “This factory was the property of Messrs. Greene, who made strong appeals, based on the fact that it gave employment to very many females and poor families, and that, although it had woven cloth for the enemy, its principal use was in weaving cloth for the people.” Sherman stated he would be better off compensating the owner and caring for the unemployed families than letting the factory run. In addition, Grant also placed Sherman in overall charge of wrecking the city. Sherman reported the destruction of the state penitentiary, which produced goods at a profit for the state, but laid the blame on released inmates. He also reported other industries destroyed.11 As the Federals destroyed much of the state’s industrial capacity, Mississippians built new factories, mostly in the eastern portion of the state where fewer Federals roamed. One Confederate wrote of a clothes factory near Columbus in May 1864, and stated, “another factory is now in the process of construction.” Still, few of these factories lasted the war, some even going down in the last months. Benjamin Grierson, for example, reported on his raid from the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to the Mississippi Central Railroad in January 1865, saying his men destroyed a “large cloth and shoe factory, machine shops, pile driver and engine,” and many other stores. One of his colonels reported destroying at Greensborough and Bankston “large quantities of quartermaster’s and subsistence stores, together with a large cloth mill, tannery, shoemaking establishment, and their contents.” He gleefully noted, “Five hundred men were thus thrown out of employment.”12 The state’s foundry operations were few and far between, mostly centralized in Jackson, although the Confederate government did keep an arsenal in Columbus. The state arsenal had moved several times in response to Federal incursions, but Sherman caught up with it at Jackson in May 1863. He reported that “the arsenal buildings, the Government foundry, the gun carriage establishment, including the carriages for two complete six-gun batteries, stable, carpenter and paint shops were destroyed.” Another foundry, located in Holly Springs and chartered by the legislature as the Marshall County Manufacturing Company, closed shop on the approach of the Federals and ultimately moved to Macon, Georgia.13 The most rare industrial production facilities found in the state during the war were shipyards, and these vital operations became especially important targets for the Federals. When the Federal navy put out of business most of the shipyards along the Mississippi River at places such as Memphis and New Orleans, many moved into interior rivers. One of the few in Mississippi was at Yazoo City, where the famous Arkansas was completed, but the yard fell to Federal torches in May 1863. Admiral David Dixon Porter sent a fleet up the

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Yazoo in May, once the river had been opened, and destroyed “a fine navy yard, containing fine sawing and planing machines, an extensive machine shop, carpenter and blacksmith shops, and all the necessary appliances for a large building and repairing yard.” Porter also reported destroying several gunboats and rams, believing his sailors had “destroyed millions of their [Confederates’] property.”14 Not only was the mechanical production plant of the state literally destroyed, but the agricultural production also almost ceased to function. The small farm, according to one of Mississippi’s foremost historians, D. Clayton James, was the dominant agricultural unit in the state. These small land plots, ranging on average from fifty to one hundred acres, often functioned without slaves or with only one or two slaves and were primarily subsistence farms in nature, not producing enough goods to sell for cash. The loss to the South of agricultural implements and tools such as plows, wagons, and harnesses, with little chance of replacement, cut the production from small farms drastically as the war progressed. Likewise, the absence of large numbers of white males led to a decline in small farm production as well as a ratcheting down of work for slaves on plantations who, logically, did not work as hard as when pushed by overseers. The attempt to diversify the state’s agriculture from cotton to other crops also took a toll. One Mississippian summed up the situation in writing to Governor Clark in 1864, telling him “the country in some districts is lying waste; corn, cotton, and other products of the soil are abandoned.”15 Weather could also be harsh on the small farmer and larger planter alike. The alternating droughts and floods in various portions of the state caused widespread agricultural problems in 1861, 1862, and 1864, which only compounded prewar problems. One Delta plantation owner noted that his land in 1860 was flooded; “we was overflowed . . . lost both crops,” he said. Particularly, corn crop failures in large swaths of the state in 1862 and 1864 and wheat crop failures in 1864 caused much destitution. Floods on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, whether caused by nature or Federal tampering, such as in the Yazoo Pass Expedition when the Federals cut the levee to flood the Delta, were also devastating to crops.16 The arrival of the Federals on individual farms stopped crop production for small farmers, and often the destruction went beyond just the crops in the ground. One small farmer in north Mississippi cringed to see Federals misuse “splendid horses” and leave them for dead. In areas on the border between Union- and Confederate-held territory, destruction from both sides regularly occurred. One Mississippian tried to determine which side was worse on his crops.17 Midsize farms and small plantations were likewise devastated. John Lemuel Poates, too aged to serve in the Confederate army, owned only a few slaves and 74

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worked hard on his small plantation between Vicksburg and Jackson. Immediately after the fall of Vicksburg, the Federals returned to Jackson, by way of the Poates’ farm. His wife, Sarah, reported the effects on agriculture in her diary. “They destroyed the garden entirely and the orchards as for taking the fruit, green or ripe, was concerned,” she wrote. Continuing, she related: “One of the cows and our old blind mule [were] driven into the pond and shot. . . . The gin fired and burned down for nothing as there was but little cotton in it and that unbailed. There were two new gin stands and a fine mill destroyed, also a pea house containing a great quantity of peas. Well, that wearisome and trying day drew to a close.” Even more problematic for a plantation dependent on slave labor, the arrival of the Federals gave the slaves a chance for freedom. Sarah Poates remembered in her diary, “In the morning [there was] no one at the kitchen. I waited some time. At last it popped into our heads the servants had probably gone. Mr. Poates got up and went to the cabins. I dressed in a hurry and went to the kitchen. Sure enough every negro we had had left.”18 In February 1864 Sherman again marched through the Poates’s plantation on his way to Meridian. Sarah described the effects: “The destruction of that army is incredible excepting to eye witnesses. Fences were fired at short distances along the road, smoke intense, burning all day and doing much damage. All the fence on side of the avenue burned to the branch. Mr. Poates saved the quarters by burning against the fire. In afternoon fire got into hedge back of pond and destroyed many rails which had been hauled, and much of fence besides. That is discouraging news.”19 Of course, the large plantations were also liberally struck as armies marched through their vast acreages. The head of the Duncan plantation near Natchez recorded $179,896.09 worth of cotton, slaves “carried off by the enemy,” spikes, axes, harnesses, shovels, and plows lost to the Union army in 1862. In 1864 another round of losses occurred, a more fathomable $11,304.10. Another plantation’s total entitled “Amount of Stock and Property Consumed and Taken Off by Gen. U. S. Grant’s Army 1863” listed $29,855.00 in cotton, mules, horses, sheep, cows, oxen, hogs, wagons, bacon, ham, fodder, lumber, fence rails, and corn taken while the Army of the Tennessee camped on the plantation “from 3rd of May to 7th 1863.” The tabulator even went so far as to list the names of mules and horses (Rose and Buck were a team as were Jack and Jane, Dick and Tom, and Kit and Mike), and the regiments that took these items (mostly Illinois units). Howell Hobbs’s plantation near Jackson reported a loss of $44,300 in slaves alone. Yet another plantation overseer near Vicksburg reported sheep and oxen taken by the Federals, and spoke of the halting of work as the Federals took over. As early as May 23 the overseer reported in the plantation diary, “Expecting the Yankees every hour day or night.” They finally came on May 25, after Vicksburg was encircled. “All hands went to work and worked up to 12 75

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o’clock,” he reported, “and the Yankees came and set the negroes all free and the work all stopped.”20 The McGehee family owned a large plantation in Wilkinson County named Bowling Green. The Federals looted the place and burned the house on October 5, 1864, prompting the McGehees to list the losses room by room. This document not only shows the furnishings of a typical main plantation house but also the extent to which the family was deprived of its possessions. After listing everything from the parlors to the bedrooms to the attic, the total loss was $169,133.48, which included a vast “library of over 1500 volumes.”21 Even the family of one of the Union’s favored generals was not spared. Grant’s march toward Vicksburg in the spring and summer of 1863 devastated the plantation of George Meade’s sister, Meade of course being next in line to command the Army of the Potomac and soon to fight at Gettysburg. His sister, Elizabeth Ingraham, lived on a plantation in Grant’s path, and much of it was destroyed. To be sure, Ingraham was very much a Confederate, once mentioning the Yankees as “our enemies.” But she was smart enough to welcome Federal officers in her home, writing in her diary of when John A. McClernand asked to stay in their house. “Graciously granted,” she wrote, “for the protection is very desirable.” That protection did not last, however. Meade wrote a friend that his sister and her family had been “reduced to actual want,” and deemed the destruction as “not only un-necessary but unauthorized.”22 Sometimes the planter’s problems came from within, such as the illadvised Confederate order to burn all cotton in the vicinity of the enemy. The idea was that it would be better to burn the goods rather than let them fall into the hands of the enemy. Confederate agents thus ordered cotton burned when they could not handle it all and when the enemy drew near. The idea of burning the precious commodity, along with a rise in prices within Union territory, drove many planters to sell their cotton illegally rather than burn it or have it captured. The impressments of horses and mules into Confederate military service also hit farmers and planters hard.23 There was some support within the state government for the plight of the cotton planter. Speaking in the Mississippi House of Representatives, Ethelbert Barksdale brought their case before the legislature, comparing their plight to those who had not been touched: Not so with the cotton planter. In many instances his family have been driven with a remnant of worldly goods upon which he is heavily taxed, houseless and homeless, before the implacable foe who are profaning his hearthstone and his altars. This he willingly endures. He yields obedience to his government and bears all the privations incident to the war,

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knowing that the times demand the surrender of every unselfish feeling. All he asks is, while he bears his share of the burthens, that it accord to him the justice which the Constitution was designed to establish.24 Governor Clark, whose term came in the worst time of the suffering in the agricultural realm, also took measures to help the people. In approving a bill to repair the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, Clark informed the legislature that he “approved the bill, not only on account of the great importance of the proposed extension in a military point of view to the State and the Confederacy, but because of its necessity in conveying provisions and other necessaries for a large number of our people in the Northern and Eastern part of the State, whose property has been destroyed and whose fields have been desolated by the enemy.”25 Illustrating the lack of goods and the trouble in transporting them when available, the acquisition of such a common item as salt became a major problem for the state and its people. By 1863, Governor Pettus had to find a supply somewhere, and he contracted for salt, bought with cotton, to be brought through the blockade. The agents never delivered the salt, whereupon Pettus sent an agent and a steamboat to Louisiana to acquire the necessary item. On the return trip to Mississippi, Confederate authorities stopped the boat. Pettus also sent agents to Virginia and Alabama, but finally had to “establish furnaces and manufacture salt.” By 1865, the state had “four furnaces in successful operation with an estimated producing capacity of forty to fifty bushels each per day.” The legislature reported that the labor is very seriously interfered with by the exceedingly wet fall and winter of the past and present year, the wells being ten feet under water at date of report; but much of the delay and inconvenience resulting from this source is avoided by conveying the salt water in tubes a distance of two and a half miles, to the higher pine lands; by which also is saved the great expense and labor of hauling the wood to the water. Another and not the least important advantage obtained by this skillful device of Mr. [Z. A.] P[hillips] is that, whereas the wells are situated in a low, marshy, miasmatic district, productive of much disease, intermittent, billious and typhoid fevers, in the summer and fall, and pneumonia in winter, a healthier locality is secured for the operatives in the dry pine lands adjacent.26 In addition to the agricultural and industrial production of the state, Mississippi’s transportation network was also hit hard by Federal incursion and

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became a chief reason for the lack of supplies getting to the military units and to the people in the interior portions of the state. Governor Pettus himself told the legislature as early as December 1862 that he had been unable to get key supplies “to the interior of the state,” and asked for some type of legislation to remedy the problem.27 Mississippi’s water-borne transportation experienced major destruction as the Federal navy became increasingly dominant on the state’s waterways. Although few incursions took place on the eastern and southern rivers such as the Tombigbee and Pearl, those waterways running into the Mississippi River were broad highways open to the Union navy. Both military and civilian transportation on the Big Black River and particularly the Yazoo and its many tributaries in the Delta region, including the Sunflower, Yalobusha, Tallahatchie, Yocona, and the Coldwater rivers, came to a halt as the war progressed.28 Relatively little shipping was affected inland from the Mississippi River before 1863. The Confederates placed batteries and a barrier across the Yazoo River near its mouth, blocking any Federal advance upriver. In one of Grant’s attempts to get to Vicksburg, the Union navy did manage to use a prewar pass from the Mississippi River near Helena, Arkansas, into the Delta in February, March, and April 1863. Using the Yazoo Pass, which had been blocked by the relatively new levee system built prior to the war, the Federal navy moved into the Coldwater River and then the Tallahatchie River before being stopped at Fort Pemberton, near Greenwood. Still, the expedition wreaked havoc on the local population by burning cotton and any shipping it came across. By April, the expedition was over, but another was taking place farther south as the Federals moved into Steele’s Bayou and Deer Creek. This effort likewise failed, but the Union navy and a few army units reached into areas of Mississippi untouched by the war to that point. Moreover, once Grant surrounded Vicksburg, the Yazoo River valley was completely open to Federal gunboats.29 The effects of the Federal navy on the Mississippi transportation infrastructure can clearly be seen in Federal command reports in the latter half of the war. Union ironclads and gunboats patrolled the Mississippi River itself, literally cutting off any major communication and supply from the trans-Mississippi. Grant reported in July 1863, “Finding that the enemy were crossing cattle for the rebel army at Natchez, . . . I have sent steamboats and troops to collect them, and to destroy their boats and all means for making a move.” Other tributaries and smaller rivers were also blocked or patrolled, such as the Big Black River, which emptied into the Mississippi south of Vicksburg, and even the Pearl River, which emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.30 The Federals concentrated their effort on the important Yazoo River watershed, however, and made several forays and patrols into the region. The first

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advance was in May 1863, when the Federal navy moved all the way to Yazoo City and destroyed several boats and the navy yard at the town. Boats other than those used by the Confederate navy were also destroyed. One Confederate newspaper correspondent, of the Atlanta Appeal, wrote of the destruction of the shipping on the river, reporting more than twenty boats sunk or destroyed. The newspaper reporter counted only four remaining boats “of all the splendid fleet which sought refuge in the Yazoo River,” and they had taken refuge far up smaller tributaries. “This closes the history of another strongly defended river,” the newspaper reported.31 The May raid up the river may have closed the history of major Confederate operations on the river, but not Federal patrols. The Union navy made frequent voyages up the river, one of the largest occurring in February 1864 in conjunction with Sherman’s Meridian campaign. Sherman told his naval commanders to “visit every navigable part of the Yazoo and its tributaries” in order to “show the planters along the Yazoo and Sunflower that we can reach them and punish them.” By that time, so many hulks were in the river that navigation was almost precluded. One historian of the Yazoo River counted thirty-seven hulks in the river by war’s end, put there, he said, by Grant’s military policies. Ironically, years later President Grant would sign the legislation to clear these hulks from the river.32 As in the case of other production facilities, many of the riverboats were actually destroyed by Confederates to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. One of the principal Confederate commanders on the Yazoo River reported “that in the month of July, 1863, 27 steam transports belonging to rebel owners were ordered . . . to be sunk in the Yazoo River and its tributaries, to prevent the same from falling into the possession of the Federal Government.” Whether fired by Confederate or Union officials, however, the result was the same. The loss was to Confederate transportation because of the presence of the enemy, and by war’s end admittedly scanty records indicate only three boats were operating on the entire Yazoo River system.33 At the same time the waterways were coming almost completely under Union control, Mississippi’s railroad transportation system was also being wrecked. The state began the war with six major railroads that, when combined, formed two complete north-south and two complete east-west routes across the state. These railroads, moreover, formed an integral part of the Confederacy’s rail network, two of them being primary routes that one Confederate secretary of war termed the “vertebrae of the Confederacy.” The locations of these railroads’ crossings became especially important strategic sites both for Confederate military and logistics organization, mobilization, and supply, and for Union military conquest.34

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Of the two east-west railroads in the state, the Memphis and Charleston was the northernmost. It ran eastward from Memphis, Tennessee, across the width of Mississippi, mostly in Tennessee but only a few miles north of the border. The line entered Mississippi northwest of Corinth and ran through that town and then on to Iuka and into Alabama, where it continued on to Chattanooga. From there, other lines connected it to the eastern seaboard ports and most notably to Richmond, the Confederate capital. With the other connecting lines, the Memphis and Charleston was the only complete east-west line in the Confederacy and was thus an extremely important transportation route.35 The southernmost east-west railroad lay parallel to the Memphis and Charleston, but roughly 170 miles farther south. The Southern Railroad of Mississippi ran from Vicksburg on the Mississippi River eastward through the capital city at Jackson and thence to Meridian before running into Alabama to Demopolis. The Southern was a much safer route as it was much less exposed, lying as it did in the heart of the state. Unfortunately, a section of railroad was missing from Demopolis to Selma, Alabama, for most of the war, thus denying the Confederacy another complete link from the Mississippi River to the eastern seaboard.36 The dominant and safest north-south railroad was the Mobile and Ohio, which ran northward from Mobile, Alabama, to Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River. The line entered the state south of Meridian before running through that city, where it crossed the Southern Railroad. The road continued northward through West Point, Tupelo, and finally to Corinth, where it crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. From Corinth, the line ran on through west Tennessee and into Kentucky.37 The other north-south line lay roughly eighty to one hundred miles to the west of the Mobile and Ohio, but this road was not a continuously owned company. The southern portion of the line was the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern, which ran up from New Orleans in Louisiana to Jackson, Mississippi, where it met the Southern Railroad. North of Jackson, the line continued to Canton, where it became the Mississippi Central, which ran northward to Grenada, Holly Springs, and into Tennessee, where it met the Memphis and Charleston at Grand Junction. At Grenada, another line, the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, branched off and ran to Memphis and the Memphis and Charleston as well as the Mississippi River.38 These railroads, and a few smaller lines, provided a strong grid network of transportation routes, and, coupled with the navigable waterways of the state, provided a major resource not only for the military but also for the citizenry of the state. The crossing point of the railroads, towns and cities such as Corinth, Grenada, Meridian, and Jackson, as well as Vicksburg at the junction of a rail

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line and river, were extremely important and would become primary targets of the Federals. Each of these locations would be heavily utilized to organize and ship men and matériel, and would play a major role in the state’s ability to wage war. They were also the beneficiaries of many wounded and sick men sent home from the front and bloody battles such as Shiloh. By the end of the war, however, each of these sites would sustain major Federal damage and would be taken out of the war as military and civilian support centers.39 The first breaks in the railroads came as soon as the Federal armies entered the state. Sitting in their vulnerable positions, the Memphis and Charleston and Mobile and Ohio, and their crossing point at Corinth, soon became the focus of several Union armies. After holding out in the Battle of Shiloh in nearby Tennessee, the Federals advanced on Corinth and took it in a relatively bloodless campaign in May 1862. This development, as well as the attending losses by the Confederacy, took large portions of these railroads out of Confederate hands. The Memphis and Charleston was captured all the way from Memphis to the Alabama line and beyond, and it would not be a major factor for Mississippians or the Confederacy for the rest of the war. While the Federals would abandon Corinth in January 1864, the railroad was never again a vital transportation link for the state. Confederate ineptitude also played a role in its destruction. Upon the evacuation of Corinth, Southerners burned bridges on the line, but they did so before seven valuable trains passed, trapping them and forcing their operators to destroy them.40 The same was true of the Mobile and Ohio as far south as Baldwyn and at times farther into Mississippi. Various raids against the line throughout the war broke it in numerous places, and the state and the Confederacy sought unsuccessfully to keep it in running order south of Tupelo. One such raid took place even during the Corinth siege. The Federal commander reported his men destroyed the track north and south of Booneville and “blew up one culvert, destroyed switches and track, burned up depot and locomotive, and train of 26 cars, loaded with supplies of every kind.”41 The other railroads in the northern part of the state were likewise broken and put out of service. Various raids from the Memphis area hit the Mississippi and Tennessee hard, particularly on trestle work, and the first stages of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign saw the Army of the Tennessee advance southward along the Mississippi Central. Each mile of advance took that much track out of Confederate control, with Grant’s army ultimately reaching all the way to Water Valley and Coffeeville, near Grenada. Grant stopped his advance when Confederate cavalry wrecked the Union supply depot at Holly Springs and cut the railroad elsewhere, damaging the line even more. As the Federals retreated up the road, however, they left a destroyed line in their wake.42

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The later stages of the Vicksburg campaign also left wrecked rail lines in its path. Once Grant crossed the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg, his initial plan was to strike the Southern Railroad between Jackson and Vicksburg and thus cut off supply and communication to the river city. Grant ultimately decided the best way to neutralize the Confederates in his rear would be to take Jackson and its railroads out of the war. He captured the capital on May 14 and left Sherman to destroy the city and the railroads while he trapped the Confederates in Vicksburg.43 Jackson’s railroads were of prime importance. For Grant to move on Vicksburg, he had to protect his rear. Accordingly, entire Union regiments lined the tracks and tore whole sections off the bed. Then the troops burned the ties and bent the rails beyond further use. Using regiments en masse allowed Sherman to destroy the railroads in short order. The Federals also tarred and burned the railroad bridge across the Pearl River, just east of Jackson, and damaged several hundred feet of other trestle work. Sherman reported the rail lines were destroyed “4 miles east of Jackson, 3 south, 3 north, and 10 west.” He also reported “Jackson, as a railroad center or Government depot of stores and military factories, can be of little use to the enemy for six months.”44 Of course, the Southern Railroad ceased to be a factor once Jackson fell, and would play little role in the remainder of the war, especially the portion of the railroad between Jackson and Vicksburg. The Southern line east of Jackson was also hit during the campaign. In addition, raids damaged the Mississippi Central and the New Orleans line north and south of the capital. Moreover, none of the three lines even connected to one another after Jackson’s destruction in May and July 1863. By far the most celebrated of these raids was Benjamin Grierson’s effort to break the Southern at Newton Station. After detaching some troops to hit the Mobile and Ohio on his way southward into Mississippi, Grierson reported arriving at Newton and destroying two full trains “in less than half an hour after his arrival.” He also destroyed stores and supplies, arms, locomotives, and miles of track before moving on eventually to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.45 The only major rail crossing left in the state was at Meridian, where the Mobile and Ohio crossed the Southern, but even that crossing in the relatively secure eastern portion of the state was not safe. Sherman led his men on the Meridian campaign in February 1864 along the Southern Railroad, destroying it as he went. Another component of the raid was a cavalry force from Memphis that was intended to meet Sherman in Meridian, but did not arrive. This force did heavily damage the Mobile and Ohio between Tupelo and Meridian, however.46 While waiting for his cavalry force, Sherman began to destroy the railroads, arsenals, storehouses, and other Confederate military installations, calling it

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a “systematic and thorough destruction of the railroads centering at Meridian.” One participant remembered that “an arsenal, immense storehouses, and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, north and south, and the Jackson and Selma Railroad, east and west of Meridian” were destroyed. Also, a Confederate hospital, after the patients were removed, was burned. Many other semimilitary structures were fired, including sawmills and other structures. Sherman himself described the devastation: “For five days 10,000 men worked hard and with a will in that work of destruction, with axes, crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work as well done. Meridian, with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists.”47 The Confederates did not sit idle and let the railroads decay after each attack, however. The Confederate commander in the state in the summer of 1863 and in early 1864, Leonidas Polk, began massive rebuilding programs in which the damage at Jackson and Meridian was repaired and the Mobile and Ohio was returned to service northward past Tupelo. The Southern was also repaired to Jackson, while the Mississippi Central likewise received much attention.48 Although by mid-1864 Mississippi was in the backwater of the war, cavalry raids were common throughout the area, further harassing the state’s transportation routes. The Mobile and Ohio was damaged again in the summer of 1864 near Tupelo, while a January 1865 raid through the state diminished the remaining capacity of the Mobile and Ohio and the Mississippi Central. Benjamin Grierson hit the Mobile and Ohio near Tupelo and Egypt and then turned to the Mississippi Central at Winona before moving on to Vicksburg. While at Winona, a force rode to Grenada and destroyed many rail facilities at that place, including a machine shop. In all, Grierson reported destroying several trains and over forty miles of track.49 At the end of the war, the railroad companies were all broke, with their lines heavily damaged. Rapid movement about the state was difficult if not impossible. The physical attributes of the lines were somber indeed. Every bridge and trestle in the state on the Memphis and Charleston was destroyed, as were all as far south as Okolona on the Mobile and Ohio. The Southern had endured Sherman’s wrath, and the Mississippi Central was almost nonexistent north of Oxford. The Tennessee and Mississippi had but three serviceable bridges on its entire route. On other sections of these lines, the rails had been bent, the ties were rotting because of neglect, and the routes themselves were becoming overgrown with bushes and weeds. Most of the stations, depots, water tanks, and machine shops in the area of operations had been destroyed. And the rolling stock was just as depleted. Only fifteen of the nearly sixty locomotives on

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the entire Mobile and Ohio were in working order at war’s end, and the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern had only three working locomotives in Mississippi.50 As a result, travel on these lines was very dangerous during the war, with many wrecks occurring, often killing many people. English traveler Arthur Fremantle noted in May 1863 that the Southern Railroad, on which he traveled, “was in a most dangerous state, and enjoys the reputation of being the very worst of all the bad railroads in the South. It was completely worn out and could not be repaired. Accidents are of almost daily occurrence, and a nasty one had happened the day before.” Wrecks were indeed common. A treasury train evacuating Jackson ahead of Grant’s army jumped track three times as it sped toward Meridian. One young girl of Kemper County noted in her diary, “the cars run off the track and killed seven men and wounded 20.” Perhaps the most famous accident was at Duck Hill on October 19, 1862, which killed as many as eighty soldiers. The Jackson Daily Southern Crisis told of the railroads’ troubles, asking, “Have you heard of the railroad accident[?]” to which another responded, “No—where was it?” “The Western Train left Meridian and arrived at Jackson in schedule time,” the paper joked. Another newspaperman reported he “has heard of no such accident on that route.”51 The economics of railroading was no laughing matter, though. One major problem was the debt of the roads, which depended on payments by the Confederate government, which of course were not forthcoming. The lines were also heavily affected by the depreciation of the value of Confederate and state currency. By the end of the war, the various lines in the state were over $1 million in debt.52 Attending the Federal destruction of the factories, fields, and railroads of the state was the localized destruction of immense amounts of supplies by Federal raiding parties, both large and small. Grant on his way to Vicksburg and Sherman on the Meridian campaign destroyed huge amounts of supplies and goods found along the way. They basically destroyed everything that was of no use to their men. The numerous smaller raids also took a drastic toll on the supplies found in the state. It was altogether a random lot concerning where supplies were located when a Federal raiding party appeared, but throughout the war, much of the state’s supplies were destroyed sitting at depots throughout Mississippi. One Federal writing in 1865 reported “destroying large quantities of quartermaster’s and subsistence stores” in Choctaw County. Another reported burning eight “warehouses filled with ordnance, commissary, and quartermaster’s stores” at Verona, along with two hundred U.S. army wagons, captured at Brices Cross Roads, loaded to the brim with supplies. Benjamin Grierson, in his famous raid through the state in 1863, reported burning trains

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full of stores and supplies at Newton, along with “a large quantity of commissary and quartermaster’s stores and about five hundred stands of arms stored in the town.”53 The war also negatively affected other state infrastructural agencies. Early in the war, the legislature stopped the appropriation for the State Geological Survey. So many students at the state university in Oxford joined the forming companies and regiments that the university closed. It was later the scene of Federal occupation, although the Union soldiers did little damage to the buildings; nevertheless, the school would not reopen until the fall of 1865. The state library in Jackson was a wreck, and the state penitentiary ceased to exist. “It pains me greatly to be compelled to report to you the almost total destruction of that Institution by the Federal army on the 17th of May last,” reported A. M. Hardin, the prison’s executive officer. The Institution for the Blind in Jackson was likewise “greatly injured by the shot and shell during the investment and bombardment of the city, and entirely destitute of furniture, or movables of any kind. The premises too, are now suffering for the want of occupancy,” the trustees reported. The trustees for the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, also in Jackson, reported “the buildings, grounds, etc., were very much injured—windows and window blinds, all gone—doors broken down and destroyed, fences all burned, much of the weather-boarding torn off, and with the exception of the frames, the buildings are almost entirely destroyed.” The board of trustees for the State Lunatic Asylum reported, “The public enemy, during the siege of Jackson, destroyed nearly all the enclosures of the Institution, as well as the stock of cattle and hogs and crops of vegetables, to the extent of several thousand dollars.”54 On a different note, in addition to the mechanical, agricultural, and transportation destruction, Mississippi’s budding tourist industry was also heavily affected. To be sure, few wanted to vacation in war-torn areas, and much of Mississippi was involved during at least some point in the war. The springs at Iuka were a prime example. One Federal soldier described Iuka as “the prettiest village I have seen for a good while, not large, but . . . very neat.” He went on to say that because of the “fine mineral springs, that have been finely improved, in times of peace, it is a favorite resort of the Southern gentle-folks, during the hot season.” “They are not so highly prized as heretofore,” he admitted, “perhaps on account of the close proximity of the Yankees, as we are termed.” Jackson also had a mineral springs resort.55 Mississippi officials did not take a hands-off approach to the destruction of their infrastructure, however, and tried to remedy and repair the floundering situation as the war progressed. The economic efforts, most notably the cotton money, were intended to provide currency to the people while still allowing

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cotton producers a market for their crops. Likewise, the legislature passed numerous industrial and internal improvement pieces of legislation throughout the war. The legislature incorporated such companies as the DeSoto Bridge Company, the Carroll County Manufacturing Company, the Marshall County Manufacturing Company, and the Farrall Bridge Company, and passed bills “to encourage the Manufacture of Leather in this State” and to build a toll bridge over the Pearl River. The legislature spent a great deal of time on the railroads, passing legislation “for the benefit of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad Company” and later appropriating money to repair the Mobile and Ohio between Okolona and Saltillo. They also felt the need to regulate the lines as the war progressed and money became tighter. The legislature passed a bill “compelling railroad companies to be responsible for freight and baggage.” But the recovery efforts by a strapped legislature with little money could not keep up with the devastation brought by raiding columns of Federals throughout the state.56 By 1865, Mississippi’s infrastructure was so beaten down that it was impossible to even obtain the simplest of items such as paper, cotton cards, or medicines. The legislature did not have enough paper to conduct its sessions, and the state treasurer could not even obtain a ledger book to keep up with his office’s disbursements. Governor Clark, in defiance of the Confederate government, began to trade cotton with the enemy in return for such goods. “What difference is there in morals or policy in sending cotton to Boston by way of Nassau, or of Memphis?” the governor asked rhetorically. The major point, however, was that the state was so devoid of even the barest essentials that it had to turn to such means.57 The resulting loss of infrastructure had a tremendous affect on Mississippi’s ability to wage war. But perhaps nowhere was the effect of Federal military destruction felt more than on the common people on the home front in Mississippi. The Jackson Daily Mississippian spoke with probably unknowing candor when it editorialized, “We at last realize the fact that a cruel, relentless war is waged not more against our Government and our separate nationality, than against communities of unarmed men—against our people—against homes and property.” As attested to by thousands of Mississippians during the war, when the home front tottered, the rest of the Confederacy did likewise.58

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CHAPTER FIVE

“Patriotism Enough to Bear Such a Tax as This” William R. Barksdale saw trouble ahead. As a member of the Mississippi secession convention, he took part in the many deliberations, ranging from taking the state out of the Union to setting up an adequate military defense to obtaining the funds needed for that military defense. On the economic front, the secession convention debated a wide range of possibilities, including taxes, bonds, and credit. The members settled on all of the above, but the most stringent was a new tax on the people. Barksdale was not sure of the success of such a move, but not because he was against raising taxes. Rather, at least privately, he questioned the economic will of the people of the state to endure the hardships of war. Writing a friend during the convention, Barksdale remarked, “If the people have not got patriotism enough to bear such a tax as this then they have not got enough to sustain this movement of secession.” Unfortunately for the state and the Confederacy, this prophecy would be all too true.1 Social history, especially in Civil War historiography, has always included economic matters, yet very little has been written on the state of Mississippi and its economy during the Civil War. Like other topics, the issue has been treated in more traditional works such as those by Bettersworth, and in a few antiquated articles on taxation and banking in the state. A fresh look at the state’s economy can thus provide ample opportunity to examine the economy during the war, its shortcomings, and its ultimate collapse. Like the other topics such as the military, politics, and infrastructure, an examination of Mississippi’s Civil War economy will show a steady decline and ultimate collapse throughout the four years of war.2 Such collapse would come later, however, as the state and its convention delegates began the war with extremely high confidence and courage. Still, a certain sense of reality did pervade the convention, for the delegates knew full well that their actions could and probably would spark civil war. As a result, they began the process of upgrading the state’s military through the Military

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Board. They also knew such an upgrade would require large sums of money, and the delegates saw it as their responsibility to ensure that the state’s military and other operations were adequately funded. Thus part of the original convention deliberations, and probably the most heated, dealt with ways to raise money for the state. The entire convention did not fully turn its attention to economic matters until Friday, January 18, 1861. Throughout the next few days, the Committee on Postal, Financial, and Commercial Affairs made recommendations on an economic ordinance, which met numerous amendments as the delegates plodded through the legislative process. The most contentious came on January 24 from James Z. George, who, in addition to the regular tax imposed in the original ordinance, suggested a tax of $1.25 per slave. Amendments, even to the amendment, came and went, but this amendment ultimately failed. The next day, George offered the same amendment, but reduced the tax to $1.20. This motion failed again.3 On January 26 the convention passed “An Ordinance to raise means for the defense of the state.” This law, in addition to regular taxes, levied “an additional special State tax of fifty per centum on the regular State tax of such tax payer.” In addition, it required “also a tax from every inhabitant of this State of three-tenths per centum upon all money owned or controlled by such inhabitant, and deposited, loaned or employed in the purchase of notes, bills, stocks, or any securities for the payment of money, without the limits of this State, or kept from use and circulation within the same, at any time during the fiscal year.” In other words, the convention required an additional one-time tax of 50 percent of the regular tax and a 0.3 percent tax on all money used in loans or stocks. The ordinance also allowed the governor to issue $1 million in “certificates of loan or treasury notes” to “persons desiring to loan money to the State.” The notes would be redeemable at 10 percent interest over the course of three years. The money thus raised was to be put into a “military fund” to aid in the defense of the state if and when war came.4 The convention passed two other ordinances on January 26 that touched on economic issues. One authorized the governor to “borrow a sufficient amount of money to defray the expenses of the troops of this State now in the field.” The idea was good, but the convention limited the amount to a whopping $10,000. The other ordinance allowed the governor to enter into contracts to acquire “arms, munitions and military equipments.”5 In the immediate aftermath of the January secession convention and its quick return in March, Governor Pettus and other state officials began implementing these monetary policies. Many Mississippians were quite generous as the state seceded from the Union, giving out of their own pockets to the initial

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war effort. “Patriotic citizens in various portions of the State, have extended to me pecuniary aid in arming the State,” Governor Pettus reported in January 1861. Hal Chambers, Miles McGehee, and future Confederate general and Mississippi governor Charles Clark all gave the equivalent of one hundred bales of cotton either in actual cotton or in money from the sale of the fabric. One of Mississippi’s future Confederate senators, Albert Gallatin Brown, gave $500, John M. Graves gave $200, and Burwell Scott gave $1,000. R. S. Rayburn donated to the state one hundred kegs of black powder. Together, Jefferson Davis and Jacob Thompson were responsible for $24,000 to buy arms for the state.6 Other entities gave donations in kind, such as the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, which offered free use of its road to transport troops and supplies. It also offered Pettus “extra trains, when required, free of all charge.” The Mississippi Central Railroad, not to be outdone, tendered its employees as soldiers in case the state was invaded, and offered its services “on favorable terms, to be arranged hereafter.” Pettus also reported that “many other patriotic citizens have tendered me similar aid,” and went on to say that “all citizens on whom I have called to aid me in the purchase of arms and ammunition, have gone wherever I requested, and performed any service I required, without asking or accepting fee, or reward for their service.”7 This bliss did not last long, however, because by the summer of 1861 economic matters were already troubling the state to the extent that Governor Pettus saw fit to call a special session of the legislature, all because the war “has so deranged the financial affairs of the country.” Foremost among the problems was an issue with credit among Mississippi’s debtor class, which did not mean the poor classes but rather the planters who had borrowed money for their crops and merchants who had bought goods for resale. The planters had planted mostly cotton despite a call from the secession convention itself to diversify into food crops. The main issue was the Federal blockade, which was already closing ports. This resulted in the inability of planters to sell their cotton and merchants to import goods for resale. The result was that the debtors owed large amounts of money to their creditors with no way to regain a return on their investments.8 Governor Pettus called on the legislature to aid the debtors. “Ought not the Legislature which brought on this revolution to equalize its burthens as near as possible?” he asked. Pettus wanted the body to legislate a compromise “postponing the sales of property under all judgements heretofore obtained in any court, for twelve months.” He also wanted a delay in the execution of all judgments to come. “This, while it may inconvenience, cannot ruin the creditor,” Pettus argued, who would still be paid their money with interest.9

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But there was an additional concern for Pettus. He was already beginning to become concerned over military finances, and so told the legislature that this law would free up the people to support the war financially. “The people thus relieved will not be constrained to keep a large portion of their cotton crop to save their property from execution sales, but can, and I doubt not will, loan it to the government annually until the war is triumphantly closed,” Pettus argued.10 The governor was so concerned about military finances that he advised raising taxes to meet the demand. The state would obviously need a large budget to prosecute its part of the war, and Pettus had already sent “Large advances . . . for the Confederate government, in tents, camp equipage and commutation money for clothing for the Mississippi volunteers ordered into the Confederate service.” Despite much giving by patriotic citizens, the governor wanted an across-the-board tax so that those unpatriotic citizens would do their part. He recommended a 0.25 percent tax on slaves and land, which would add a total of $279,544 to the state’s coffers. Pettus also petitioned the legislature to make permanent the ordinance of the secession convention that placed a tax of 0.3 percent on “all money owned by every inhabitant of this state.”11 By the end of 1861, more foreboding news came from the state treasurer. Governor Pettus was even less optimistic about the finances, and cautioned the legislature about the lack of ready cash to average Mississippians, which in turn affected the government through the collection of taxes. “The people of this State,” Pettus informed the legislature, “dependent almost entirely on the sale of cotton for money, having no large cities where capital is accumulated, and no bank, and having spent the ready money on hand at the commencement of hostilities, in fitting out their sons for the field, will be peculiarly embarrassed in paying their taxes, unless some plan can be devised by which cotton can be converted into the means of payment.” Pettus recommended some compromise on this issue not only to aid the people but also to keep revenue coming into the state’s coffers.12 The governor also saw a need for a firm monetary system on the national level. Instead of the states issuing paper money, Pettus argued, the Confederate government should do so. “If we must rely on a paper currency, during the continuancy of the blockade, which I believe is admitted by all,” Pettus declared, “would it not be both cheaper and safer for the Confederate Government to make that paper currency by issuing Treasury notes to the full amount of the wants of the Government?” Obviously, any currency needed to be backed by gold or silver, of which the South had little, but nothing could be done without the Confederate Congress.13 The national currency never developed, and by December 1861 Mississippi was running out of money. The legislature passed a series of bills that printed

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$5 million in “cotton money,” which would be advanced on the next cotton crop. The legislature also provided for $2.5 million in treasury notes to fund the military needs of the state. This “military fund” was to be filled by bonds sold at differing amounts under $500 and payable in ten years at 8 percent interest annually. Unfortunately, some treasury notes were never funded because the legislature had not appropriated any money for printing the bonds. The cotton money and military fund notes were printed, however, at four cents a note.14 With the people of the state beginning to suffer because of the war, the blockade, crop failures, and failing monetary policy, the legislature had no choice but to raise the tax rate again, first by 30 percent in December 1861. This tax provided funds “for the support of destitute families,” the number of which was growing rapidly. One south Mississippian wrote in the fall of 1862 that the people “are living on potatoes and beef, and when the potatoes give out—which will be the case before mid winter—I don’t know what they will do.” Another tax of 25 percent in January 1862 went to pay interest on loans taken by the state to pay Confederate taxes. Taxes seemed to be the order of the day.15 With the passage of these acts, along with a charter for the Bank of Jackson as well as banks elsewhere, the cotton notes soon became Mississippi’s currency. Not backed by gold or silver, these paper notes put the state on a weak financial footing from the beginning. Unfortunately, the state found very little market for its cotton. The value of the notes plummeted while prices began to rise dramatically.16 The situation only worsened as time passed. By the legislature’s called meeting in December 1862, one year later, the citizens of the state were facing tremendous problems, especially those who had family members off fighting in the Confederate army. The legislature responded with the State Military Relief Tax in January 1863, which was intended “for the support of destitute families of soldiers.” By August 1863, the state had provided $198,754.19 to families of 63,908 volunteers in the military service.17 With the fall of Jackson in May 1863, the state’s finances seemed to take a turn for the worse as well, although there is little direct correlation between the two events. The state’s fiscal matters had been in trouble long before the enemy took the capital city. Still, the capital’s fall had a profound effect on the economic bureaucracy stationed there. The state treasurer, M. D. Haynes, began packing the department’s books and funds as soon as Pettus issued the evacuation warning early in May. The department’s officials took a train out of Jackson on May 7, and made a horrific trip to Meridian. Once in Meridian, Haynes set up shop in nearby Enterprise, but soon moved farther away from trouble as rumors of a raid on Meridian became commonplace. Haynes moved on to Mobile, Alabama, where he deposited the state’s funds in the Bank of Mobile.

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Mobile likewise soon became the center of rumors, whereupon the department moved to Montgomery, where the funds were deposited in the Central Bank of Alabama, where they resided for much of the war.18 In the fall of 1863 Governor Clark took over a nearly penniless state. With only about $400,000 in the treasury, the state was $8 million in debt. The plight of the people was just as bad. To handle the growing indigent masses, the legislature had passed a small appropriation of five hundred thousand treasury notes in an earlier session, but they had to get serious by the fall of 1863. The legislature passed another tax and offered $500,000 more to be spent by a body of five commissioners per county. The counties were also allowed to levy taxes to help this cause. More help for the helpless was also forthcoming in later sessions, including farm produce taxes in kind when money ran out. Money matters were certainly not very stable when taxes had to be taken out of crop yields instead of currency.19 One of the most important pieces of legislation passed in November 1863 was an effort to diversify the state’s crops grown by its planters and farmers. For far too long the state had been dependent on cotton, with the vast majority of farmers, planters, citizens, and even industrial workers dependent in some shape or form on the fiber. With the cumulative effects of the blockade, “the failure of king cotton diplomacy,” and the devastation to the state’s rail and water transportation systems, growing cotton was no longer such a money maker, and the state was finding it was not that profitable either as taxes or as a trade commodity. The result was an effort to diversify in order to grow crops that would benefit the people of the state and the South.20 Many patriotic citizens as well as newspaper editorials pushed the idea of diversification, and the legislature put teeth into the effort in November 1863 when it passed a tax of five cents per pound on seed cotton. This law, as well as other outside factors such as the lack of markets due to the blockade and Federal destruction, caused the production of cotton to plummet by 90 percent by 1864 while the price rose to some fifteen times the 1861 price for a pound of the fiber in 1865. Some planters simply could not resist the chance to make huge sums of money and began illicit trade with the enemy.21 The slowdown in cotton production brought a rise in the production of food-based crops. With starving soldiers and citizens across the state and the Confederacy, the idea of diversity was well understood. Many planters switched to corn, and there is evidence that large amounts of the crop were produced in the state. To be sure, the price of corn, unlike cotton, dropped dramatically by more than half in two years during the war. Instead of cotton, Mississippi farmers also produced rice, sugarcane, peanuts, and potatoes. Unfortunately, while much food was produced in the state, the breakdown of the water and

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rail transportation systems meant these goods could not be moved to the areas of greatest need in the interior.22 With the agricultural woes only one of the economic problems facing the state, Governor Clark, in his first message to the legislature during the called session of March and April 1864, reported to the elected officials the status of the treasury and the results of their recent work on monetary matters. Clark took a hard line in dealing with Confederate national bonds put out by the Confederate Congress to restrict currency in the Confederacy. The idea was to buy Confederate twenty-year bonds with state treasury notes, or to accept Confederate bonds as tax payments, thereby making one national currency. The problem was that there was no mechanism for repaying the Confederate bonds. “The bonds are practically twenty year bonds without interest,” Clark noted, “and it requires no great financial acumen to determine their total worthlessness in the market after January next.” He also had bad news on the tax revenue front, stating that “a large part of that tax [1862], as well as of that assessed for 1863 remains unpaid.” And not only was the state tax a burden for destitute citizens who could not pay, the Confederate tax was likewise beyond the ability of most Mississippians to pay. “No agricultural capital can bear a tax of 5 percent in times of peace,” Clark argued, “and no nation is expected to provide for the payment of its debts in time of war.” Clark recommended the legislature call on its representatives in Richmond to work for a lower tax as well as revising the economic code of the state. All in all, Mississippi’s economy was a mess.23 And it only got worse. By August 1864, when Clark saw he had to call another session of the legislature to try to do something about the state’s problems, he reported that “the outstanding liabilities of the Treasury and Quartermaster General’s department, exceed the sum in the treasury, in State and cotton notes.” Moreover, the state owed a large amount of money to destitute families within its borders, and it had little or nothing to pay with while the number of people who were destitute grew larger and larger. “The enemy have, in their raids, by destruction of property, theft and devastation, added greatly to the number of destitutes,” Clark reported to the legislature. He saw no other recourse than to levy a new tax while turning many of the destitute over to “the clergy of several of the Christian churches [who] have entered into this work.” In addition to selling public lands, the legislature could only issue another $2 million in treasury notes funded by bonds.24 The growing number of destitute families in the state was indeed becoming a critical problem. The legislature continued to pass treasury note legislation with little to back it. Meanwhile, those who were destitute only suffered more, finally prompting the state to begin taking taxes in kind; instead of

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accepting paper money or specie, county officials took in crops and food to be distributed to the poor helpless citizens who had no other means of survival. In 1865 the legislature passed an act authorizing a 2 percent state tax, and allowed the individual counties to create an additional 0.5 percent tax for their local indigents. Each of these taxes was on corn, wheat, and bacon and could be paid in kind. One soldier operating in north Mississippi remembered, “The tax in kind made almost a continuous row of corn pens along the railroad through Chickasaw, Monroe, and Lowndes Counties.” Unfortunately, all those in Monroe and Lowndes counties were destroyed by Federal raids.25 The spring of 1865 saw suffering at its worst. Governor Clark reported “in some parts the partial failure of the corn crop, and in others the incursions of the enemy, and the consumption by our own army, have drained the country and raised prices to fabulous rates.” Most affected, the governor wrote, were the indigent families of soldiers. The disabled Clark wrote personally of this group: “there is no subject in which I feel a deeper interest than this, cut off as we are by physical disability, or by our public duties and responsibilities, from the glorious privilege of fighting the battles of our country, we may yet perform an acceptable service by providing and caring for the loved families of our brave soldiers who are fighting those battles for us.”26 By the end of the war, Mississippi’s economy was shattered. The burden of determining the state’s financial position and rebuilding it fell to the various Reconstruction legislatures and governors. The regular session of the legislature in the fall of 1865 thus called on the state auditor and treasurer to report their findings. The results plainly told the state of Mississippi’s economy. The state treasurer reported $112,185.20 in “outstanding warrants from 1st January 1860 to 22nd May, 1865.” That was not so bad, but the state auditor reported the “probable indebtedness” of the state as $4,979,324.53. In other words, the state was around $5 million in debt with little way to recover, given the taxed-out nature of the indigent and ruined people living on a wasteland that had been the scene of a brutal war.27 Throughout the war, however, other issues beyond monetary policy also ate at Mississippi’s economic structure. Once the Federal armies began to invade the state in 1862 and then with increasing fury in 1863 and 1864, the economy became more and more volatile. With major portions of the state in enemy hands, few taxes were collected from occupied regions, thus lowering the receipts, which increasingly hampered the state. The hardest development on the economy was the disruption of goods and services and the plunder of any possessions in the path of the enemy’s march. Louisa Henry of Madison County described the problems incumbent to one household during Sherman’s Meridian campaign. “I was in mortal terror all the time they were here,” she

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wrote her mother, “the children were clinging to my skirt crying ‘fir to break their hearts,’ which prevented some of the brutal set from burning the house, so they told the negroes. I regarded it as a mere threat. We lost all our mules, having sent them to Morton for safety, just in their route you know.” The state penitentiary is another example. In the first seven and a half months of the fiscal year, the prison made such a profit that, above all expenses of paying for itself without any state appropriation, it placed within the treasury $60,460.76. When Grant’s army took Jackson, however, they burned the site. “Had the Institution not been destroyed I am confident it would have produced a revenue to the State for the past year of at least one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, clear of all expenses,” reported E. P. Russell, an agent at the prison.28 The need for massive amounts of food and goods to feed the armies and the destitute required the state to impress those items, which also caused economic as well as other problems for Mississippi’s citizens. When the army or state took their crops, farmers and planters had little left to live on, much less sell for a profit. “I think we can get along with what Corn we have,” wrote one Mississippi farmer to his mother in the spring of 1863. Then he added, “if the Government doesn’t impress it.” One Mississippi woman was in the same shape, writing her husband that she had spent all the money she had and needed more. “I went uptown from which place I came back as usual penniless,” she wrote, and went on to say, “I came out in debt and didn’t get all I wanted either.” But she tried to ease her husband with a little humor, reminding him of a fitting poem: God Bless the wives They fill our hives With little bees and honey; They ease life’s shocks They mend our socks But don’t they spend the money.29 The Federal blockade also increasingly hurt the Confederate and state economy. The first squeeze was felt as early as 1861. One Mississippi woman remembered that the “Blockade of Mobile in 1861, whence the farmers and upcountry merchants obtained their supplies, first suggested the necessity of contriving some way of making the supplies on hand last an indefinite time.” Another Mississippi woman, Bettie Black Mayo, remarked in her diary in January 1863, “You know the blockade has put us to doing a great many things we would not have done otherwise.” Another mother had a more humorous take on the tightening noose: “Santa Claus somehow manages to get through the

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blockade,” she wrote her sister, “so much, good old man, does he love little children, ’twould almost break his heart to disappoint them.” The blockade also had a major effect on the monetary policy of the state, particularly the December 1861 cotton money effort in which planters could sell their cotton to the state for treasury notes. With the blockade already cutting off access to worldwide ports, Mississippi farmers had little other place to sell their goods, thus forcing them to turn to the state rates. The state legislature even appointed a special committee to look into the issue of the blockade: the select committee on the “Means of Upholding Government and Extending Relief to the People During the Existence of the Blockade.”30 The Treasury Department also had to deal with counterfeit currency. Luther Baechtel, a clerk in the department, reported in his diary on counterfeit bills, one entry in June 1863 describing a bill as a “new and dangerous counterfeit just issued.” A planter near Coffeeville reported that Federal soldiers “got all the money my negroes had & left in place of it Counterfeit Confederate notes.”31 Of course, as goods became increasingly scarce, speculators began to manipulate the system, forcing prices for those goods to soar. A Mississippian who admitted to trading with the Federals in Memphis learned a good lesson: “I was foolish enough to get a lady to get a few articles for me in Memphis,” he wrote, “and like every body else who has tried that experience in this town I was woefully cheated.” Prices went up for even the most common goods. One Mississippi woman in Kemper County reported in January 1864 that “unbleached domestic” cloth sold at $3.50 a yard, with calico going at $8 to $10. Boots cost $125, while shoes went anywhere from $15 for children to $60 for adults. A bale of cotton was fetching $38, while sugar was $3.50 a pound and tea $7 a pound. Watermelons brought $10 to $25 a piece.32 Money was not readily available to pay such high prices. As the state placed more and more cotton and treasury notes in circulation, inflation destroyed the value of each bill. One Oxford woman wrote in 1864 of items “which we stand in great need of, which are only procurable for something else than Confederate money.” In addition to the state placing more script in circulation, the legislature in December 1861 allowed railroad companies in the state to “issue notes to be circulated as money.” In all, the companies were allowed to issue over $1 million in notes. Insurance companies did likewise. Inflation was thus a major concern, so much so that one Mississippian noted that “the price of everything is almost fabulous, and but few persons in this vicinity will take money; they prefer food or clothing in exchange.” One Kosciusko lawyer told of buying hogs with salt. Because of so much depreciation of currency, the people could not

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pay their taxes, and receipts steadily declined as the war progressed. Thus the state had to turn to levying taxes in kind. Fortunately, residents could gain tax credits for losses incurred by Federal destruction.33 Illustrating the lack of value of Confederate money is the story of one Federal cavalry regiment in the Delta that captured a Confederate quartermaster carrying supplies and a large amount of money. The Confederate, one Federal remembered, “bewailed the loss of the supplies, but seemed to care little for the loss of the money, saying, ‘We have money to burn, but we need those supplies badly.’” One of the early students of Mississippi’s Civil War economy summed up the problems with obvious truth: “the evils of this banking anarchy were multiplied by the issue of worthless cotton certificates, Confederate currency and counterfeits. Depreciation stalked abroad in a devastated land.”34 Many other economic problems faced Mississippi as well. The state auditor reported that by 1863 not only was the economy breaking down but also the state’s economic bureaucracy. “Having fully reported all balances due upon the taxes of 1861 and 1862, I would state that owing to the unsettled condition of the country, suits have not been instituted against Tax Collectors in arrears, as required by law, and I would respectfully ask of your honorable body instructions in the premises,” reported A. J. Gillespie. He went on to say, “I would respectfully urge upon the Legislature the necessity of some alternative in the present law for enforcing the collection of taxes on delinquent lands, as it is impossible to observe any system under the law as it now stands. Any change would be an improvement.”35 Perhaps most illustrative of Mississippi’s economic problems was State Treasurer M. D. Haynes. Upon the revelation that the auditor’s report did not match his treasurer’s report in late 1864, with Haynes’s report not accounting for the missing money, Governor Clark called on Haynes to resign. He did so on January 2, 1865, but killed himself that night. The saddest aspect of all is that it was later determined that the deficit attributed to Haynes had been inherited by him from his predecessor. Unfortunately, Haynes was yet another of the many casualties of a war, this one economic, that devastated the people of Mississippi’s home front.36

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CHAPTER SIX

“If Lincoln Should Continue to Work at the Mote in Our Eye” In writing to his brother in September 1862, George R. Smith, the owner of a modest plantation with some twenty slaves near Meridian, Mississippi, spelled out many of the problems facing the state during the Civil War. “You say you want my consent to a final settlement of father’s estate,” he wrote. “I have no objection to your making a settlement at any time it may suit your convenience,” he penned, noting he was in no hurry for his share of the money, “as I owe no one a red cent.” He went on to share how “I have been drafted and now have a man in my place. I give him $25 per month and gather his crop.” He also related that his son Robert, who was fighting in the Confederate army, “is or was at Chattanooga sick with fever the last we heard of him but said to be improving.” Moving on to his agricultural endeavors, Smith noted, “Our crops here are verry sorry and we will be hard run to make the connxtion with the next crop, particularly if Lincoln should continue to work at the mote in our eye.” He ended his letter on a more ominous note: “We are verry uneasy here about salt. We fear we shall not be able to get it at any price,” he related, but then surprisingly ended with “We are all well.”1 Such a common letter spelled out the many difficulties facing Mississippians, including sickness, missing loved ones, conscription, shortages, Federal invasion, and the lack of salt. And this note was from a fairly well-to-do planter, not a member of the poorest class, upon whom many of these problems fell even harder. To end his gloomy note with the words “We are all well” is curious, but reflects the time in which the letter was written. Even in the fall of 1862, before Antietam, Emancipation, and Vicksburg, many Mississippians were still fairly optimistic about their fate. Within a year, however, those sentiments would change. For George Smith, the war would be disastrous. The conflict would cause economic and physical shortages and problems, and would take his son Robert, who was mortally wounded at Stones River soon after his father wrote this letter. His other son, also in the Confederate army despite being a lad

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of only sixteen, would become very sick, although he later recovered and survived the war. For untold numbers of Mississippians, George Smith’s example was repeated and compounded countless thousands of times. Mississippians faced almost inconceivable problems as the war progressed, and these difficulties had a definite effect on their support for the Confederacy. While most Mississippians never broke and went over to the enemy, many, while loyal to the end, nevertheless steadily lost the will to continue the fight and yearned for the horror to just be over, regardless of who won.2 One significant portion of modern Civil War historiography is dominated by the lack-of-will thesis most notably espoused by Richard Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William Still Jr. in Why the South Lost. Arguing that the South did not have the nationalism to sustain the will to win amid hardships of war, this thesis has been controversial to say the least. Although only a portion of the entire context and in need of conceptualization amid other anti-Confederate feelings by Unionists and African Americans, that construct of the lack of will, or better described as a loss of will, fits well with what the contemporary sources say about loyal Confederate Mississippians during the Civil War.3 Any study of Mississippi’s Civil War home front must include an examination of these loyal white Mississippi civilians, in this case primarily men because women, Unionists, and African Americans will be treated in separate chapters. While it is impossible to investigate males entirely, it may be better to describe such an examination as that of the basic loyal white nuclear family unit in Mississippi. Regardless of how the focus of the chapter is defined, however, the key feature is investigation of those whites loyal to the Confederacy (again, Unionists will be treated in a separate chapter). Research into this demographic group divulges a slow loss of will throughout the Civil War. A note of explanation must be given to illustrate the complexity of the topic as well as the need for generalizations to amply examine such a broad range of people. Mississippians differed in many ways during the Civil War. A few elite citizens lived on large plantations where cotton was king and slaves did all the work. Most of the largest plantations were scattered along the great Mississippi River, where the soil was fertile and the access to trade routes and markets was best. These elite Mississippians were very rich and generally opposed the war out of fear that their economic fortune would be lost due to invasion by the enemy, stoppage of trade with markets, or even death and destruction. But there were also many rich elite who supported the Confederacy, chief among them Jefferson Davis. The example of the Bisland family of Natchez, large plantation owners, is illustrative; they sent three brothers to the Confederate war effort and remained loyal despite living in a climate around Natchez that

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fostered Unionism and provoked many to take Union loyalty oaths to keep their plantations.4 The vast majority of loyal rural Mississippians were neither rich nor lived on plantations; the average number of slaves owned by Mississippi slaveholders was six or seven. Many slaveholders worked on small farms, trying to scrape out a living in the less fertile areas of the state. The hilly northeastern portion was particularly insufficient for large-scale agriculture, but some tough farmers there grew what they could. The soil was better in the mid and southern portions, where small farms were sometimes intertwined with larger farms and a few plantations. The poorest of these Mississippians, who ironically made up a large portion of the state’s men in the ranks, did not worry about growing cotton or any other cash crop; they were more interested in growing enough food for their families. These subsistence farmers often grew corn, wheat, and hay and added what came from a vegetable garden to their family’s diet. Often their meager crops were augmented with fruit from an orchard or honey from a beehive. Most did not even dream of owning slaves, although some of the uppermost of this poorest class might own a slave or two who worked in the fields and gardened right alongside the owner and his sons or daughters.5 Life in the towns was a little different. Many of these families still augmented their income with a garden, but many had skills that would be utilized in the state’s infant industrialization. Wheelwrights, carriage makers, textile workers, and blacksmiths could be found in many small towns, as could clerks, store owners, hotel operators, ministers, lawyers, teachers, and other people engaged in small-town occupations. In towns through or near which a railroad passed or near larger rivers, more skilled workers could be found, such as mechanics and engineers.6 The most skilled workers in the state, as well as the highest society, were found in the larger cities, which were very small compared to the largest Southern cities such as New Orleans, Charleston, Memphis, and Atlanta. Despite having less than 2,000 citizens, as compared to 170,000 in New Orleans, Jackson was the chief urban area in the state. Jackson housed not only some industry but also the seat of the state government, which brought with it attending agencies such as the state penitentiary, the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and the Institute for the Blind. Other cities of note were Natchez, Vicksburg, Meridian, and Corinth, all along either railroad or river trade lines. Some evidence of higher culture could be found in these small cities, such as the theater in Natchez. Many elite plantation owners chose to live part-time in these cities while an overseer handled the dirty work on the plantation.7 The gathering place in most counties was the county seat, where almost all official business was transacted at the courthouse. Goods could be bought

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and sold at the stores in town, and medical, media, and religious institutions were abundant. Unfortunately, these small towns, with their newspapers, could also be the breeders of rumors, mostly false, which seemed to travel throughout the state at a rapid speed. Rumors of raids, battles, and other actions kept Mississippians nervous throughout the war, even if most bad news never came to pass. Particularly egregious rumors that made their way into newspapers insisted that the Federals were retreating from Vicksburg in May 1863 and that Grant had been mortally wounded. One newspaper even reported that sixty thousand “Yankees of all grades, nations, and colors—except gentlemen—have been buried in North Mississippi and the adjacent portions of Tennessee and Alabama.” The editor called it “reoccupation.” One Confederate military official even took the extreme step of asking to preview newspaper reports in order to verify their content. “The publication of such rumors must cause much unnecessary alarm and uneasiness to those persons having friends or other interests at or near designated points,” the Confederate officer argued.8 Even more than the U.S. or Confederate governments, or the state government itself, most Mississippians’ connection to formalized government was on the county level. Each county government was made up of a five-member board of police, which was the forerunner of the board of supervisors that oversees county government in the state today. Each county had five “beats,” with one police member representing each beat. Also serving in each beat were two justices of the peace and a constable, making up twenty officers divided among the five beats. There was also a sheriff and deputies, as well as a probate judge and clerk, the circuit clerk, assessor, surveyor, treasurer, coroner, and ranger. Much of the state’s work, such as any assistance or taxes suggested by the governor and passed by the legislature, was funneled through the county government, most notably the board of police. It also had responsibility for the more local functions such as road and bridge work, which took up much of the board’s funds and time. The board could also levy taxes. Many county governments’ ability to function well during the war, however, was adversely affected by its officers entering the army.9 Like today, Mississippians during the war were also mired in bureaucratic paperwork for almost any action that involved the state or Confederate government. Passes, exemptions, receipts, forms, and reports were all required of Mississippi’s citizens, although as the war progressed less attention was paid to paperwork when life itself was in question. On top of that, the state’s militia, which affected most citizens, had its own system of paperwork, which included muster rolls and any number of vouchers, passes, and statements of leave, furlough, or court-martial. Paperwork and bureaucracy seem to transcend time.10

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Mississippians depended on a judicial system of justice, but when law and order broke down, particularly in areas near enemy-occupied zones, there was a system of vigilante justice. One Unionist pastor remembered: “Self-constituted vigilance committees sprang up all over the country, and a reign of terror began; all who had been Union men, and who had not given in their adhesion to the new order of things by some public proclamation, were supposed to be disaffected.” Another Mississippian wrote a friend: “The rifles as you requested, I have given to such of our neighbors as I know will use them when ever an opportunity occurs.” Of course, the army also had its own judicial system, which did not always follow the civilian courts. One judge in Corinth wrote: “Spent the day in town. There was a great deal of excitement there. They drummed a fellow out of town. Tared and cottoned an Irishman and had a fellow brought before me for breaking in B. B. Adams’ house.” In the worst cases, the military declared martial law.11 Within this context of civil life, Mississippians loyal to the Confederacy tried their best to maintain their lives during the war that was developing around and quickly overtaking them. One of the foremost problems endured by Mississippi families was the loss, either temporarily or permanently, of the male head of the household. The state contributed some seventy-eight thousand soldiers to the war effort, which was a substantial portion of the population. Governor Pettus reminded the legislature early in the war of the state’s obligation to aid these families, saying, “Deprived of the means of support by calling the husband and father to the army, they may justly claim protection and supply of the necessaries of life from the State.” The absence of the male leader of the household had several effects. First, women became increasingly important in running the family. Second, the fear of slave rebellion grew as men were absent, leaving many slaves unwatched. The fear of slave revolt particularly flourished around the highly concentrated slave population of the Natchez region. Third, women and children, particularly on smaller and poorer farms, and old men were forced to take up the slack in the farming duties to feed the family and any livestock they had. One Mississippian described the effect of the fathers and sons serving in the army, saying, “the poor soldiers[’] wives are plowing with their own hands to make a subsistence for themselves and their children—while their husbands are suffering bleeding and dying for their country.” Wounded and disabled men who returned from the front and needed care also added a larger burden on those who remained at home. Even worse, however, was for a family member to be lost permanently in the war. It was much worse when family members at home could not learn the details of their loved one’s death or, even harder, were never able to recover the body that was buried on some obscure battlefield far away from home.12

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As the war progressed, an already stressed social situation, with the absence of the male household leader, grew much worse as the ability to obtain the necessities of life became more problematic. The Federal blockade was ever tightening, leaving Mississippians without those items that had to be imported. By late in the war, so many commodities were nonexistent in Mississippi that certain replacements had to be found. Coffee was a favorite substance, but could hardly be found anywhere in the South. Parched corn, okra seed, sweet potatoes, and sorghum seed were all used as replacements, with varying degrees of success. One traveler through Mississippi told of stopping at a Macon hotel and getting “the meanest cup of stuff that I ever swallowed as a substitute for Coffee; it was parched meal.” Honey and molasses were used in place of sugar. Medicines were also terribly lacking, prompting many citizens to depend on herbs, roots, and bark. Needles were few and far between, forcing people to use thorns. Turpentine was used for quinine. One Mississippian reported in 1864 that the people of Brandon had not had nails for two years. At times, water itself became quite scarce, particularly in higher elevations away from rivers and streams and during droughts. One Confederate Mississippian remembered farmers being forced to sell water to thirsty soldiers, which was corroborated by the soldiers themselves. With the drought, dust also became a problem.13 One of the commodities citizens most feared lacking was salt, and the state government went to extreme measures to supply the item. Salt was used for a number of purposes, including healing and seasoning, but the most useful was in preserving meat. One young Mississippi girl summed up the item’s importance in her memoirs when she said, “After ‘63 we had no salt with which to cure meat. This was a great hardship.” Thus in many ways life itself, inasmuch as the ability to maintain food for the future was concerned, depended on the ability to obtain salt.14 Governor Pettus wrote as early as December 1862, “The most pressing want of our people at the present time is a supply of salt.” Realizing the potential problem, Pettus sent agents to several Confederate states hoping to buy or mine salt for the citizens. These agents were almost “entirely unsuccessful,” as the governor described them. One agent to Louisiana was able to buy a small allotment of salt, but nowhere near enough to fill the need. A contract with a French salt supplier was stopped due to enemy activity, and a steamboat full of salt in Louisiana was stopped by Confederate authorities. Fortunately, a “private enterprise” in Monroe and Chickasaw counties, most notably at Saltville, was able to fulfill some needs, although even this early in the war Pettus also had trouble transporting the salt to the interior portions of the state.15 The situation became so bad that Pettus appointed a series of officers known as “Salt Agents” for the state, including W. C. Turner, A. M. West, and

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Z. A. Phillips, to find any and all available salt for the state. In the ensuing years, more contracts were let for salt from Alabama firms, but the item was not delivered “in the quantities and at the times agreed upon.” In fact, there was even a protest from Alabama’s governor that “Salt-Agents of Mississippi were interfering with his prospects of making salt.” Eventually, the state had to turn to manufacturing salt from seawater along the coast, although that method, combined with inadequate transportation, never totally fulfilled the needs of the people.16 With the dwindling supply of goods, prices went higher and higher, often necessitating the bartering of goods for services or other items. One Mississippian from Okolona remembered selling a load of corn for one calico dress and trading a bale of cotton for a sack of coffee, when that item was still available. As noted earlier, the state government even had to resort to allowing citizens to pay taxes in kind instead of with money.17 In addition to a shortage of money and higher prices, the ability to make money was also getting scarce. In the face of orders to “burn all cotton likely to fall into the hands of the enemy,” plantation owners and farmers were at a loss as to what to do with the huge supply of cotton, with those unwilling to barter with the enemy sometimes opting to plant other items in the hope of making a profit. One plantation owner lamented in his diary as early as 1862: “Affairs are in such condition, whether as to national or my own, that I am not certain what I should do. If cotton cannot be sold, certainly no rational man will increase the quantity; for it will only reduce the value of that now made.” Two days later he had concluded, “I think to plant all plantation in corn and potatoes.” Others began producing illegal items for sale, such as corn whiskey. The action drove up corn prices for a time, causing the farmers to sell to distilleries rather than provide food for the poor. The governor and legislature had to outlaw these illegal distilleries, with Governor Clark calling the perpetrators “robbers of the poor, robbers of the army, demoralizers of society, and the worst enemies of their country.” Some plantation owners simply ceased operation altogether. One invading Federal described one such plantation: “The blighting effects of the war was everywhere visible, the fields no longer bloomed with the fleecy staple, nor resounded with the happy songs of the plantation darkies. No rich harvest was in the prospect, weeds and brambles grew where once the cotton bloomed, verily its grandeur had departed.”18 The result of all the shortages was destitution, particularly among two groups that often included the same families: the poor and the soldiers’ families whose male head of household was away fighting for the Confederacy. One Mississippi educator wrote that “never is a stick of wood put on the fire but with dread lest the pile will be consumed before more can be procured.” He

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went on to say, “It has repeatedly happened that our breakfast has been corn bread and cold water, and our dinner wheat bread and cold water—nothing more—this from necessity not choice.” And with the invasion by the Federals, many destitute families emerged, dependent on handouts from anyone who would help them, friend or foe. One Mississippian remembered years later that “we often suffered for food, being forced by dire necessity to draw rations from the enemy to keep our bodies alive.”19 Governors Pettus and Clark and the state legislature did all they could with their limited means to aid those who were destitute, particularly the families of soldiers. In almost every address to the legislature during the war, Pettus and Clark reminded the members of their obligation. Pettus called on the legislature in December 1862 to provide for “that one class of our citizens [who] has claims upon the State as imperative and as sacred as any claim the State can have upon the soldier in this perilous hour. I allude to the families and dependents of our soldiery now or soon to be in the field.” He also warned in November 1863, “I regard it as your solemn duty.” By early 1865, Governor Clark reminded the legislators that the situation “threaten[ed] great suffering.” The legislature responded with numerous relief bills throughout the war, but the aid was not always even. One Mississippi judge complained, in fact, that local commissions tapped to supply the aid gave it both to families of soldiers and to families of deserters, some of whom were actually at home.20 In addition to all the monetary and supply problems, many Mississippians also faced personal issues such as death, strained relations, and foreclosure. The pathetic case of one Mississippi planter is, while probably not illustrative of a broad section, nevertheless exemplary of some of the extreme situations faced by the people of Mississippi. This planter obviously had some personal issues, such as when he noted in his diary early in the war, “I propose leaving in the morning. My health and mind absolutely need rest and recreation— tired of being sick here, and everybody tired of me.” When he returned, events began to crumble upon him like an avalanche. In January 1862 he sent away his overseer, who, he said, “has been grossly delinquent, negligent and inattentive. He has done me more harm than good.” Then, later that month, his wife of thirty-two years died. “Thus I am left alone,” he wrote with a heavy heart. “From summer of ‘24 or ‘25, has that woman been my polar star, the bright particular spot. Alone! Alone! Oh, God!” On top of that, he also found out that his daughter and son-in-law were suing him. “My daughter, that cherished one, that idol of my young and my old heart is weaned off, and, oh God, she sues me!” Later comments in his diary show a very disturbed man: on his anniversary, he wrote: “This is my wedding day. Alone, now! So lonely. Though a house full of strangers, yet I am alone. No fond friends to whom I can unburden my soul. No! No! Alone!”21 108

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Often, odd circumstances added to Mississippians’ troubles. One minister told of an accident that occurred near where he lived. “Mr. Alex Swain in opening a shell taken from the battlefield had it to explode,” he wrote in his diary, “and a hand of his wife was nearly torn off, and he himself was burnt so that he cannot get about.” He concluded that “shells are dangerous playthings.” On at least one occasion, even man’s best friend betrayed his master. One Federal reported that his unit flushed out a man from a plantation house, only for the man to run to the nearby swamps to hide. Unfortunately for the man, the soldiers found his bloodhound tied at the house. When the dog was set loose, he tracked his master, “baying at every jump,” according to the Federal witness. Knowing he would be betrayed by his dog, the man made a run for it only to be shot down after “failing to halt after repeated calls.”22 Mississippi soldiers knew their families were probably in danger, and the temptation to leave the ranks and protect them was very real; this motive was one of the many causes of desertions. Yet many chose to remain in the ranks, or to see to their families and then return to their units. One soldier in Pemberton’s army in northern Mississippi left his command when the enemy reached his home near College Hill. He sent a note by his body servant to gather members of his family and meet him in the swamp. The slave did his duty and brought the children on the only old lame horse that remained on the farm. There, in the spooky nighttime silence of the swamp, the soldier bid farewell to his family, sending them to stay with kin in Aberdeen. He then returned to his unit.23 Sidney S. Champion, of the Twenty-eighth Mississippi Cavalry, participated in the battle that has forever borne his name, Champion Hill. He was so near his home, yet could not see to the safety of his family or his possessions. During the battle and afterward, his home was in the midst of the fighting and became a Union hospital. His wife and children had fortunately fled; realizing that battle was imminent, Matilda Champion had quickly gathered her children and valuables and loaded them into a carriage and wagon. As she readied for departure, an excited Federal officer galloped up and ordered her to leave. She fled eastward, but by the time she reached Bolton, Matilda heard heavy cannonading. She would spend the next few months at her father’s residence in Madison County, wondering what had happened to her house and possessions. Sid Champion would have the same feeling. The night of the battle, he wrote his wife that he could see “a large fire in that direction.” He could only write his wife, “I am fearful our home is nearly destroyed.”24 With the major shakeup in society and the market forces early in the war, Mississippians probably assumed that their situation could not get any worse. Then, from mid-1863 on, their state was overrun by the enemy, which added another degree of difficulty. And not only were there problems caused by the invading enemy but also with the Confederate commanders who were 109

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increasingly intolerant of the locals in an effort to feed and equip their own commands in the midst of an ever-dwindling food supply. Likewise, as law and order broke down, particularly on the border regions between Confederateand Union-occupied territory, whether it was permanent or temporary, Confederate forces were often as merciless to the citizens as the enemy. Many families chose to leave the state. One Mississippi woman reported immediately after Vicksburg fell: “People are leaving just as fast as they can get away. As many as 4,000 persons have passed our house in the last three or four days. . . . The road is crowded continually with wagons, negroes, & stock running from the lower counties. A great many are going to leave our neighborhood for Ala & Geo.” Another family left but sent one member back to Raymond to sell all their goods. They ended the war with “a trunkful” of worthless Confederate money. Many were at a loss as to what to do. One woman thought she should leave, but opted to stay anyway. She was not at all confident, however. “I reckon we will stay at home and do the best we can,” she wrote her sister. “We would be ruined to go off and leave everything, and . . . we are ruined if the enemy gets amongst us. So, it looks as if we are ruined anyway.”25 Conversely, a few families who left what they thought were hostile areas in other states came to Mississippi to wait out the war, only to be caught right in the middle of it. Such was the experience of the Sholars family of Louisiana, who left that state and crossed the Mississippi River when Grant’s army began operating on the western side of the river in the spring of 1863. They took refuge with family members, the Shaifers, near Port Gibson. Unfortunately, they put themselves right in the path of the Army of the Tennessee, and the Battle of Port Gibson was fought around the Shaifer house on May 1, 1863. Another example is minister John N. Waddel, who left Grand Junction, Tennessee, when the Federals arrived rather than “take the oath.” He described his journey as “on my way to Dixie,” and spent the remainder of the war traveling across the expanse of Mississippi and the Confederacy.26 For those who did stay or unfortunately came to Mississippi for safety, they eventually had to face the enemy, which was a humiliating ordeal. The plan of the enemy was to take whatever they needed from the people of the state, as evidenced in one of Grant’s messages to Sherman during the Vicksburg campaign: “we can subsist our horses on the country, and obtain considerable supplies for our troops.” The result was unfortunate for the citizens. One Port Gibson girl wrote of the Federals’ arrival there, saying Union “troops were pouring into town, flaunting their star spangled banner, playing Yankee Doodle, and, oh the destruction.” There was no doubt that invading Union columns made trouble for the citizens of the state. Some of this destruction has already been documented in dealing with the effects of burning and pillaging

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on the economics of the state as well as on the infrastructure, particularly large plantations where many goods were produced. But the destruction on smaller farms and in towns affected the people of the state just as much, if not more. As a prime example, Ulysses S. Grant himself told of the people of Oxford who came to him after news of the burning of his supply base at Holly Springs in December 1862. “They came with broad smiles of their faces, indicating intense joy,” he wrote in his memoirs, “to ask what I was going to do now without anything for my soldiers to eat.” Grant told them he was now going to take their food. “Countenances soon changed,” he said, “and so did the inquiry. The next was ‘What are we to do?’”27 One Mississippian from Okolona later described the horror felt when news that the Yankees were coming hit town. “It was a terrible thing to us women, to hear ‘the Yankees are coming,’” she wrote. “Our hearts would throb and our knees tremble at the dread sound,” she continued, saying, “The old men, white and black, would gather up all the mules, horses, and wagons and hurry off to the ‘Bottoms.’ The women and children would try to hide and otherwise take care of what was left. It was a difficult thing to do; for some of the negro women would be almost sure to tell where the things were hidden. So, in order to save the valuables, the women would often wait until midnight to bury their prized belongings.”28 When Grant and Sherman marched southward through northern Mississippi in the winter of 1862, intending to reach Vicksburg, the town of College Hill lay in their way. The populace found ingenious ways to save some valuables, although the Federals burned mills, gins, and a house that had harbored a wounded Confederate soldier. The Federals occupied the home of Em Frierson, and one officer made her sit at the piano and play and sing all the Southern songs she knew. Other Union soldiers rushed in to try to stop the concert, but the officer quieted them. Little did they know that Frierson had hidden the family’s silver in the piano. She had also hidden a rooster and two hens under a tub in the garden now covered with tall weeds. The rooster insisted on crowing every morning, which prompted the Federals to search for him, although unsuccessfully.29 One Mississippi woman wrote of the Union army’s march through her land as the Federals moved toward what would eventually be called the Battle of Raymond during the Vicksburg campaign. Mrs. J. W. Russell, whose husband was fighting in Tennessee at the time, lived near Raymond and heard the sounds of battle, although she was too far away to be affected by the fighting. The Union army did not pass her by, however. “There were some polite men, in every squad that came, and I suppose that was one reason I was not alarmed,” she wrote her husband. “I let them have the keys, and they ransacked

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the smokehouse, took most all our meat, took all the tobacco. Some of them took nothing, others asked for what they wanted, and others were as ravenous as wolves.” Mrs. Russell then described what she lost, including “every mule, on the place,” chickens, bed clothes, and all the servants: “the Yankees forced or threatened & persuaded the negroes to go.” One slave reported that the Federals told the slaves that if they did not all flee they would “burn every house on the place.” Some left without any word, but the last few “came and told us all goodbye,” prompting Mrs. Russell to state “for the first time I was negroless.” She was clearly frightened, but she told her husband, “I bore the whole affair, as a Soldiers[’] wife should.”30 Another Vicksburg woman told of the approach of the Union army to that city. As the lead elements passed their house, an officer inquired if her father knew where the “rebs” were. He spoke honestly when he said no, but the column unfortunately ran into a Confederate trap just over the next hill, where the officer and several of his men were hit. “The Yankees were so enraged with my father[,] saying he had known the rebs were hiding under the hill,” she remembered, “which he did not, that they at once put a torch to our home and told my father that if he was on the premises at sun-down they would hang him.” She remembered her house as “a mass of smoldering ashes” as the family moved to her grandparents’ home, but noted, “Inside the city it was worse.”31 Entire towns were sometimes targets. One lady of Pontotoc commented, “Our poor little town has the appearance of almost entire desolation.” Many hamlets along the line of Sherman’s march to Meridian were especially pilfered and damaged on varying levels. One Federal wrote his sister: “You say it looks hard to see so much property destroyed. So it does, but that is not the worst of it Jennie. I saw things on that march that made my heart ache.” He told of the sacking of Morton, where a woman and her “four or five small children” were turned out of their house, which was burned. “This is but one instance among hundreds some ten times worse,” he wrote, and admitted, “I do not like to see it even if they are Rebels.”32 The town of Oxford also suffered major damage at the hands of the Federals late in the war. In August 1864, when at least one newspaper reported only “a few old men and helpless women and children” lived there, a Federal column of white and black troops made its way to the town and burned much of it, including thirty-four stores, the courthouse full of records, the Masonic hall, hotels, shops, and five dwellings, including that of former secretary of the interior Jacob Thompson, known to be a public enemy of the United States for his resignation upon Mississippi’s secession. It was reported that the Federal commander would not allow the citizens to remove any of their possessions before they burned the houses. One historian has concluded that the burning

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of Oxford was in direct retaliation for the Fort Pillow affair, where Federals complained that Confederates had massacred the black garrison in cold blood. Whatever the cause, some said Oxford was “the most completely demolished town they have seen anywhere.”33 Jefferson Davis’s property, of course, was not spared. The Federals took his main plantation on Davis Bend during the operations around Vicksburg, but his other land holdings inland were also overrun. William T. Sherman told of one such incident during the Federal march to Vicksburg. He rode up to a “small hewn-log house” to get a drink of water. As he sat on his horse, he noticed a book on the ground. Ordering a soldier to hand it up to him, Sherman was surprised to find it to be a copy of the Constitution of the United States with Jefferson Davis’s handwritten inscription of his name on the title page. Upon inquiry, Sherman learned the land he was on belonged to the Confederate president. Another Federal general, Hugh B. Ewing, reported finding papers belonging to “the Arch Rebel Davis” in an abandoned house.34 Despite the overwhelming evidence of Federal destruction in Mississippi, there were instances when the Union army provided goods for the people of the state. Amid the destruction that came with an invading army, many Mississippians began to realize how to beat the odds. They learned that an occupied dwelling was less likely to be torched by the enemy than an unoccupied house. On one occasion, a Mississippi family watched as a Federal colonel asked, “Is this house occupied?” Learning it was, he said, “Touch nothing about this place.” Some Mississippians also realized that having Federal officers use their homes was no bad thing. One Port Gibson woman wrote how Union general James B. McPherson used her home as headquarters and how she realized “the General will be a protection.” The Federals also helped protect civilian property, as when Grant placed a provost guard in Raymond to make sure Union soldiers “conduct themselves in an orderly manner, and [are] prevented from entering and pillaging houses.” That the victorious Union soldiers shared their rations with the starving prisoners and civilians in Vicksburg is well known. Less well known is the fact that Grant later sent rations and goods to the people of the state in the area through which he had recently marched and fought. The Federals issued food and medicine to the people of Jackson and Raymond, Grant saying, “I thought it only fair that we should return to these people some of the articles we had taken while marching through the country.”35 Much civilian suffering also came at the hands of the Confederates, however, prompting Governor Clark to task the state militia to “repel raids, not make them.” One judge in Corinth, Walter Overton, complained bitterly of the treatment of his land during the Confederate occupation of the place just before and after Shiloh. “A regiment of soldiers have camped on my land and there is

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no telling how much damage they are doing it,” he confided to his diary. “They are cutting all the timber off of it and burning all the rails. If they stay long they will ruin it.” Overton complained to Brigadier General Adley Gladden, who sent a few of his aides and “the Provost Martial to see what damage they had done me,” Overton wrote a few days later, “and they came back and said they had done me no damage.” Overton fumed, “If that is the way our friends treat us, Lord deliver me from our friends.” Later he complained that “the soldiers have filled up my well. . . . I would give a good deal to know who did it.”36 In Vicksburg, Confederates burned several houses of locals along the siege lines simply because they blocked the lines of sight and could potentially be used as havens for Union skirmishers or sharpshooters. The famous diarist Emma Balfour noted on May 19, the day of Grant’s first assault on Vicksburg, that “the darkness was lit up by burning houses all along our lines. They were burnt that our firing would not be obstructed.” Immediately after Vicksburg, when the Federals returned to the state capital at Jackson, Sherman reported the departing Confederates “had caused cattle, hogs, and sheep, to be driven into the ponds of water, and there shot down; so that we had to haul their dead and stinking carcasses out to use the water.” A planter who lived near Coffeeville confessed that “I always dreaded the falling back of our army as much as I did the coming of the Yankees. Our army was scattered for twenty or more miles wide and committing depredations wherever they went. It is truly disgraceful to the Confederate Army.”37 Confederate marauders were a particular problem for the citizens living in the no-man’s land between Union and Confederate occupied territory. There, law and order broke down because the county authorities were afraid to keep the law and neither Confederate nor Union soldiers were willing to wander too far from their respective units and the safety of their larger numbers. William T. Sherman himself commented on the marauding Confederates hitting their own people: “In this department I pay but little attention to guerrillas. They have never attacked any place of note, and are chiefly engaged in harassing their own people, who merit little at our hands.” A Confederate official reported that “around the country from the Tallahatchie to Memphis are organized bands of men acting, they say, under the authority of the War Department, but having no such authority, who are living upon the people upon the plea of being soldiers and then stealing every available horse, mule, or hog they can lay hands on.” He went on to note, “most of the depredations have been upon the unprotected families of soldiers, whose natural guardians are battling for their country’s cause.”38 And then there is the case of Confederate political persecution, as many citizens termed it during the war. Confederate authorities declared martial law

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in various areas of the state when they deemed it necessary, sometimes drawing withering criticism from the inhabitants. The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus likewise caused an outcry. Many Mississippians also saw conscription as an attack on their civil rights. In addition, numerous Confederate and state impressments of goods and supplies, particularly horses and mules, negatively affected the citizens.39 By far, however, the worst suffering came when citizens were caught in the crossfire of contending armies. While towns were primary objectives for Union raids and marches, thus putting those urban citizens in harm’s way, the rural Mississippians who lived in between those towns also faced destruction at the hands of contending armies. When the armies met and territory swapped hands, the inhabitants of the area were caught in the crossfire. Although not caught in the midst of firing between armies, the people of Meridian were certainly entangled in the hardships of war that came when a Union army forcefully took and destroyed the town that was a major logistical center for the Confederacy. Intent on breaking Meridian’s rail lines as well as its support base for the Southern armies, Sherman entered Meridian in February 1864 and destroyed anything of value to the Confederacy. Unfortunately, many civilians were also affected adversely. Realizing that Sherman was nearing Meridian, the population tried to hide valuables. One citizen had his servants hide the family silver in a millpond and the horses in a canebrake. He told the slaves to stay in their quarters, which was fine with the slaves, who sang, according to his rendition of their dialect, “De Yankees are comin’, De Yankees are comin.’” It was all of little use, however. One historian noted that by the time Sherman reached Meridian, his soldiers “knew about millponds and canebreaks.”40 Sherman allowed his men to “occupy the houses of the citizens of Meridian,” which caused untold horrors for the people. A pregnant Mary Semmes saved her house only by begging the soldiers, who had already started a fire. As she begged, it was said, the sun broke through the clouds, creating “something resembling a halo” around her golden blond hair. The soldiers thought better of burning the house. Another woman told of the Yankees going into her house, “breaking open doors, trunks, locks, etc.; tearing up and destroying everything they could.” “I begged for my things,” she wrote to her mother. Nevertheless, the soldiers killed or took the cows, chickens, and many of the personal items in the house before a guard sent by Major General Stephen A. Hurlbut arrived, at the request of the family. Later Brigadier General Mortimer Leggett made the house his headquarters.41 One dwelling that did not survive was burned because the woman and her daughter had insulted a Union officer and a common soldier. They saved only

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“what she and her daughter had on their back when they ran out of the house.” Even worse, the two destitute women could not find shelter with the other families for fear that any house that harbored them would also be burned.42 The effect of shooting on citizens was sometimes even worse, for life itself was at stake. One citizen of Natchez recorded his thoughts on the bombardment of the city by the Federal navy. Rev. Benjamin Chase recorded in his diary how “we were driven from our abode in Natchez, on the 2nd of September last by the bombardment of the City by our remorseless enemies, two of whose sixtyeight pound shells passed through our premises.” He noted that “through the merciful protection of God, neither exploded nor did us any personal injury.” He went on to describe how the Federal navy completely canvassed the town, “slightly moving the battery after each discharge, like the opening of another fold of a fan, until the whole city had been swept over by 173 shells.” Chase told how he “retreated into the basement story with my family, servants, and all, but the shrill whistle of the shells was so terrific, my daughter and feeble help fainted.” He described how ”I held her in my arms endeavoring to revive her, closely surrounded by the family, [when] a shell passed through the adjoining room so near as to cover us with the rubbish, cutting away part of the staircase, and passing out through a brick wall, struck an oak tree in the street and fell on the pavement.” Rev. Chase was able to take a larger view of the episode, however, gathering souvenirs of the mayhem. “Wishing to preserve some memorial of the scene through which we were passing,” he noted, “I crossed the street where the bullets had passed through the windows of the Presbyterian Church, and took one, partially imbedded in the front of the pulpit near its base.”43 The citizens of Corinth underwent similar stress as the town was fought over and changed hands several times. At one point prior to the Confederate evacuation in May 1862, an order went out for all citizens to leave. Not all obeyed. When the enemy took possession, the citizens were subjected to many months of Union authority as well as a battle that raged right in the very streets of the city. One Corinthian remembered, “If there is a place within the boundaries of the Union that has smelled the breath of war, that place is Corinth.”44 There was perhaps no worse place to be than inside Vicksburg as the contending armies vied for possession of the city. Even before the siege, the residents knew something was amiss as the contending armies fought one another near the city. Young Annie Broidrick remembered the Battle of Champion Hill sounding like “a vast cane break on fire,” and reported “windows and mirrors in the house, although the fighting was many miles away, were broken and shattered.” When the Confederate army was finally caught in the trap, so were many residents, who had to endure the siege just as the defenders did, including

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the shelling, lack of food, and miserable conditions. Many residents dug caves into the hillsides to get away from the almost continual bombardment. Emma Balfour noted, “we have provided ourselves with a cave as Gen. [Stephen D.] Lee says there will be no safety elsewhere.” When Lee later inquired whether “we were provided with a rat-hole, I told him it seemed to me that we were all caught in a rat hole.”45 Despite her humor, Balfour and the other residents could not help but feel trapped. During one particularly bad bombardment, she noted in her diary, “As all this rushed over me and the sense of no way of escape, that we were hemmed in, caged:—for one moment my heart seemed to stand still—then my faith and courage rose to meet the emergency, and I have felt prepared ever since and cheerful.” The trouble eased at times, sometimes allowing the inhabitants to emerge from their caves. But it would not be long before the bombardment began again. Emma Balfour described one lull: “As we sat on the gallery a mortar shell exploded in the shed in front making me involuntarily jump from my seat. Then another and another from all directions.”46 Other voices from the siege tell a similar story. Mary Loughborough described meals during the siege: Our dining, breakfasting, and supper hours were quite irregular. When the shells were falling fast, the servants came in for safety, and our meals waited for completion some little time; again they would fall slowly, with the lapse of many minutes between, and out would start the cooks to their work. Some families had light bread made in large quantities, and subsisted on it with milk (provided their cows were not killed from one milking time to another), without any more cooking, until called on to replenish. Though most of us lived on corn bread and bacon, served three times a day, the only luxury of the meal consisting in its warmth, I had some flour, and frequently had some hard, tough biscuit made from it, there being no soda or yeast to be procured.47 By mid-1863, Federal forces had overrun much of the state. Almost the entire portion of northern Mississippi along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was in Union hands, particularly Corinth and Iuka. The same was true for the Mississippi River region, where Union gunboats patrolled and the enemy kept heavy garrisons at Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez. Much of the interior and eastern portions of the state were still in Confederate hands, but only as long as the Federals allowed. Numerous raids into these areas took place, the most noted being Sherman’s Meridian campaign in early 1864. The various

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raids demonstrated to Confederate Mississippians that the enemy could pretty much go anywhere it wanted, when it wanted. The continual capture and recapture of the state capital at Jackson was illustrative of this ability.48 There were some long-term Union-occupied zones in Mississippi, however, which caused quite a new manner of social life for loyal Mississippians or those who remained. While Corinth was occupied for several months, that city was left to the Confederates when the strategic situation no longer warranted its use by the Federals. Ship Island, captured early in the war, was a major Union haven although few if any civilians were affected. Still, the soldiers occupying the fort tried to make life seem more like home by organizing a camp newspaper, bakery, post office, and church. The major cities along the Mississippi River were different cases, however. Vicksburg and Natchez would remain in Federal hands for the remainder of the war, causing a major shift in Confederate civilian social patterns in those areas.49 Vicksburg’s occupation was somewhat different than Natchez’s, although there were some similarities. The Federals were firmly in control in both, for example. In Vicksburg, the U.S. military ran the town, and citizens were forced to appeal to the governing military rulers throughout the war. And those Federals lived very comfortably, some even bringing their wives to live in town. One soldier wrote that his “duty is very light.” Being in its prized position, Vicksburg also saw the periodic convergence of Union military might, most notably in preparation for the Meridian expedition, which departed from and returned to Vicksburg. There were more than just Federal soldiers swamping the town, however. Vast numbers of fleeing slaves also congregated at Vicksburg, either having run away from plantations on their own or having followed Federal columns as they came and went. The influx of blacks into Vicksburg significantly altered that city’s societal patterns. The explosion of the cotton trade with the capture of the nearby cotton plantations and the opening of the Mississippi River brought numerous speculators in from the North, as well as treasury officials and brokers to see after them. As might be expected with such massive change, crime and poverty were also quite common in Vicksburg.50 Natchez saw much the same story. But while there were also Federal soldiers, free blacks, and cotton speculators in Natchez, they were not as numerous as in Vicksburg. The town’s military garrison was not as large, yet there was still the regulation of daily life in the occupied city, and crime and smuggling were rampant. There seemed to be, however, a desire to maintain much of the city’s cultural entities, with the many parties and balls continuing, as did the city’s schools. One Federal stationed in Natchez, in fact, reported, “It hardly seems like soldiering here,” and went on to tell of parties and balls and dancing

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with Southern women, most of whom by this time were Unionists. In both Vicksburg and Natchez, loyal Confederates were significantly outnumbered, and these saw firsthand the drastic changes.51 Unfortunately, the situation sometimes got out of hand even in the occupied areas. Such was the case with the Natchez murder of George Washington Sargent by a group of Federal soldiers. The Union authorities held a court-martial and convicted Alexander McBride of the Twenty-eighth Illinois of murder and sentenced him to be “shot to death with musketry,” which he was. A black soldier also found guilty escaped before the sentence could be carried out.52 With all the problems confronting Mississippians loyal to the Confederacy, there is little doubt that their will began to break as time passed. With the enemy running rampant over their state, many families destitute, food and goods scarce, and little prospect of victory, these citizens’ will to continue the course, much less to win, faded fast in the latter war years. It is important to determine when the major turning point came, although compiling a quantitative analysis of a large amount of data would be problematic and would actually serve little purpose. Without doing so, several major actions no doubt factored into Mississippians’ loss of will, including the Emancipation Proclamation and the reelection of Abraham Lincoln. Major battlefield defeats such as Gettysburg or Atlanta also figured into the mix. It is readily apparent, however, that the elections, proclamations, and defeats that occurred away from the citizens’ local sphere of influence were much less disheartening than what occurred right in their own neighborhood or state. Thus the major change in loyal Mississippians’ views about the war took place in the summer of 1863, for it was then that the Federals took a permanent hold in what was thought to be a secure area. It was then that the enemy demonstrated that they could march at will anywhere in the state they desired. It was then that the state government was put on the run. And it was then that what was believed to be a formal Confederate defense was actually shown to be paper thin. It was the summer of 1863, with Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, that really turned the tide for many Mississippians. Many historians have placed emphasis on the fall of Vicksburg as the chief event in the summer of 1863 in Mississippi. However, the capture of Jackson by the Federals probably produced as much disillusion and demoralization as Vicksburg’s capture. Vicksburg was a military defeat, which by mid-1863 was a common event in the western Confederacy. Even the capture of an entire Confederate army was not unheard of; it had happened before, most notably at Fort Donelson. Mississippians were well aware of those events. And the Confederates in Vicksburg faced almost impossible odds, both with a large and ever-growing Federal army inland and the powerful Union navy on the river.

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But the fall of Jackson heralded major change for most Mississippians. Jackson lay inland from the river, where no Federal naval presence could be brought to bear. In addition to being the state capital, housing the very seat of government, it was also a major manufacturing area. But it was also the symbolic heart of the state. To add insult to injury, Jackson, inland and deemed nearly invulnerable to the enemy, was lost almost without a fight. The battle that took place there was fought not between large contingents of the major armies, but rather by smaller groups. Once captured, the Federals put the state government on the run, and it would stay that way the remainder of the war. And as if to prove that the capital could be recaptured anytime they wanted to, the Federals took the city three more times during the war. No previous defeat compared with the fall of Jackson. Nashville, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge had all been captured, but none of those cities meant the same thing to Mississippians as Jackson. Even more than the loss of Jackson itself, the larger Federal invasion of Mississippi caused the most demoralization for Mississippians. The army that captured Jackson and Vicksburg marched through various portions of the state in doing so and thus touched many Mississippians either directly or through extended familial relations. The pillage of a Mississippian’s plantation or farm very likely had a much stronger effect on his or her view of the war than the fall of Vicksburg or even Jackson. Thus the major change in Mississippians’ will to win came when the war became personal and touched them directly. In fact, a large amount of primary source material deals with demoralization. Its pattern, traced over the years of the war, reflects a bit of worry at the outset of the conflict, which was quickly engulfed by the war spirit. That high spirit continued through mid-1863 as the Confederate military was able to parry threats to the interior of the state. But with the fall of Jackson and Vicksburg, voices of demoralization and defeat began to emerge, with prominent Unionist citizens such as William Sharkey and Jacob Yerger telling the Federals that Mississippi was “beaten, [and] subdued,” and that they wanted to form a Reconstruction government. This mind-set would become a literal wave flowing across the state by 1864. And contrary to common assumption, the effect of conscription, substitution, and exemption seems to have affected Mississippians less than the result of illegal trading with the enemy.53 There were indeed some Mississippians, even among the loyal Confederates, who saw trouble ahead early in the war. As early as January 10, 1861, the day after Mississippi voted to secede from the Union, one judge in Corinth, who later served in the Confederate military, wrote in his diary, “I fear great trouble is close at our doors.” Later, watching the buildup before Shiloh, his pessimism seemed to grow a little when he wrote, “There are 5 generals in town

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now and if we do not whip the Yankees this time it will not be for the want of [those] articles.”54 Others had their doubts as well early in the war. In December 1862 one Mississippian wrote, “In truth it seems to me, that if the Federal Govt. is determined to open the Mississippi River, and will bring all their force in the West to bear for that purpose, the disparity of forces is so great—that without an accident, they must succeed.” Even President Davis was concerned about embryonic demoralization. On his return to Richmond from meeting with Pemberton in Mississippi in December 1862, he inquired of Secretary of War James A. Seddon about Pemberton’s fears that contracts for goods to be obtained via trade with the enemy “had caused already some and tended to produce much unlawful trading with the enemy and a consequent demoralization of the people.” In fact, much of the discontent early in the war stemmed from illegal trade with the enemy. Those Mississippians who were too honorable to illegally trade with the Federals saw their cotton burned per Confederate policy, while those who traded became richer. Stephen D. Lee commented on this problem in April 1863, saying that “the planters and negroes are much demoralized on the Mississippi, and from all I can learn large cotton crops are being planted by men who were regarded above suspicion.”55 By May 1863, the frequency of reports of demoralization began to mushroom, however. One Confederate in northern Mississippi reported that many crops were available in De Soto, Tunica, Panola, and Marshall counties, and would be available “if the citizens of those counties could be protected from the frequent raids of the enemy.” He went on to say that with so much trading with the enemy in Memphis, “In fact, to say in moderate language, they are demoralized.” Even the Federals picked up on the change; a Union cavalry raid leader, who had been through the Liberty and Woodville areas in southwestern Mississippi in July 1863, reported “the people to be discouraged with the rebellion, and anxious for peace on any honorable terms.” Similarly, James L. Alcorn witnessed a disheartening episode in Grenada in August 1863. “Our soldiers are thoroughly demoralized,” he wrote his wife, “and the people panic stricken. The ladies of Grenada were (many of them) wringing their hands and crying with fear; Oh my country how you are fallen!!” He also noted “the cry is the ‘Yankees are coming oh Lordy what shall I do.’” Even the leader of the secession convention, Wiley P. Harris, was beginning to have doubts in the summer of 1863. “When the Federal forces, naval and land forces, took possession [of] the Mississippi river, from its mouth to its source,” he wrote, “it became apparent to me that we could never have the strength to recover it, and that it would never be surrendered to us—in any settlement, and without it independence was simply impossible.” Harris admitted, “The conviction came over me that we had made a sad mistake.”56

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Even President Davis realized that the crisis was at hand for Mississippians during the summer of 1863, writing that “the disasters in Mississippi were both great and unexpected to me.” He wrote one friend in the state in August, “recent events near their homes have been calculated to produce in some minds the feeling of gloom,” but Davis expressed hope in rebuilding the will of the people. “I trust that the people of the State have in a measure recovered from their depression,” he wrote.57 By the end of 1863 and early 1864, the declining will had reached a landslide. Colonel Edward Dillon, commanding the area of southwestern Mississippi and eastern Louisiana, wrote to his superiors in December 1863, “You cannot conceive the demoralization of all classes in this country, and, unless something is speedily done, I fear we shall not be able to reclaim the country without a large force.” In early 1864 Nathan Bedford Forrest wrote Jefferson Davis, stating, “I regret, however, to state that the people of North Mississippi and the counties adjacent to the Mississippi River are much demoralized by the cotton trade carried on with the enemy.” Robert S. Hudson, a judge in Mississippi, also wrote Davis in early 1864, alerting him that desertion was causing a lot of morale problems. “Unless this thing is speedily arrested,” he wrote the president, “the army and people of Mississippi will soon be so demoralized that no remedy can be found; no temporizing policy will answer.”58 Another official reported to department commander Leonidas Polk in early 1864, “I regret to say that the condition of affairs in Northwestern Mississippi exhibits much demoralization, and the tone of feeling toward the South is much weakened. This is attributable to the association with Yankees in Memphis, the want of protection afforded against robbers, and a depreciated currency of no value in procuring such supplies as the necessities of the people demand.” Yet another citizen, of Grenada, described the massive trade taking place on the Tallahatchie River: “The trade has so depreciated Confederate money, you can make no purchases only for cotton or greenbacks; and the demoralization is so great among the people that the country mentioned will be ruined unless the intercourse is broken up.”59 The gloomy reports continued through the summer and fall of 1864. A scout in the southern portion of the state informed Stephen D. Lee in July: “The whole country west of Pascagoula River seems to be in a state of demoralization, judging from what I heard and saw. In every house almost the men seem to have forgotten their obligations to their country.” In September 1864 one Federal colonel who raided throughout the state reported, “I found the inhabitants anxious for peace and willing to accept it under Federal rule.” Even Richard Taylor, later commander of the Confederate department, reported to the War Department, “The inspection report to which you refer cannot, I am

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sure, have represented the condition of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana to be worse than the actual state of affairs.” He found “its conditions to be certainly very deplorable.” He added that “the illegal traffic with the enemy has certainly caused much of the demoralization found to exist in Mississippi and East Louisiana.” A Mississippian in Liberty echoed these sentiments in November: “you cannot form a conception of the demoralization existing everywhere in regard to trading cotton.”60 By 1865, times were at their worst. One Confederate commented on “a season of depression and of almost universal demoralization.” Another wrote that supplies intended for the army had been “carried off by citizens, paroled soldiers, and negroes.” Even the department commander, Richard Taylor, was despairing. “Present information indicates Enemy will overrun Miss and Ala.,” he gloomily wrote.61 The disillusion affected more than just the citizens of the state. One judge reported, “many soldiers are writing home from Hood’s army that if Lincoln is re-elected, they will fight no longer, but will return home, and that such is the general sentiment and resolve of the army.” He continued, “They meet with favor at home in these propositions.” A Mississippi soldier in Virginia was livid that draft dodgers were “crammed down in every hole and corner speculating and extortioning on those who try to live honest.”62 Governors Pettus and Clark were forced to acknowledge this disaffection, although they had to put as good a spin on it as possible. For instance, Pettus mentioned to the legislature in November 1863 “the flood of rumors as to the disloyalty of particular districts and localities of the State.” He admitted, “It is perhaps true that some individuals, taking council of their fears, have taken the oath of allegiance to, and sought the protection of the government of the United States.” Governor Clark acknowledged that many Mississippians were trying to evade army service, either through desertion, hiding out from the draft, or securing exemptions and replacements. One Mississippi judge elaborated on this phenomenon, saying certain county offices “have until recently been disregarded and often vacant, but now they are all being filled by elections, and the contest for them extraordinary, to keep out of the army.” He also stated there was “great abuse in many of the counties in the ap[p]ointment of unnecessary deputies.”63 By the end of the war, Mississippi’s loyal Confederate citizens had been through four years of pure misery. Prices were outrageous, food was scarce, family members were dead or missing, lawlessness was the order of the day, and the Confederate and state governments could not defend them from the enemy. In fact, the state government could not even defend its own capital. Perhaps Judge Robert S. Hudson described the situation best when he wrote

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Jefferson Davis of the situation in Mississippi late in 1864, describing “a general discontent and loss of confidence in the administration and our success, a disposition among the people to rise up in opposition to the powers that be, declare for reconstruction, or anything else but the things that are.” The majority of the people of Mississippi had remained loyal to the Confederacy to the end, but that loyalty was tested and bent as the war progressed. At some point, the people decided the war was not worth the suffering. A loss of will definitely helped doom Mississippi and the Confederacy.64

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CHAPTER SEVEN

“Her People Are Drifting to the Yankees” William T. Sherman was leaving Jackson after his wave of destruction on May 16, 1863, marching westward toward Vicksburg. As the general rode out of town, he remembered “a very fat man came to see me, to inquire if his hotel, a large, frame-building near the depot, were doomed to be destroyed.” The general told the man he had no intention of burning the building, only military installations. The hotel owner would not let it go, however, and professed to Sherman that he was “a law-abiding Union man.” Sherman, perhaps in a playful mood, remarked to him that he did not doubt the man since his loyalties to the Union were, the general said, “manifest from the sign of his hotel, which was the ‘Confederate Hotel;’ the sign ‘United States’ being faintly painted out, and ‘Confederate’ painted over it!”1 Such is an example of an untold number of Unionists or so-called disloyal Mississippians during the Civil War. The hotel owner who went from Union to Confederate and then back to a Union man is illustrative of many Mississippians whose loyalty lay less with a government and more with whichever side suited their particular economic or physical state at that particular time. It also shows that Mississippi citizens displayed less than a united and cohesive Confederate front during the war that tore their state apart. While many citizens’ commitment and patriotism to the war effort waned and their will to win subsided, as examined in the preceding chapter, there was an admittedly undetermined, but still quite substantial, portion of the population that went above and beyond the simple loss of will. Despite conventional wisdom and Lost Cause rhetoric, a sizable portion of the state’s population neither supported the war nor aided the Confederacy. Some, in fact, labored to take down the new Southern government. The publication of Bettersworth’s Confederate Mississippi in 1943 brought a good deal of attention to Mississippians who were less than supportive of the Confederacy for the entire

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war, perhaps a surprising fact to many readers. Modern historians have taken Bettersworth’s work and examined this phenomenon more closely.2 Any attempt to arrive at numbers of Unionists or disloyal Confederates in Civil War Mississippi is challenging at best, and any number reached will probably be more an estimate than documented reality. Yet an effort to determine at least some proportion of the number of disloyal Mississippians can offer a starting point for studying this phenomenon. While not scientific and probably more akin to prewar political party loyalty than true war referendums, the state’s elections during the war are just about the only statewide resources showing the level of opposition to the war government. In the 1861 gubernatorial election, Governor Pettus was reelected with some 87 percent of the vote over his main opponent, Jacob Thompson. In the 1863 election, Charles Clark received 71 percent of the vote over Reuben Davis and Absalom M. West, and votes were not received from Union-occupied counties such as Adams, Warren, and others along the Mississippi River, which would more than likely have heightened the Unionist vote. While these returns cannot be taken as literal concerning Unionist activity, they do offer some indication of opposition to the war effort, and at the least can be taken as opposition to the candidate supporting the war. Thus, while any number is an outright guess, perhaps as many as a fifth to a quarter of the people in the state could have held some type of Unionist or disloyal feelings, with numbers growing as the war progressed and as Unionists felt safer in letting their true feelings be known.3 Making the study of anti-Confederatism even more difficult, these Unionists exhibited varying levels of nonsupport for the Confederate war effort, above and beyond the waning enthusiasm of much of the population. Perhaps the most stringent, if not the most vocal, were the outright Unionists. Some of these willingly and openly sided with the Federals at the peril of being ostracized from their communities or having violence used against them. Others were less open, but covertly supported the Union at every opportunity that presented itself. A larger but less committed second group of Confederate opponents were those who sided at times with the Federal war effort although they were not necessarily Unionists, but likewise were not fully on the Confederate side. Perhaps the best term for these is “disloyal Confederates.” Almost citizens without a country, many of these Mississippians were not ideologically or morally tied to either cause, but were most interested in their own well-being. While neither outright Unionists nor simply dejected Confederates, they supported whichever side looked to be winning and whichever was more likely to give them what they needed at the time. A third group that has to be examined in this context are the deserters from the Confederate army, a group that grew larger and larger as the war continued. Not necessarily supportive of the Union,

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these soldiers were nevertheless no longer welcome in the Confederate fold and were hunted as lawbreakers. The result was that thousands of Confederate deserters filled the Mississippi backwoods, unable to return home or to the ranks. Their presence significantly altered home life in Civil War Mississippi.4 Outright Unionists in Mississippi during the Civil War were not always vocal about their adherence to the United States, but their actions more often than not showed their true feelings. Making it easier, though hardly easy, however, was the fact that hotbeds of Unionism were centered in several locations within the state and not always scattered amid the more Confederate-leaning population. But even the locations of major Unionism feeling provided an ironic dichotomy. The chief centers of Unionism were the rich Mississippi River and Delta counties, fertile and agricultural with thousands and thousands of slaves; the poorer regions of the extreme northeast counties, hilly and poor in nature with very little slavery; and a swath through the central portion of the state along the Pearl and Big Black river watersheds and on down to the infertile piney woods in the southern areas of the state. Interestingly, the poor common folk and the elite plantation owners were both in agreement about the war. The poor hill people had little interest in slavery or war, and correctly discerned that the common people like them would be required to carry the load during the conflict. Conversely, the rich elite along the plantation-rich Mississippi River correctly foresaw that war would inhibit trade along the river and probably ruin their plantations, causing economic catastrophe. And then there was the southwestern portion of the state, with many of its citizens being immigrants from the North who settled in towns named for those in their old regions. At least some of the people in towns such as Utica and Cayuga could be counted on to have more Northern than Southern sympathies. So, for different reasons, poor white hill country residents sided with rich elite planters on the Mississippi Unionism issue during the Civil War. Politics and war made strange bedfellows.5 These various counties, along with some anti-Confederacy sentiment in the southern portion of the state, sent Unionist delegates to the state secession convention. Yet there is an important difference between the Unionism of these areas and the delegates they sent to Jackson in January 1861; the fact that they sent Unionist delegates did not mean a large portion of any certain county’s population would not support the war effort—at least initially. When final passage of the ordinance of secession came, many of these Unionists, such as James L. Alcorn, voted for the ordinance in a show of unity. Only one member absolutely refused to sign the ordinance of secession. It is important to note, however, that even Jacob Thornton was not a Unionist. Although he refused to sign the document, he was one of the first to volunteer and enter the Confederate

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service. Becoming colonel of the Sixth Mississippi, Thornton received terrible wounds at Shiloh. Such a man’s stance is hard to ignore, and almost all respected him for his courage. Even William T. Sherman, whom Thornton had helped surprise on April 6 at Shiloh, later placed a guard at Thornton’s home in Brandon as his army marched through during the Meridian campaign; Thornton declined with “some language he would not care to see in print.”6 Much of the state’s Unionism was centered at Natchez, the home of a large number of socialites who owned sprawling plantations nearby. One elite family, the Minors, were perhaps illustrative of the Natchez Unionist community. Well known as antisecessionists before the war, the Minors said little against the Confederacy, but were nevertheless well known as Unionists. Upon secession and the formation of the Confederate army, John Minor resigned his officer’s rank in what amounted to a local militia company, a local cavalry group organized in 1860 to keep the peace during that volatile period. The leader of the “Adams Troop,” as it was known, future Confederate general William T. Martin, wrote that “John Minor has disgraced himself, by his course, from the beginning.”7 While the historian of the Minor family has found no evidence of active anti-Confederate actions, the Minors were nevertheless involved in pro-Union activities. When Natchez fell to the Federals, the Minors became willing hosts for numerous Federal officers. One wrote that the Minor plantation house “was a kind of resort for officers to meet there and talk, [and] pass the time.” Another reported that Minor “was a gentleman and that he was well disposed toward the United States.” The Federals rewarded Minor with passes to travel anywhere he wanted and with a gun permit, which demonstrated that the Minors were not a threat. The Federals also placed guards on their plantations, although the family did lose quite a bit of goods and stock throughout the war, not to mention their slaves, who were freed.8 Minor’s refusal to serve the Confederacy and his association with the Federals, as well as an episode in which he saved his own cotton from the torch while letting a neighbor’s burn, did not set well with local Confederate sympathizers. Kate Minor was no longer accepted among the Confederate elite society of Natchez. She did not take part in local groups that promoted efforts to aid Confederate soldiers or sew them clothes and socks. She was even referred to as a “little Yankee.” Even years after the war, Kate Minor continued to declare her Unionism in an attempt to be repaid for the family’s war losses by the Southern Claims Commission.9 Another Natchez-connected Unionist was Mississippi historian John F. H. Claiborne. Fiercely anti-Confederate, Claiborne tried to remain neutral by planting his family in Natchez while he sequestered himself at his south

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Mississippi plantation home, Laurel Wood. He could not remain neutral for long, however, and soon was aiding Federal authorities despite trying to keep at least some pretense of Confederate support. His son actually died in the war as a Confederate soldier, and Claiborne himself resigned his position as U.S. timber agent. He also talked up his support of the Confederacy, even to Governor Pettus. But his actions spoke louder than his words.10 Soon after New Orleans fell, Claiborne began a lengthy correspondence with Federal commanders in New Orleans, eventually becoming a trusted adviser to Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. Claiborne filled the general in on many events and activities of the south Mississippi area, including the suffering of the people and the spread of what Claiborne described as “Unionist sentiment.” As time went on, Claiborne began giving very useful information to Banks, including information on Confederate movements, efforts to produce salt on the Gulf Coast, and locations of fortifications on the coast. Claiborne even outed Confederate spies in New Orleans.11 Claiborne never let pass an opportunity for personal gain. Even while serving as a Federal informer, he took a Confederate position as a cotton purchasing agent. In this effort, he managed to get passes from Union naval and army officers to ship cotton through the lines. Of course, he sold all his cotton as well as that which he had bought from other planters. The extent that Claiborne was worried about his own well-being was shown in his concern when Confederate officials began to suspect him of his Unionism. He instructed Banks not to allow anyone to “surmise how your information was obtained. My position here is very precarious & the registered enemies in Mobile are doing their best to have me arrested.” Claiborne’s case eventually went all the way up to the heights of the Confederate government. Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and Secretary of War James A. Seddon discussed what to do with the suspected traitor. “It is necessary to have the papers now in possession of Mr. Claiborne proving the assent of the enemy’s officers to the shipment of the cotton,” Benjamin advised. The Confederates never obtained enough proof to charge Claiborne, however.12 The case of a Unionist in the northern part of the state took a slightly different form. Rev. James A. Lyon, a Presbyterian minister in Columbus, was much more vocal about his Unionism and took much less action than did Claiborne or even the Minors, but was more ostracized than the others. Many Mississippians did not appreciate his crusade for “Reform on the Subject of the Marriage & Parental Relations of Slaves.” Moreover, Lyon spoke frequently of the people of the state causing the calamity that was befalling them. “Their Sins, their violations of God’s law but nothing else had brought the sword upon the land,” he preached. Lyon reported, “Two or three rabid men in the ch[urc]h. And two or

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three violent men out of the church, but directly or indirectly connected with the congregation, have been exceedingly outraged because I did not agree with them in their ‘blood and thunder’ politics, and preach and pray (on fast day occasions) to suit them.”13 Lyon’s son Theodoric, a soldier in the Confederate army, defended his father’s unpopular stance, with the result that he was court-martialed and banished to Virginia. Still, Rev. Lyon preached repentance from the sin of secession. Apparently, however, Lyon and his son had more friends than they knew in and around Columbus. In the midst of Theodoric’s trial, the soldier ran for the state legislature as a Unionist, and, while he was defeated, he did get a respectable number of votes. He was up against a solid Confederate machine, however, that threatened to put down Unionist principles “with the bayonet.” One of his chief opponents was none other than secession convention president William S. Barry.14 Another Mississippi Unionist, albeit a little different from other American Indians, was Greenwood LeFlore, former chief of the Mississippi Choctaws. He had decades earlier sent his nation westward to the Indian Territory, but chose to remain on his plush plantation, Malmaison, in Carroll County. He had been deposed as chief of his tribe upon remaining in Mississippi, but he never gave up on the Union. When Federal soldiers arrived at his plantation in 1864, he welcomed them with open arms. One Federal remembered that the old chief had kept a small American flag concealed in his home during the war, but met the Federals “waving the flag, and raising his hands.” LeFlore shouted, “Thank God, I have lived to see the old flag again carried by United States soldiers. Take of my supplies what you will. I give freely. My Negroes, too, shall fight for the Union.” The commander of one cavalry regiment remembered that LeFlore “entertained the officers of the command at his palatial residence, setting before them the best of everything his house afforded.”15 Another luminary who was a Mississippi Unionist during the war was Andrew Jackson’s nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson. By then an old man in debt, Donelson was once Old Hickory’s private secretary as well as minister to Texas and Prussia. During the war, Donelson lived on his Bolivar County plantation and meshed well with the Federals, although they did take some of his belongings. He nevertheless traded what cotton he could hide from the Confederates and at least made some money during the war.16 While many Unionists were content simply to gain from their association with the Federals, some took matters in their own hands and actively fought against the Confederacy. In fact, Mississippi sent one Unionist regiment to the Federal army. Others acted more solitarily. Such was the case with M. A. Higginbottom of Tishomingo County, another broad area of Unionism. He lived

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under Confederate rule during the early portion of the war, but found some relief when the Federals took the Iuka-Corinth area in May 1862. By 1864, Higginbottom had joined the Union army and served in the Federal Secret Service, guiding Union troops in the neighborhood he knew so well.17 In a similar vein, perhaps one of the most determined Mississippi Unionists was Levi H. Naron of Chickasaw County. This veteran of Jefferson Davis’s Mississippi Rifles during the Mexican War did not follow his leader’s path into the Confederacy, but rather became one of the foremost Mississippi scouts for the Union army. Demonized because of his Unionist sympathies and known simply as Chickasaw, Naron spent much of the war guiding, informing, and operating with Federal forces in the north Mississippi and west Tennessee areas. According to his life’s narrative written after the war, Chickasaw was at Shiloh, Corinth, and Tupelo, guiding and informing the Federals. Naron reported on the surprise at Shiloh, saying he informed Sherman that the Confederates were advancing on him, but that Sherman was “not disposed to believe us.” Chickasaw also took part in the Federal raids through the state in the latter portion of the war, particularly Greirson’s second great raid in late 1864 and early 1865.18 Levi Naron was treated much like the other outright Unionists during and after the war. Almost everyone knew of Naron’s loyalty to the Union and his anti-Confederate activities during the war. Many Mississippians blamed him for helping defeat the Confederacy. As a result, Naron lost his property and his friends in Chickasaw County. Knowing he could never go back and make a good life at home, he chose to move westward, finally settling in Kansas.19 These examples of Unionists scattered throughout the state do not take into account the transplanted Unionists brought in to work plantations in occupied areas. Many farms and plantations in the Delta and Mississippi River counties were run by “lessees” who oversaw agricultural work for the Union side using former slaves as hired hands. The area between Vicksburg and the Big Black River, under Union control, was filled with these lessees, but local Confederate units harassed them endlessly. Made up of locals who knew the area well, these Confederate bands frequently raided the lessee plantations not only to disrupt Federal agricultural efforts but also to open a line of undercover supply with the Federals in Vicksburg.20 Mississippi historian Horace S. Fulkerson has described these lessees in detail, along with the Confederate raiding companies’ activities. He noted a difference in tactics against the lessees among the various independent commands. One, he said, “would break them up root and branch, and have the fellows to feel thankful if they got off with their lives.” Another he described would raid the lessees’ farms but “leave their persons undisturbed till many of them, in the course of time, became ‘tamed,’ . . . and became of valuable

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service in furnishing the contraband articles of necessity the Confederates so much wanted from Vicksburg.” One lessee, after losing his stock to the raiders, consented “to bring them out such contraband articles from Vicksburg as they might desire upon payment to him of the price.” Fulkerson noted that the lessee “continued his farming on a small scale unmolested, but if he made any money, it was on the merchandise he took the chances on bringing to the scouts from Vicksburg.”21 Each of these outright Unionists, and countless thousands more, toiled amid a hostile population, and each paid for their loyalty to the United States. Every situation was somewhat different, with varying levels of Unionism. Some Unionists were very vocal while others attempted to talk up the Confederacy while taking clandestine actions. Others simply favored the Federals, offering little support. Still others actively worked to aid Northern armies and sabotage Confederate efforts as best they could. All paid a price for their loyalty to the Union, however, from verbal threats to outright murder.22 Despite their differences, Unionists nevertheless produced two comprehensive results. First, their actions, or nonaction in some cases, had a dramatic effect on Confederate morale while, conversely, aiding and strengthening Federal ability. One minister traveling through the state was horrified at the prospect of being caught by some of these Unionists after hearing of the atrocities committed by them. “This alarmed us as these fellows were Southern Union men & live in Tippah County & we did not know how soon they might take us,” he recalled. Second, most of the Unionists paid for their loyalty to the United States. Almost all were ostracized to some extent, with many suffering significant damage in terms of property and homes. Some had to move out of state because of their stances, while some lost their lives as a result. Such was the price of unpopular Unionism in Mississippi.23 The number of outright Unionists was comparatively small within the state, however. A much larger and potentially more dangerous group for the Confederacy were the disloyal Confederates who at one time supported Jefferson Davis’s government but became neutral citizens later in the war. This group became more disillusioned with the war than the average Mississippian whose will to win waned as conditions worsened. They worked to save themselves, and in the process worked with the Federals, although such help was not their driving force. These disloyal Mississippians, though never actively aiding the Federals or specifically hurting the Confederacy, were nevertheless on friendly trade and living terms with the enemy. Extant records are full of examples of Mississippians turning to the enemy during the Civil War. One of the most noted actions by disloyal Mississippians was trading with the enemy. Another was the taking of the oath of allegiance,

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which was most often done when the enemy occupied their local area. Another stance taken by former Confederates was the acquaintance and familiarity with the enemy. In all these actions, Mississippians once loyal to the Confederacy decided they had had enough of the war and openly courted the Federals.24 Trading with the enemy was most common near and within occupied areas. One Mississippi official reported to Governor Clark in 1864 about the large number of people “trading with the Yankees at Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis & other points.” Poor Mississippians, suffering from the high prices and inflation caused by the war as well as the lack of food and other items due to Federal raids, could not resist obtaining what was needed in an illegal manner. To them, family and personal needs came before any devotion to the Confederacy, which they discovered more and more as the war dragged on could neither defend nor provide for them. This illegal trade also included what Clark’s informant reported as “would-be ‘stars of society,’” whom he later described as “men and women of the highest respectability and means and who have heretofore been (in language) the most violent secesh.” These large cotton planters, influenced by economic and physical hardships, began an illicit trade with the enemy. Required to burn their cotton rather than let it fall into enemy hands, many planters did so, or were beat to the effort by Confederate troops. Many, however, did not, and tons of cotton and other commodities underhandedly went into Federal traders’ hands, with many goods coming into the state in exchange. The 1863 Confederate Impressment Act also unnerved planters who received lower prices from Confederate commissary agents buying food and goods for the war effort than they could get from merchants in Union-occupied territory. In particular, Memphis and New Orleans became major havens of illicit and illegal trade activity, with one government agency estimating that over $30 million in goods had been sold in Memphis to Mississippians.25 One Confederate Mississippian told of this illegal activity during the war. He remembered that he was approached by a large planter who offered him a “large bribe” to “engineer his cotton through the lines.” The loyal Confederate was surprised that the planter “regarded it as a simple business proposition,” but quickly told him no. The planter, he said, “embraced every opportunity he had to tell me that I was the biggest fool in the Confederacy.” One observant Mississippian reported this trade was “corrupting our people, encouraging and supporting the enemy, and discontenting those who have not the will or ability to indulge in such things.”26 Another Mississippian, a general loan agent, reported, “They do it [trade with the enemy] at night, or even in broad daylight, as there is little law in the country.” Some planters, he reported, sold their cotton to the state and then again to the Federals, thinking they could replace the state’s cotton at the next

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harvest. “General demoralization prevails throughout much of the entire section,” he said, “reaching every class. Trade with the enemy is universal. The temptations to fraud are overwhelming. Even our own agents are charged with complicity.”27 Although the Confederate government had emplaced an embargo and outlawed trade with the enemy, ultimately the state itself simply could not abide by the law when so many were suffering the hardships of war. Governor Clark began statewide trade with the enemy late in the war by supporting a measure that allowed the state to send cotton to Memphis and Vicksburg in exchange for necessities such as cotton cards, medicine, needles, and shears. The Confederate government, through its departmental commanders, quickly squelched this trade, prompting Clark to inform the legislature that he “deem[ed] the policy of the Confederate Government on this subject unwise and injurious. Its only effect has been to inaugurate a system of fraud, to demoralize the troops on the frontier, to enhance the profits of illegal traffic, and to prevent our people, except at enormous cost, from obtaining articles of prime necessity, even the implements of industry with which they might manufacture clothing for the people and the army.” In all, only a few bales of cotton were sent into Union lines, resulting in very few necessary materials being brought to the needy people of the state.28 Similarly, many Mississippians took drastic measures to save what they could when confronted with large numbers of Union soldiers on their doorsteps. Most citizens simply hid valuable goods, hams, horses, and money. Others took the desire to save their household items, and even their houses, to a higher level by immediately taking the oath of allegiance to the Union. One missionary working with freed slaves south of Vicksburg remembered that locals on the estate of deceased Mississippi general John A. Quitman “are now taking the oath of allegiance hoping thereby to save some property.” While perhaps not an official oath, citizens of many Mississippi towns were extremely eager to surrender their towns to the enemy in order to stop any destruction. As Federals troops approached Iuka after that battle in September 1862, they met a delegation of citizens led by Sam Dewoody, who carried a bed sheet on a broom handle. These men wanted to surrender the town and asked the Union troops not to destroy any private property. Moving forward, the Federals continued, finding more white flags. As the Federals entered Corinth in May 1862, one Federal general described the buildings: “most of them displayed hospital or white flags.” Another mentioned that the Federal forces were first met by “Mr. Harrington, the Mayor’s clerk, who asked protection for private property, and for such of the citizens as had determined to remain.”29 One Mississippi judge went so far as to alert Jefferson Davis of the problem of white Mississippians going over to the Federal side during the war. In 134

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March 1864 Judge Robert S. Hudson wrote, “Mississippi is in a most deplorable condition, and is rapidly tending to the most deplorable disgrace. Very many of the middle class, a large number of the more intelligent, and nearly all of the lower class of her people are drifting to the Yankees.” Hudson could not explain why “the more they are abused by the Yankees, the more they strive to go with them.”30 Perhaps the most famous of these disloyal Confederates was James L. Alcorn, whose case makes an illustrative study of this group. To be sure, Alcorn was committed to his state if not the Confederacy, serving in the secession convention, as a Mississippi state troops brigadier, and later in the war in the state legislature. But that did not stop him from raging against the Confederacy and its leader, Jefferson Davis, and befriending and even trading with the enemy.31 Alcorn of course opposed secession, although he voted for and signed the ordinance of secession in hopes of displaying harmony within the state. By the summer of 1861, he was on the Military Board, butting heads with Governor Pettus and feeding his distaste for how affairs were being run. As one of the state’s brigadiers, Alcorn led a portion of the Army of Ten Thousand into Kentucky in the fall. There, he became even more dissatisfied with all things Confederate. He wrote his wife in October 1861, “I shall be appointed a Brigadier Genl of Confederate Army within two weeks . . . , I will not accept a position below that.” Alcorn would not get his commission, however, which had to come from Jefferson Davis, whom he grew to despise.32 When the disastrous Kentucky affair came to an end, Alcorn retired to his plantation on Yazoo Pass in Coahoma County. There, his hatred for the officials on the state as well as national level festered. Pettus was a favorite target, one biographer declaring Alcorn to be “persona non grata to the War Governor of his own state” and “a man without a country.” Alcorn also found out about a Confederate officer sent to spy on him; the spy was not very good, and wound up being captured by the Federals. Alcorn himself was vehement in his antiConfederate stance, reporting to his diary in 1863, “I sought to avoid this terrible war, but the wild mania has seized upon the passions of the southern people, when I would point them to coming danger, they would laugh in derision.” Alcorn saved his best prose for old enemy Jefferson Davis, however. In writing to his wife, Alcorn promised her that the secessionists who got them into this war will smell sulpher before another year rolls by, then they can sing paeans of praise to their demigod Jeff Davis—the miserable, stupid, one-eyed, dyspeptic, arrogant tyrant who now occupies his cushioned seat at Richmond, draws his twenty five thousand a year, and boasts of the future grandeur of the country which he has ruined, the soil which he has made 135

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wet with the tears of widows and orphans and the land which he has bathed in the blood of a people once free, but now enslaved. Oh, let me live to see him damned! and sunk into the lowest hell.33 The Confederate-bashing planter had ample opportunity to converse and trade with the Federals after February 1863, when a Union expedition moved through Moon Lake and into Yazoo Pass on the way to Vicksburg. Alcorn reported to his wife, “Our plantation is a Federal camp.” In describing the Union units that “passed by our house,” he told her “many of the officers called in to see me and we had a social chat.” He also went aboard the gunboat Chillicothe. Later in the war Alcorn traveled to Helena, Arkansas, where he called on the Federal commander at that place as well as visited a contraband camp and barracks for Confederate deserters. Although some destruction occurred on his property, Alcorn and his plantation were obviously treated differently than the normal Confederate plantation in Mississippi.34 Alcorn’s most suspect activity was in trading with the enemy. He sold his cotton instead of burning it, once writing to his wife that he would sell his cotton “if I escape the burners.” As early as November 1862 he told his wife how he had sold cotton and was paid in “greenbacks.” He also wrote, “I wish . . . to fill my pocket.” Alcorn was still selling his cotton as late as February 1865. Alcorn’s biographer, Lillian A. Pereyra, has found ample evidence in her research to conclude that Alcorn frequently traded with the enemy. Judging from Alcorn’s wartime activities, it is clear that he was a Mississippian at heart, but did not let devotion to the Confederacy or even his state get in the way of economic and personal benefit and survival. In fact, he once said, “My self-respect, my own honor, is dearer to me than country or life itself.”35 One last group of disloyal Confederates were those who willingly took manpower from the Confederate or state armies either by dodging conscription or deserting from the army once enlisted. Conscription dodgers were frequent throughout the state. One Mississippian wrote his friend Jefferson Davis in October 1863 of “the open and palpable failure of many officers to enforce the conscription law against many exempt conscripts who are prosecuting their trades and exemptions to the foulest extortions,” and “the mysterious discharge of many able-bodied conscripts at conscript offices and the conscription of many who should be discharged, showing either partiality and corruption or great incompetency.” He also railed against those allowed to be exempt, saying, “there are plenty of old men and women to teach our schools; there are plenty of old physicians to do our practice; there are plenty of old men and negroes to do our tanning, shoemaking, and blacksmithing.”36

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Perhaps the most troublesome of this group of disloyal Confederates were the deserters, who naturally collected near the more Unionist portions of the state. According to one estimate, the total number of deserters amounted to as many as 11,600 men and fifty-six officers, with as many as twelve hundred of them joining the Union army. Difficult to count and even more challenging to stereotype, this group nevertheless caused significant problems for the state and Confederate authorities in Mississippi. While not all deserters were lawbreakers, and probably only a minority were, the entire lot is nevertheless usually associated with the worst examples. Many deserters were no more than family men who had lost the will to continue the fight or had succumbed to the temptation to leave the army to return home to protect and provide for their families. But certainly there were less noble characters who entered a life of pilferage and destruction just because the chaos of the war allowed such activity with little chance of punishment. And these militant deserters received most of the coverage both during and after the war as historians have tried to figure out just exactly what went on during the war.37 Many records indicate the extent of the deserter problem during the Civil War. One state official reported to Jefferson Davis, “Desertion from the army, trading with the enemy, and the removal of deserters and their families into the lines of the enemy is now the order of the day,” and concluded, “the state is now under the tacit rule of deserters, thieves, and disloyal men and women. . . . Open-day and midnight robbery is practiced every day and night.” He went on to estimate that there were five thousand to eight thousand deserters in the state in October 1864, but it is unclear exactly on what source he based his numbers. “They are not only absent from the army,” he noted, “but are a great curse to home and the communities where they prowl.” One unfortunate Confederate officer found out as much as he made his way to Louisiana. “I was overwhelmed and captured by deserters in Covington Co.,” he said. “They carried me to the Yankees on the Miss. River where I made my escape only to be recaptured in attempting to recross the River to return to my command.”38 Although Unionism and disloyalty were widespread throughout the state, there were special areas of congregation for deserters opposed to the Confederacy. Of course, occupied territory such as the regions around Corinth, Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez were full of Unionists, Federals, and freed slaves, both those who lived there originally as well as those who fled to the safety of Union lines. Confederate deserters were less abundant in those areas, but likewise fled and congregated in certain locations, normally close to Unionoccupied regions in order to be at least near Federal forces whose mere presence would lend some safety from Confederates who did not want to venture

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near Federal strongholds. Yet these deserters could not actually enter Federal areas either; the Federals wanted the deserters no more than did the Confederates, although they did not want them to go back to the Confederate ranks. As a result, districts that became almost no man’s land emerged in swampy regions that offered good protection from either side. The Pearl River watershed and the Mississippi and Yazoo Delta region were especially favored locations. One of the most famous regions of disloyalty and Unionism was the wellknown Honey Island. Actually, there were two Honey Islands into which Mississippi deserters and bushwhackers fled. One was along the lower Pearl River near the Louisiana border. Confederate general Dabney Maury reported that he drove off many deserters in March 1864: “they have scattered in every direction; some west, but most for Honey Island and the coast.” Another Confederate official reported in April that deserters “have gone down Pearl River to and near Honey Island, where they exist in some force and hold the country in awe, openly boasting of their being in communication with the Yankees.” Mississippi Confederate general William L. Brandon reported in August 1864 that “a number of Yankees, in concert with deserters, both from Honey Island and that vicinity, have been committing serious depredations in the region of country bordering upon Jones and Jasper Counties, driving off large numbers of negroes and a great deal of stock.”39 There was another location in the Mississippi Delta known as Honey Island, which also saw the influx of deserters from the interior of Mississippi. A large piece of land formed by a change in the Yazoo River’s course, the “island” was bordered by the river and its old bed now filled with backwater. Both were navigable, but the interior of the island was nothing but reclusive swamp, just what fugitives wanted. Judge Robert Hudson, who oversaw that area of the state, reported in May 1864, “I am truly sorry to know that the counties of Leake, Attala, Neshoba, Winston, and others counties are now and have been for the last six months emptying their filthy, base, disloyal, deserting, stealing, murdering population into Yazoo.” Later, Hudson gave more specifics, including names of people who had “settled on the west side of the Yazoo River near and above the city, on different places, and all are deserters.” Hudson continued his gloomy synopsis in July 1864, reporting to the governor that more people “have gone from Leake, Neshoba, Winston, and Attala into Yazoo and there seized upon places and supplies at will, and are exhorting all behind to follow, alleging that they can thus keep out of the army, have plenty, trade with the Yankees, and ultimately the Yankees will reward them with the places they have thus located upon.”40 The larger Delta was also a haven for deserters and disloyal Confederates. “A large number of persons calling themselves ‘scouts’ and ‘independent

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companies’ are,” one Mississippian told Jefferson Davis, “infesting the valley and its borders north of Vicksburg, who are nothing less than murderers, plunderers, blockade-runners, and Yankee communicants.” The nearness to Federal presence and the swampy nature of the area allowed them protection and hideouts.41 South Mississippi was also riddled with deserters and outright thugs. One Confederate officer reported that in Marion County, “they are banded together in large numbers, bid defiance to the authorities, and claim to have a government of their own in opposition to the Confederate government.” He also reported “that a band of deserters still continue prowling about the country, doing considerable damage to the farmers and molesting travelers.”42 Although much of south Mississippi was infested with such activity, by far the most famous concentration of deserters and anti-Confederates was in Jones County, where one citizen reported to the governor that “we have been over runned by the deserters.” The case of the “Free State of Jones,” including the infamous Newton Knight and company, has been the stuff of legend and embellishment. Used by Lost Causers as well as Unionists to make certain points, the story of Jones County has been altered, changed, and transformed to the point that a clear picture of what actually happened is difficult to ascertain. At one point, the rumor began that the county actually seceded from the Confederacy, and that myth has somewhat persisted until today. Early Mississippi historians such as Alexander L. Bondurant concluded in 1898 that the secession story was entirely false, however. He tried to “dispose of this canard reflecting upon the grand name of a county which rendered brave and efficient service to the Confederacy.” Another historian of the same period noted the secession story was “not heard of until many years after the close of the war,” although John K. Bettersworth concluded that the secession story appeared as early as 1863 but was still utterly false. Modern historians agree.43 The basic story is that Jones County was a haven for deserters infiltrating the area after the Confederate defeats in the fall of 1862 and the conscription act that allowed for exemptions for owners of a certain number of slaves. Many of these deserters banded together under a leader by the name of Newton Knight, and this band basically ruled the county for many months, pillaging, murdering, and obliterating all legal authority in the area. Jones County, while not seceding, had become an entity in and of itself, with its own government run by locals and having no affiliation with the state of Mississippi or with the Confederacy. Recent research has also indicated that the Jones County ruffians contrived with the Federals to wreak havoc in the state.44 So while probably not representative of the majority of Mississippi deserters, the criminal ones received the most attention, and they could be a vile

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set. One Mississippian reported “deserters and worse than deserters, have gone there [the Delta] to evade service, steal, and fellowship with the Yankees. The tide is still rolling on, swelling and enlarging, and unless arrested by our people must prove very injurious.” Judge Hudson described one family of deserters to the Yazoo County sheriff, William H. Mangum: “The old man is not really a deserter himself, being over age, but his son and sons in law are deserters for the 20 and 30 times, and the whole crew, male and female, are unfit to live anywhere. The old man got his son and sons in law away from here, gave parties to deserters and danced over the downfall of Vicksburg and all our defeats. They are all as rotten as Hell.”45 The state and Confederate officials’ response to the desertion problem was quick and decisive in rhetoric, but in reality there was little they could do. The havens of safety were so isolated and swampy that even finding these hideouts was difficult, and then the sheer numbers of deserters necessitated fairly large troop concentrations to rid the state of them. That, of course, took soldiers away from the army. Local county officials were likewise unable or unwilling to do much about this problem. Heavily outmanned and outgunned, these sheriffs and police boards had to live among the offenders and sometimes looked the other way. Judge Hudson wrote Governor Clark in May 1864 that “not one of these civil officers is attempting to discharge that duty, although the counties are full of deserters, and are often killing or outraging the persons and property of good citizens.” He also stated that he knew “many deserters now in desertion for the fourth, fifth, and sixth times who have never been punished.”46 The concern over the deserter problem reached the highest levels of state government. As early as December 1862, Governor Pettus remarked about the “hundreds [of soldiers] who are absent without leave, or on expired furloughs, or have recovered from disability and are now able to return to duty.” As the war progressed, the deserter problem became much larger, and by 1864 Governor Clark could not be so benign on the matter. “Deserters, thieves and robbers, banded together, overawed the citizens,” he reported to the legislature in August 1864, and by 1865 stated: “The country is filled with deserters and marauders. Crimes are daily committed and the offenders escape punishment.”47 The legislature could do little, especially with a group of its own members actively seeking to form a new government. To be sure, deserter laws were already on the books but were not being heeded. Likewise, the local sheriffs were too undermanned to stop the gangs. Perry County sheriff G. W. Bradley reported to the governor that he had been threatened and could only enforce the tax laws “at the risk of my life.” Sheriff William H. Quarles of Smith County stated that he had been ambushed and shot in his county.48

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Clearly, it would take military force to clean up the deserter problem, and some action took place. The sheriff of Yazoo County, acting on Judge Hudson’s letters, sent a small force into his county and netted some ten deserters in early 1864, several of whom were executed. The Confederate military officials were in a better position to send troops to clear out safe havens of deserters, however, and some did. Colonel Harry Maury led one of these raids into Jones County in March 1864. Sent to “break up the organized deserters,” who, he reported, called themselves “Southern Yankees,” Maury did so, even stopping the organizations in nearby Covington and Perry counties. “I am satisfied that there no longer remains any organization of deserters in this county,” he noted, “although some few scattered outlaws are still lurking about in the swamps and will have to be hunted out with dogs.” Some for sure would not cause any more problems; Maury executed several of his prisoners.49 About a week later Leonidas Polk sent Colonel Robert Lowry of the Sixth Mississippi into the same area with his own regiment and the Twentieth Mississippi to break up more deserter rings, having heard that they were holding public meetings. In a campaign that lasted from March into May, Lowry moved through Newton, Covington, and Smith counties, netting numerous deserters, hanging several of them, sending many more back to their regiments, and providing a major Confederate presence in the area. Word soon spread that a Confederate force was in the area, Lowry having issued a circular in local papers saying he was there “for the purpose of correcting evils which had well-nigh destroyed your country.” In all, Lowry counted some 350 deserters captured or sent back to their commands.50 In April Lowry’s men moved to Jones County and continued the work begun by Maury. They hunted out deserters with dogs, concentrating on the swamps of the Leaf River. When found, some were hanged, while others were tortured to give up information on other deserters. Although he was never able to capture the elusive Newton Knight, Lowry did break up the major desertion rings in the counties. In return, the Confederates suffered several casualties. It was basically a civil war against their own people within the larger war.51 Thus Unionism and disloyalty in Mississippi carried several different flavors, making study of the entire group difficult. But clearly not all Mississippians favored the Confederacy, and the number grew throughout the war until it was in epidemic proportions by 1864. Although a sure minority, these Unionists, disloyal Confederates, and deserters were nevertheless a force with which to be reckoned. The outright Unionists clearly favored the Federals and aided them when any chance presented itself. Disloyal Confederates began as supporters of the war but soon turned to opposing the Confederacy due mainly to

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personal or economic trouble. Deserters who had lost any interest in fighting for the Confederacy only made the situation worse, with a small minority of them causing major problems for the state and Confederate officials. The sum of the parts, however, clearly indicates a major problem for Mississippi and Confederate leaders in keeping support for the war effort alive at home while the armies were fighting in the various theaters of war.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

“Tears on Many a Dark Cheek” The blue-clad cavalry arrived at Jackson, Mississippi, that July 1864, causing the inhabitants to fully realize what had happened to their state, their Confederacy, and, most important, their lives. These were not typical Union cavalrymen, which the citizens of Jackson had seen before. These were African American Yankees, the Third Regiment Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops, raised and organized out of Mississippi slaves in 1863. Firmly in control of the city and all functions that took place in it, the cavalrymen openly displayed a new manner in Mississippi; old cultures and society were obviously changing. A white officer in a black regiment noted the change: “The slaves are the masters and the masters, or rather, the mistresses, for there are few masters at home, are the slaves, through fear.” One former slave put it more succinctly when he spoke of the “bottom rail on top.” That day had come in Mississippi.1 The ultimate arrival of black troops in Jackson that day was a symbolic capstone to a difficult and often complex journey for Mississippi’s African Americans during the Civil War. Beginning a voyage of four years of hardship and turmoil, Mississippi blacks trudged a path of slowly emerging freedom. From the earliest days when slaves were used by both sides for hard labor, blacks in Mississippi began the journey toward freedom, often taking the initiative themselves to continue the course. Slaves began to aid Federal efforts on their own, and then began to leave plantations and farms to strike out on dangerous journeys toward the cover and safety of Federal lines. Ultimately, after an early hands-off approach, the Union government became involved and began to aid these slaves in their quest for freedom and safety; contraband camps were set up around the area to allow safe havens for former slaves. Blacks took the ultimate step when they chose to enter the Federal armies themselves and fight for their own freedom. The progression, then, from pawns to active agents to status under Federal protection and finally to active participants in the military struggle is a story of freedom. And it came in the face of stiff resistance from the Mississippi state government as well as Confederate armies. The journey for Mississippi’s blacks toward freedom was often terrible and difficult, but was

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ultimately worth the turmoil when slavery was abolished and they were forever set free.2 Like the role of Mississippi’s women in the Civil War, the subject of Mississippi’s minorities, most notably African American participation in the fighting, is another topic that has not been treated in any real depth. The major books on the state’s home front were printed decades ago, before the civil rights era and the emergence of African American history as a specific topic of academic study. While many of the earlier studies such as Bettersworth’s Confederate Mississippi treated the politics, economics, and white society of the state in vivid detail, the crucial experiences and actions of African Americans were neglected, leaving a gap in our comprehensive understanding of the war as a whole. Thus an examination of blacks’ role in Mississippi’s Civil War is a fresh topic that can add tremendous knowledge to our understanding of the state’s home front during the conflict.3 When the war began, some 437,000 slaves were in bondage in Mississippi, a total that outnumbered the state’s white population of 354,000. In addition, there were some 773 free blacks in the state. The tiny percentage of free blacks were nevertheless part of the state’s racial history, and these free blacks were primarily treated in a demeaning manner of racial inferiority along with slaves, although there were exceptions such as the free men and women of color who actually owned slaves in Natchez. Particularly in the Civil War era, free blacks were no more trusted than slaves, with one historian of free blacks in Vicksburg arguing that whites took exception to the “wretchedness of free Negro life” as well as their perceived negative influence on bound slaves. Another historian has argued that the majority of free blacks “found it necessary to obtain white sponsors to vouch for their good and productive behavior.”4 Meanwhile, most of Mississippi’s slaves were concentrated along and within the great Mississippi River valley on the large, profitable cotton plantations. Others could be found on other plantations throughout the state as well as in smaller numbers on individual farms. Some sections of the state such as the Gulf Coast and the extreme northeast hill country were never large slave areas. Slaves in Mississippi worked in many jobs, some as house servants, some as skilled artisans, but mostly as unskilled laborers in the fields. Many arguments have been made over white treatment of slaves, but it is accurate to state that treatment ranged from cruel inhumanity to kindness (within the context of bondage).5 The path toward freedom for these slaves began with little change from slavery early in the war. Until the Federal government began to examine and change its policy toward slaves, black Mississippians continued to be used as laborers in any fashion their masters saw fit. The only change early in the war

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was a shifting of masters from plantation owners and overseers to military and government officials. Many slaves in Mississippi were either sent to work with the army or the government or were confiscated to perform the work. In several cases, the new masters of the slaves were Federals. Existing Civil War records are full of instances when both sides used slave labor for military benefit. In addition to masters taking body servants with them to the army, the Confederate government and army frequently used slave labor to help its cause. In the evacuation of Corinth in May 1862, for example, Confederate officials reported that “a sufficient and permanent force of negro laborers was employed by the quartermaster’s department for loading and unloading the cars at the railroad depots.” As late as August 1864, Mississippi slaves were sent “to work upon the fortifications at Mobile, Ala.” In addition to accompanying their masters to the army, many slaves were actually impressed into service. In an effort to remove railroad equipment, one Confederate general ordered his men to “impress negro labor.” As the situation became worse and the Federals moved farther into the state during the Vicksburg campaign, John Pemberton instructed his commanders that if “negro labor is not furnished upon the call,” they were “directed and authorized to impress such labor as you may require.”6 The Confederates were not the only ones using black labor early in the war. The Federal armies began to impress slaves to work on railroads and fortifications as well, even before a fixed governmental policy emerged. As early as July 1862, Ulysses S. Grant developed plans to fortify Memphis with slave labor. During the Vicksburg campaign, James Z. George reported, “They [the Federals] carried off every valuable slave which they could entice or force to accompany them.” Impressment was not the only Federal action regarding the slaves. Often, the actions of war caught blacks in the middle, and Union commanders were not terribly careful to force their men to take precautions against harming slaves. During the Vicksburg campaign, Union army units disassembled slave “huts” to use the material for a bridge. On another occasion, fire from Federal gunboats wounded a “negro” woman. Federal officers, such as an officer in the Forty-sixth Ohio, also kept black servants. One general, Peter Osterhaus, even used a black servant during the Vicksburg campaign, although he was captured while in the process of cooking and bringing the general his supper. One Confederate general reported, “Am also informed that General Osterhaus’ negro, horse, and dinner were captured this evening,” and went on to say, “the negro says the general told him to cook his dinner and bring it on to Edwards Depot, and he was doing so when captured.” There were also instances of prejudice among the Federals, such as when one colonel noted in his report that the Confederates were “repulsed by the negro troops and a few of the half-

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breeds.” Another white officer of a black regiment commonly referred to blacks as “niggers.”7 Although most slaves gladly aided their masters’ enemies, not all slaves were helpful to the Federals; one Union officer wrote of “one of our honest darkies,” indicating some were not so supportive. As the war progressed, however, most black Mississippians began to shift from their passive servant state to taking an active, if subtle, part in operations against the Confederates. Increasingly, slaves began an undercover network of intelligence for Union commanders. The Official Records are full of Federal commanders mentioning intelligence obtained from willing slaves. During the siege of Corinth and then the pursuit of the enemy after the capture of the city, slaves issued warnings to Federal officers about what lay ahead. “I had learned,” one Federal reported, “from a negro that a piece of cannon was not far ahead.” Another slave alerted the Federals of the pending evacuation. The Federal navy on the Mississippi River also benefited from the slaves’ intelligence. One Federal sailor reported that the Confederates had set a trap on the bank, complete with artillery, but that they were notified of the trap by “a fugitive negro [who] had brought us full information of their plans and position.”8 The Federals also found the slaves as willing guides. A Federal colonel reported approaching a Confederate camp near Ripley in July 1862, whereupon he was met by a slave and told of the enemy’s presence. “Taking him as a guide,” the colonel reported, “I met a[nother] negro, who stated that the enemy had hurriedly left his camp.” In traversing the swamps of the Yazoo River in the Chickasaw Bayou affair in December 1862, one Federal general reported, “I proceeded with the whole command, directed by the negro guide whom the general sent to conduct me.” When the Federal navy almost became trapped in Steele’s Bayou, Union infantry hurried to its relief, one Federal brigade commander reporting, “At daybreak we were in motion with a negro guide.” Perhaps the most famous example is the slave who led Grant into landing the Army of the Tennessee at Bruinsburg in late April 1863. “During the night,” Grant said, “I learned from a Negro man that there was a good road from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson, which determined me to land there.”9 Slaves also served as messengers for the Union officers. Confederate commanders told of capturing slaves carrying messages between Federal units. One Confederate reported the “capture [of] a negro, a bearer of a dispatch from General Sherman to Admiral Porter.” Another reported capturing “two Federal deserters and a negro taken in the act of carrying dispatches for the enemy.” One can only imagine the punishment these slaves received. The Confederates also seemingly took full advantage of the common use of slaves as messengers. In describing a meeting of a spy with a Federal general, one Confederate

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colonel reported, “One of my spies, disguised as a negro, had a long talk with him.”10 Slaves also took to outright, if sometimes subtle, rebellion. Knowing that working their fingers to the bones for the planters would not gain them anything, most slaves chose to do as little as possible, and became quite good at determining just how little they had to do to get by with a reasonable response from their master. The lack of work was not lost on masters. One Mississippi planter noted in his diary, “Jacob was 4½ days planting 30 acres of corn. Negroes don’t work.” Another plantation diary contained entries such as “All the negroes doing nothing.”11 The chief nonconfrontational form of rebellion for slaves was to run away. Many slaves took it upon themselves to flee to nearby Federal armies despite the incomprehension of many owners as to why they would want to leave the plantation. “Poor deluded wretches,” one slave owner wrote, “no doubt believing they were [bound] for the ‘Promised Land’ when all things were provided for them.” One Union cavalrymen, in reporting on a raid, wrote “there came to him 215 contrabands of all sexes and ages.” During the Meridian campaign, long lines of slaves, some estimates reaching to as many as ten thousand, followed both Sherman’s column and the cavalry column sent out from and returning to Memphis. While it is impossible to determine a specific number of slaves who fled, John Hope Franklin, the preeminent African American historian, has concluded that “Negroes poured into the Union lines by the thousands.” And the effects were obvious. One Federal soldier wrote, “I saw enough to convince me that the rebels are troubled more by taking their slaves than in any other way.”12 Not all slaves were willing to leave, however. One planter reported his slaves were told to remain on the plantation “for they would all be free the first day of January [1863] anyhow, that all they would have to do would be to kill their owners & take possession & live as white people.” Most, however, either actually felt some affection toward their owners or believed they were better off at home. The famous English visitor Arthur Fremantle reported during his days in Mississippi in May 1863 that he, along with “a fat Government contractor from Texas, the wounded Missourian Mr. Douglass, and an ugly woman, wife to a soldier in Vicksburg,” caught a ride with a slave who paid his owner $4.50 a week “to be allowed to work on his own account.” The slave owned his own team and wagon, and remarked he “didn’t want to see no Yanks, nor to be no freer than he is.” Fremantle also noted that the slave thought the war had been raging for four or five years.13 There is also substantial evidence that some slaves opted to remain on the plantation in their subservient status. One mistress wrote her husband from Raymond, “The squad of negroes that went with Sarah came running home,

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saying they were tired of Yankees and wanted to come home to stay.” A minister near Brices Cross Roads, reporting on a Federal raid in 1863, wrote in his diary, “They [Federals] asked them [slaves] to come and go with them, but no one seemed disposed to accede to their invitation.” Another woman wrote, “They flocked in to the Yankees, expecting to experience the blessings of freedom.” She then reported how they were worked hard with no pay. “Most of the negroes became disgusted and returned home,” she wrote. On another occasion, a Federal soldier told of a plantation family near Greenwood, the Strongs, who “seemed to be much attached to their slaves, especially to the ‘old mammy’ who had nursed all the Strong children for two generations, and they felt confident that their colored people would not leave them.” He went on to say, “But when the time came for us to depart, the lower deck of the steamer carried every one of them, conspicuous among them being ‘old mammy,’ perched on a pile of cotton bales, the happiest one of the lot.” But that was not the end of the story. Mrs. Strong later traveled to Vicksburg to claim an award for her abducted cotton; there “she found many of her truant darkies, a number of whom returned home with her, among them ‘old mammy,’ now truly repentant, and more eager to return than she had been to leave home.” At times, apparently, the Federals also sent slaves home. There was one report in a Mississippi woman’s diary that “the Yankees have the impudence to send a petition to the planters to come and take their negro women and children as they are now starving.”14 While logic dictates that the vast majority of slaves did not aid the Confederacy, there were a few reports of such happenings. The Jackson Weekly Mississippian noted that four slaves owned by A. J. Montgomery provided blankets for the Confederate soldiers. It also reported that “the colored population of this city and surrounding country will give a grand ball at Concert Hall tomorrow night—the proceeds to be donated to the Ladies Military Aid Society, for clothing our volunteers.” It is not known whether the slaves performed willingly or were forced into action, but the editor thought it newsworthy enough to comment, “Wonder what Massa Horace Greeley would say to that?” Such instances, however, were few and far between.15 With the common use of slaves as messengers, guides, and laborers, as well as the large numbers of blacks fleeing to Union-held territory, Federal policy slowly shifted from nonrecognition to care for the obviously soldier-rich slave population in Mississippi and elsewhere. Early Union war policy regarding the slaves was summed up by William T. Sherman, who wrote as late as June 1862, “The well-settled policy of the whole army now is to have nothing to do with the Negro.” He went on to say: “Exclude them from camp’ is General Halleck’s reiterated order. We cannot have our trains encumbered by them, nor can we afford to feed them, and it is deceiving the poor fellow to allow him to start and

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have him forcibly driven away afterward.” Such a policy was soon rethought, however, and at the highest levels. By July 1862, Sherman was issuing orders for the slaves working for the army to be fed and clothed at government expense, noting that extensive records should be kept, including the slave’s master so that “fair and equitable settlement may be made at the ‘end of the war.’” By August of that year, Sherman was including recent national legislation in the army’s relationship with slaves, issuing orders that slaves should be paid as laborers for the army and not as servants. By September, with Lincoln’s issuing of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the war took a very different turn, and Grant was sending “Negro women and children and unemployed men” to new facilities for their care, including leased plantations and a new concept—the contraband camp.16 The Federal government began to set up Northern-run plantations for freedmen in Mississippi and throughout the South in late 1862, further caring for the blacks who the Federals had decided would make good workers and soldiers for their cause. At Rolling Fork in April 1863, Stephen D. Lee reported news of Federal plans to put blacks “to work under overseers, to raise cotton and corn for the Government, to make the war self-sustaining.” The idea soon became standard procedure in Union-occupied areas such as Vicksburg, Natchez, and northern Mississippi.17 In other locations, the Federals set up secure areas for the freedmen. Less formal camps emerged at Natchez and on Jefferson Davis’s plantation on a bend of the Mississippi River just south of Vicksburg. In Natchez, Federal soldiers arrived in 1863 and turned the famous slave market at the “Forks of the Road” into a locale for freedmen. Likewise at Brierfield, as well as Jefferson Davis’s brother’s nearby plantation, Federal authorities gathered thousands of escaped and liberated slaves. For slaves who had always lived on the plantation, conditions were not too bad, but for those who had recently arrived from the interior of Mississippi, particularly as a result of Sherman’s Meridian campaign, the environment was harsh indeed. One Northern missionary described the conditions on Davis Bend: “I find objects of pity claiming the immediate care and aid of kind charity with feelings of awakened sympathy.” He reported in one area “along the river Bank and right in the woods are about 150 poor, miserable hovels or sheds each filled to overflowing.” He went on to describe cabins as “simply sticks reared up, brush put on & a round and some sod put on the top.” At one point, the missionary found living in a hen house “a family of sixteen coloured people, who were not suitably provided with any of the necessities of life.”18 Conditions were better in the formal contraband camps. Union general Grenville Dodge organized the most famous of these camps at Corinth in

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December 1862, and placed it under the command of Sixty-sixth Illinois Infantry chaplain James M. Alexander. The white garrison soldiers, according to one soldier, “gave up our school rooms and even our porch & hall until shanties could be provided” for the ever-growing population of escaped slaves. One Federal wrote that “raids were made into the enemy’s country and invariably returned with a number of men, women & children who had traveled by foot in wind and rain or sunshine and dust—for many miles. . . . They came not as the Hebrews out of Egypt—ladened with the riches of the land—what few possessions they had accumulated were left behind and they hardly escaped with their lives.” With so many arriving fugitives, the Corinth camp had a population of up to six thousand inhabitants at times, although the normal population was apparently around twenty-five hundred.19 These ex-slaves worked several jobs. Many tended to an abandoned plantation near Corinth while others worked gardens closer to their site. Many others attended the school that was part of the camp, which taught as many as 150 students. The inhabitants eventually lived in houses on the site, worshipped in the camp church, and tended to odd jobs on-site. Many of the men of the camp were organized into the First Alabama Regiment Infantry (African Descent), which became the Fifty-fifth Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops. Their “very neat barracks” sat nearby the camp, one observer noting that they were “quite as neat as those of the white regiments, and are kept in excellent order.” The camp itself, with houses, a school, a church, and an assortment of other buildings, was laid off with streets named after Federal military commanders. An internal police force kept the peace. All in all, the contraband camp at Corinth was nothing less than a city unto itself, and was ironically larger than Corinth. And it was a success. One Federal officer reported Corinth as a model camp.20 The contraband camp was a logical place to organize military units of black men, and one regiment was formed and another started at Corinth, although men were running low after one regiment was organized. “I think Colonel [Florence M.] Cornyn will have to make another raid or two before enough men of color can be found to fill the second regiment,” one observer noted. The soldiers built their barracks near the camp, prompting a newspaper reporter to observe that, with the white regiments camped near Corinth as well, Corinth was “almost lost in the little villages built about it by the troops.” He also noted the black regiment on parade was not quite perfect as yet, but reported “it was apparent that the officers were more to blame for it than the men.”21 Almost all who observed the black soldiers were impressed, especially at their dedication and sense of duty. A Cincinnati Daily Gazette correspondent wrote a glowing report for citizens back home of “a formal presentation to the

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negro regiment of the national colors.” The ceremony took place at the regiment’s camp, named Camp Dodge. The black schoolchildren first showed how much they had learned and sang songs for the guests. Then an opening prayer was given, with the chaplain kneeling on the stage and “many of the black soldiers following his example by kneeling on the ground beside their muskets.” A white colonel gave the main address and then “gave with his left hand—his right hand and arm he sacrificed at Shiloh—the starry emblem of freedom into the hands of the black color-bearer of the First Alabama regiment, adjuring him to bear it with honor, and to desert it never.” The black soldier, according to the Northern newspaper correspondent, responded “with more fluency and good sense than one would have expected,” and closed by saying, “Why, theye’s not much blood in a man any how, and if he is not willing to give it for the freedom of his children and friends, he does not deserve to be called a man.” Another black soldier spoke, but the correspondent described him as “a bit of a wag.” The soldier closed by saying, “We to-day for the first time have had given to us the stars, but many of us have received stripes before.” A dress parade with General Dodge and other Federal officers in attendance ended the affair, but the soldiers were obviously moved: there were, one observer reported, “tears on many a dark cheek.”22 The regiment went on to garrison Memphis and participate in fighting in north Mississippi, but the contraband camp at Corinth was abandoned in January 1864 when the Federal army abandoned the city. Most of the inhabitants were removed to Memphis, but the legacy of the camp was one of illustrating the capability of freed slaves. Other camps of similar nature, as well as other experiments, existed along the Mississippi River and in other parts of the South.23 Although ex-slaves proved they could successfully care for themselves at camps such as the one at Corinth, ultimately the largest step in the progression for black Mississippians occurred when slaves began not only to take a role in the war themselves by guiding Federal troops, carrying messages, and aiding Federal armies, but also when black volunteers began to fight the Confederate authorities themselves. This was done in many ways: one Confederate general reported from the Delta in April 1863, “On some of the places [plantations] the negroes are almost in a state of insurrection.” The most telling way slaves fought the Confederacy, however, was as equipped and trained U.S. soldiers. The contraband camps were major stepping stones for these actions not only in providing care and supplies for the freed slaves but also in bringing many of the men together and setting up a context in which the units could easily be formed.24 After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the North began organizing and training black regiments. By the summer of 1863, the process was working

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according to plan, with black regiments engaged at such places as Milliken’s Bend and Port Hudson. In Mississippi, black troops manned Corinth as well as Natchez and Vicksburg, and were parts of various brigades that operated in the state for the remainder of the war. Lincoln himself realized what good they would do. “It works doubly,” Lincoln wrote Grant, “weakening the enemy and strengthening us.”25 Prejudice remained, however. The well-known sentiment among some Federals was that every bullet a black soldier stopped saved the life of a white soldier, and rumors filtered in to Confederate commanders that Union “troops are . . . much demoralized, in consequence of a wide division of sentiment concerning the negro question.” Grant, in ordering black troops to man Vicksburg, ordered that the white troops be saved, as if the black troops were expendable. “During the present hot weather,” Grant wrote, “it is necessary to save our men as much as possible from fatigue duty in the sun.” While Grant may have been saying that the ex-slaves were accustomed to hot Mississippi summers, the order still smacked of prejudice toward the color of the troops. There was also some difference of opinion among the Federal high command as to how best to use the black troops. Sherman wrote James B. McPherson in March 1864: “I think General Grant is making a mistake in taking all the negro troops and Marine Brigade to cover plantations.” Sherman wanted a different strategy followed, but told McPherson, “But this will manifest itself in time.”26 Unsurprisingly, Southerners who learned of the slaves-turned-soldiers became frightened, already worried as they were about the threat of slave rebellions. Civilians were troubled, with one Mississippi girl describing in her diary the pain she felt when she heard black soldiers were approaching her plantation. She thought they were soldiers of “African descent, but [was] very much relieved when I found they were Yankees, because of the two evils I think I would rather have the latter.” As a result, there was a major emphasis on catching runaways and selling slaves into safe locations.27 So many slaves were winding up in Federal units that Confederate leaders began to become alarmed over the prospect. Messages ran back and forth about the topic among the Confederate high command in Mississippi. One Confederate general reported that one of his scouts found the Federals “were actively organizing negro regiments, which they threw across into Louisiana as fast as organized.” Stephen D. Lee also reported news of the organization of black regiments: “All the negroes were to be returned and the men conscripted. Each division should have three negro regiments, to be officered by white officers.” One Southerner at Meridian warned the Confederate government in Richmond as early as August 1863: “At Memphis and Corinth there are now several thousand negroes under drill, with the prospect of their being made

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pretty good soldiers; and, to prevent more of our slaves from being appropriated by the enemy, we should ourselves bring their services into requisition.” Perhaps one captured Confederate soldier summed up the feeling best when he told his captors, “It ain’t fair to fight us with our own niggers.”28 The Confederate government would argue over the issue of arming slaves for months, but would not organize black units until the very end of the war. The understood Southern policy against black Union soldiers was clear: do not recognize them as Union soldiers and return them to their owners as slaves. Charges of Confederates massacring black soldiers at Petersburg and Fort Pillow are well known, but there were many confrontations in Mississippi as well. One Confederate general in the state reported a small encounter between Confederate cavalry and black troops. “General [Lawrence S.] Ross, about February 28, while going into camp near Benton, was charged by about 80 negro cavalry from Yazoo City,” Stephen D. Lee reported. “About an equal number of the Texans charged them, and before they got to Yazoo City (10 miles) 75 of the negroes were caught and killed, as they continued to offer resistance and to run.” Another Confederate general operating around Yazoo City reported, “We squabbled about the terms of the capitulation, as I would not recognize negroes as soldiers or guaranty them nor their officers protection as such.” The Confederate then reported that while they “squabbled,” Union reinforcements arrived and drove the Confederates back. “They refused to surrender,” the officer gloomily noted. Similarly, a Federal general reported to his wife that his men witnessed Confederate soldiers killing a captured white officer of a black regiment. William T. Sherman in return caught the adjutant of the regiment that murdered the man and “intends retaliating by Killing him,” the general noted.29 Most accounts credit Mississippi with sending around seventeen thousand black troops to the Union war effort. The most thorough examination of the Union units in the Civil War, Frederick H. Dyer’s A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, credits the state of Mississippi with nine African American Federal units, along with the one white Union cavalry regiment. Among these black troops was a cavalry regiment organized at Vicksburg in October 1863 and originally known as the First Mississippi Cavalry (African Descent), but later changed to the Third Regiment Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops. Dyer credited the state with two heavy artillery batteries, the First and Second Mississippi Heavy Artillery (African Descent). The First Heavy Artillery had been organized at Vicksburg in September 1863, while the Second organized at Natchez in the same month. These regiments later became the Fifth and Sixth Regiments Heavy Artillery U.S. Colored Troops. Dyer also credited the state with five black infantry regiments, the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Sixth

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Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), with the Fifth Regiment never completing organization. These regiments later became the Fifty-first, Fifty-second, Fifty-third, Fifty-eighth, and Sixty-sixth Regiments Infantry U.S. Colored Troops, and were organized at Vicksburg, Natchez, and Warrenton in May, July, August, and December 1863. The total number of men serving in these units, including the few white officers, was 15,296.30 Curiously, Dyer did not allot to Mississippi the numerous other regiments organized within the state. As many as eight other regiments or batteries were organized within Mississippi, most fully but a couple only partially, but they received designations as units from other states. Two entire U.S. Colored Troops infantry regiments were also organized, the Seventieth at Natchez in 1864 and the Seventy-first at the same time at Natchez and Big Black River Bridge, between Jackson and Vicksburg. Also organized at Big Black River Bridge was the Second Louisiana Battery Light Artillery (African Descent) in December 1863. At Vicksburg itself, Federal officers put together the Ninth Louisiana Regiment Infantry (African Descent) in 1863. Another artillery unit, the First Louisiana Battery Light Artillery (African Descent) took form at Hebron’s Plantation in late 1863.31 Areas of northern Mississippi in Federal hands also saw the organization of numerous units. The Seventh Louisiana Regiment Infantry (African Descent) was partially put together at Holly Springs in December 1863. At Corinth, in the contraband camp, the First Alabama Regiment Infantry (African Descent) was organized in May 1863, while the First Alabama Regiment Siege Artillery (African Descent) formed in June 1863. All these units, organized within Mississippi but credited to other states, were later designated U.S. Colored Troops. Although probably made up of some slaves from occupied areas of Alabama and Louisiana, these regiments no doubt contained many black Mississippians as well. If the members of these regiments organized within the boundaries of Mississippi are totaled, the number reaches 8,802. Although surely not all these troops came from Mississippi, it is impossible to determine which did; thus any total of Mississippi slaves who fought in the Civil War is an approximation, but the most liberal total of soldiers in units organized in Mississippi is 24,098.32 This total still does not take into account black units raised and organized on the very periphery of the state. Black units were organized at Memphis and La Grange, Tennessee; Helena, Arkansas; and Lake Providence and Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana. While many of the soldiers in these units were from those states, these regiments and batteries almost certainly contained large numbers of Mississippi slaves in their ranks as well. A total of these six infantry regiments, two artillery regiments, and an artillery battery reaches 13,334. If all these regiments, which were certainly not made up of all Mississippians, are

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added, the grand total is 37,432 African American soldiers placed into units that were either organized in the state or on the very periphery of Mississippi. While there is no way to determine an exact number from the state, Mississippi probably sent at least 25,000 to 30,000 African American soldiers to the Union army.33 Most of these units served in Union-occupied areas of Mississippi, both along the Mississippi River, in garrisons at Vicksburg and Natchez and on plantations in the immediate area, and along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad between Corinth and Memphis, Tennessee. Only a few of the units saw major action during the war, such as the affair at Milliken’s Bend in June 1863 and on patrols and raids. The regiment raised at the contraband camp in Corinth later took part in the northern Mississippi operations that included Brices Cross Roads. Another unit later served in the Mobile campaign in 1865, and several garrisoned different points in Mississippi into 1866 before being mustered out.34 The history of the Fifty-first U.S. Colored Infantry is perhaps illustrative of the many black regiments from Mississippi. Doing mostly guard duty, they became involved in a couple of battles, in which they performed admirably. Having been organized at Milliken’s Bend in May 1863 as the First Regiment, Mississippi Volunteers of African Descent, they took the field under the command of white officers, many of them from the Third Missouri Infantry. Described by one of the regiment’s officers as still “a battalion of raw ‘field hands,’” the unit saw its first action in the fight at Milliken’s Bend in June 1863. They had just been issued Austrian muskets the day before, but acquitted themselves fairly well considering they were entirely raw and outnumbered.35 Throughout the remainder of the war, the regiment was on garrison duty at Milliken’s Bend, Goodrich Landing, and Vicksburg. They did “fatigue work in fortifications” at Vicksburg. There, many of the soldiers were reunited with family members who had also escaped from slavery, although the chaplain reported, “I have men in my regiment who have not heard from their wives for a year and do not know where they are.” On only a couple of occasions did the regiment leave the fortifications, but when they did, said one of the regiment’s officers, they inspired “the rebels with a wholesome respect for colored soldiers.” On one occasion, however, Confederate guerrillas captured and killed a foraging party from the unit. “Every man . . . was murdered with fiendish brutality,” wrote one officer, “their bodies being mutilated in every possible manner.” A white officer was with them, and “after being disarmed [he] was shot through the mouth and left for dead.”36 Most of the Fifty-first U.S. Colored Troops’ time was spent in garrison duty, however, where one of the main goals was to educate the soldiers. One

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of the chaplains of the regiment set up a “regimental school” and lectured to the men. Many black soldiers learned to read and write in the service. By the end of the war, the regiment saw more action, moving to Fort Barrancas near Pensacola, Florida, and taking part in the capture of Mobile, Alabama, in April 1865. The unit also made a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, before returning to the Mississippi Valley and performing guard duty until they were mustered out in April 1866.37 Probably the most active and important of Mississippi’s black units was the Third Regiment Cavalry, the colonel of which was a white officer, Embury D. Osband. The other officers of the regiment were also white men, mostly from the Fourth Illinois Cavalry. Based in Vicksburg, the regiment carried out numerous raids and expeditions throughout Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The regiment took part in raids west of the Mississippi River in 1863 and then in the famous Yazoo City raid in conjunction with Sherman’s Meridian campaign in February and March 1864, during which the unit almost captured Confederate general Samuel G. French, who was spending his off-duty time at his plantation near Deer Creek. Other raids in the summer of 1864 saw the regiment on expeditions to Benton, Jackson, and then Grand Gulf. The fall of 1864 saw a raid to Natchez and Woodville, upon which the regiment captured a Confederate battery in a saber charge. The regiment also took part in Benjamin Grierson’s famous second Mississippi raid, and finished the war with more expeditions west of the Mississippi River and as a garrisoning force in Natchez. In all, the regiment seemed to be everywhere in the western part of the state.38 In the latter portion of the war, Colonel Osband commanded a cavalry brigade, which included the Third Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops. One Federal corps commander wrote his superior that “Osband’s negro cavalry are good, and if properly armed they will handle Ross’ brigade.” In July Osband’s brigade invaded Jackson, the state capital, and broke up the Pearl River bridge. Normally brigaded with the Fourth, Fifth, and Eleventh Illinois Cavalry and the Second Wisconsin Cavalry, these African American troopers fought extremely well, showing not only what black soldiers could do but also the ability of mixed (desegregated) brigades in the Union army.39 Even if as many as thirty thousand Mississippi slaves fought in the Union armies and many thousands more women, children, and elderly slaves concentrated in contraband camps, there were still countless thousands of Mississippi’s 437,000 slaves still in bondage in the Confederate-controlled portions of the state to the south and east. Although declared free by Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation, these slaves were not truly freed until the end of the war and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law in

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December 1865. From that point on, no African American would be a slave on Mississippi’s soil.40 This slow progression toward eventual freedom for Mississippi’s slaves was not without resistance from both the state and Confederate governments and the good chance of probable death, or at the very least a return to slavery, if caught by Confederate soldiers. The state legislature was almost continually passing legislation in regard to slaves, with just about each session passing such bills as “An Act to authorize the impressments of slaves and other personal property for military purposes,” “An Act to appropriate fines, forfeitures, licenses, and runaway slaves, in the County of Jones,” “An Act to increase the fee for apprehending Runaway Slaves,” and “An Act in relation to Slaves, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes.”41 The state’s governor was the main executor of slave policy in Mississippi, and the problems confronting the state in terms of handling increasingly restless slaves appear frequently in both Pettus’s and Clark’s messages to the legislature. The governors often asked the legislature for authority over the slaves, with one major example being the salt shortage during which Governor Pettus asked that slaves be put to work making salt. Once portions of the state began to be overrun by Federal armies, Pettus became increasingly alarmed at the possibility of slaves falling into Northern hands, telling the legislature, “this has become a subject of too much importance to be lightly passed over.” The governor described “the exposed condition of the Northern and Western districts to cavalry raids, and the facility with which the enemy can enter the counties upon the margin of the navigable rivers in the State,” and recommended some type of legislation that would “prevent the negro men from falling into the hands of the Federal authorities, and thus becoming a powerful auxiliary means in their hands, for our subjugation.” Pettus realized what Lincoln and the Federal commanders had already put into action: that “every able-bodied negro man that falls into the hands of the enemy is not only a laborer lost to the country in the production of supplies for the support of our armies in the field, but he is also, under the present policy of the United States government, a soldier gained to its army.”42 Pettus described the effect of what was already occurring. He told the legislature that “marauding bands of these freed negroes are desolating neighborhoods in the valley of the Mississippi, and citizens of Mississippi have been murdered at their homes by them.” Pettus described the intention of the Federal armies to occupy captured regions and thus “perfect the destruction and demoralization of the country.” Thus it was paramount to “prevent negro men from falling into their hands” by removing slaves from “the more exposed districts of the State.” These slaves should, Pettus argued, be taken to safer places

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and put to work for the state, with their owners being compensated during their absence.43 The most controversial slave-related effort was the recommendation to arm blacks and make them part of the Confederate army. Put forward so famously by Confederate general Patrick Cleburne in early 1864, the issue festered until the end of the war, when the Confederate Congress finally did authorize arming slaves. Governor Clark led Mississippi’s role in this controversy and discussed the issue with the governors of other Southern states in a meeting in Augusta, Georgia, in October 1864. Clark went on record on the issue, saying, “Whatever may be the public opinion on this subject, I hesitate not to declare mine.” He favored making the slaves teamsters and laborers or even soldiers, and argued that “they can be made effective soldiers; and that the experiment should now be made.” He likewise realized that the enemy would use any slave the Confederacy did not.44 The trick, however, was to conscript the slaves into the army without forcing them to flee to Union lines, especially those near Union-occupied areas. Clark realized that sending cavalry forces to round up these slaves would likely drive them away. He rather recommended all masters near Federal occupation areas remove their slaves quietly before any word of what was happening emerged.45 On one other issue Clark took another firm stand. A reward for slaves serving in the Confederate army had been mentioned, with some even advising that freedom be offered to slaves who fought. Governor Clark came out strongly against the notion. “I do not favor, however, the granting of freedom to slaves, or of offering it as a boon,” he advised. Clark wrote that freedom would not help the slaves, that essentially they were better off under white control. “Steady, firm, but kind discipline, such as good masters enforce, is all that is required,” he noted. “Freedom would be a curse to them and to the country.”46 By the time the Confederate government began to arm slaves, however, it was far too little and too late to do much good. The war ended just months afterward, and the slaves were given their freedom later in that tumultuous year of 1865. Still, the Mississippi state government, now under Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys, a regimental and brigade commander in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, was defiant. In a message to the legislature late in 1865, Humphreys tried to retain Mississippi sovereignty, stating, “Under the pressure of Federal bayonets—urged on by the misdirected sympathy of the North in behalf of the enslaved African—the people of Mississippi have abolished the institution of slavery, and have solemnly declared in their State Constitution that ‘the legislature shall provide by law for the protection and security of the

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person and property of the freedmen of the State, and guard them and the State against any evils that may arise from their sudden emancipation.’”47 Humphreys told the legislature, “How this important provision and requirement of the constitution is to be carried into effect, is the question now presented for our solution.” And the legislature, the U.S. Congress, and the courts would spend the next century working through these issues, with Mississippi becoming one of the battleground states in the process. Still defiant, Mississippi would be the last state to actually ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, and that ratification would not come until 1995. That ultimate solution, and the progress along racial lines that has been made in the process of reaching it, was first begun, however, during the war itself when significant numbers of Mississippi’s African Americans left their yokes of bondage and began to take an active role in securing their own freedom.48

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“I Have Borne It All Very Cheerfully, So Far” College Hill, Mississippi, was pretty much devoid of males during the war. There were a few old men and little boys still around, but almost all the males from their teens to their fifties were away in the Confederate army. That left the little town near Oxford almost defenseless, but not entirely. In order to defend themselves from the dreaded Yankees, the women of College Hill banded together. One local woman remembered that the young women of the town “organized and drilled with broomsticks and hoe handles for guns, fearing that the day would come when they would be the total defense of the community.” The day did come, but it is unknown exactly what effort the women made to defend their town. Still, the episode demonstrates the extent Mississippi’s women would go to defend their homes.1 Not all of Mississippi’s women were so dedicated or brave, of course, although one minister reported that at the Battle of Brices Cross Roads, “2 Yankees surrendered to Mother before the battle here.” There are also numerous examples of the state’s women behaving in exactly the opposite fashion, and many more times when women were simply indifferent to the war, choosing rather to concentrate on their families instead of national or state affairs. The sum of the parts is a complex picture.2 Until recently, Mississippi’s women have not received the attention they deserve. For example, John K. Bettersworth, in his groundbreaking work Confederate Mississippi, chose to give very little attention to women in the state, as he also treated the topic of African Americans. The genre of women’s studies has recently placed more focus on women during the Civil War, but specific studies of Mississippi women remain rare.3 It is difficult to quantify exactly how many women supported the Confederacy, how many did not, and how many began to lose heart once the war turned against the South. It is safe to say, however, that Mississippi, just like all other states North and South, had varying levels of loyalty among women,

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and varying levels of the will to win. In Mississippi, the best evidence indicates that most white women were at least supportive of the Confederacy, with many of them making uniforms and socks, stitching flags, and drilling with broomsticks for defense, such as the women of College Hill. It is also safe to say that there were those women, in the minority, who actively fought against the Confederacy and aided the Federals. Perhaps many of the state’s women were somewhere in the middle, more concerned about their farms, children, and husbands away in the army than the larger Confederacy. It was among this wearied majority that the war had its biggest impact and in whom the desire to survive, when the war turned on them personally, overshadowed the desire to win. The case of Susan Young of Carroll County is perhaps most illustrative of this phenomenon. When her taxes came due and she had no money, she had only one recourse and that was to write her husband who was away in the army. “I want to know what to do about our tax,” she wrote, and concluded, “You had better come home and see about it if you have to run away.”4 The patriotic fervor at the beginning of the war affected Mississippi’s women just as it did the men. Numerous accounts relate women’s role in gathering supplies, clothes, and food for departing soldiers, as well as their actions in sending them off to war. One woman of Aberdeen remembered sending off a company to Corinth: “We, with other friends, drove eight miles to Prairie Station and carried lunches for them to take on their journey. The scene is still vivid to me when Capt. [John] Moore formed them into line and we walked down it, shaking hands with every man. Those nearest of kin, not content with the grasp of the hands, gave the parting kiss, amid tears of the tender-hearted sympathizers.” She also related how she and several women stitched “a beautiful silk flag,” which they presented to the company at the local fairgrounds. “The beautiful Miss Maggie McMillan was chosen to present it,” she recalled, “which she did with an eloquent and befitting address.” The woman also remembered “how tattered and torn it was the next time we saw it.” On another occasion, the women of Pontotoc offered the soldiers the “proceeds of a concert given for the benefit of the ‘Pontotoc Minute Men’ and the Confederate (artillery) Guards.” The scene was repeated over and over throughout the state.5 There were also women who posed as men to go along to the war. One Corinth man reported in his diary of seeing a unit in town: “They had two women with them dressed in men’s clothes, going Soldiering.” The opposite could also be true. One girl reported to her diary: “There is a very tall woman going about with a bonnet framed around her and she pretends to be crazy. The people think she is a man and is acting as a spy.” There were also many women who wished they could go. One Greenville teenager wrote in her diary: ”Oh! If

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I were only a man, how quickly would I go to the War and try to put some of those vile Yankees out of our way!”6 Despite the pomp and circumstance, women still felt a serious worry about their men leaving home. In describing the situation in general, one Mississippi woman wrote her daughter in the summer of 1862: “Many a loving wife has had to give up her fond husband on whom she doated. Many an affectionate Mother has had to give up her fair haired boy to go in defense of our country.” The individual sentiments were much the same. “My mother bore my going away pretty well,” one soldier wrote, “It was a source of great trouble to her, but she possessed a great stock of patience and fortitude.” One mother showed the other side of those feelings: “I have had to give up all of my boys that are large enough. 4 of them now belong to the army. May the good Lord spare their precious lives, and shield them from danger. No one knows the trouble that I have endured about them.” Another Mississippi woman, the wife of a Corinth soldier, wrote: “My Husband left for Bowling Green Ky. This evening. . . . I did not go to see him off. I could not bear the Idea of parting with him under such dangerous Circumstances.” Others, although in the minority, saw only trouble ahead in the war. One Scott County woman wrote in April 1861: “There are Volunteer Companies organizing all around us. I fear we are going to have troublesome times.”7 Most Mississippi women were more than willing to support the men in the army. One wrote in her diary: “I went in town this morning to get something for our poor Soldiers, I call them our’s, because, although I never knew them before, I feel that we cannot do too much for, nor take too great an interest in, anyone that gives up their very life blood, for our dear country.” Another woman related how, when several women observed barefooted soldiers, they “went to work, got up a series of entertainments, and charged for admittance $2.50, in Confederate money, or a pair of socks. We had beautiful evenings and a crowded house, and took in, altogether, $2,000 and 60 pairs of socks, which we had the pleasure of presenting to the needy soldiers.” A Hillsboro woman told her sister how she was “very busy for the last month making clothes for the soldiers. And I made three suits of jeans. The first I ever made at home.”8 In addition to providing for their soldiers, Mississippi women also found themselves faced with the need to fill roles normally relegated to the male world. With so many males absent, the war confused many roles, forcing women to violate the rules of both gender and race. One woman of Okolona reported: “They not only had to care for the children and the stock, manage the negroes and the farms, but they had to make clothes and food for those at home and for those far away in the army. The long-discarded arts of spinning and weaving and dyeing with the bark of trees were revived. Many a Confederate soldier lies shrouded in the gray made by his wife’s hand or that of some other loved one.” 162

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One elite woman was honest to her diary when she stated that her slaves had left and that she had done the “washing for six weeks, came near ruining myself for life as I was too delicately raised for such hard work.”9 As fate would have it with Mississippi being a central theater of the war, many of the state’s women were unfortunately placed right in the middle of the campaigning and fighting. This invasion pitted the Federal soldiers against Mississippi’s women. The Englishman Fremantle wrote that “it is impossible to exaggerate the unfortunate condition of the women left behind in these farmhouses; they have scarcely any clothes, and nothing but the coarsest bacon to eat, and are in miserable uncertainty as to the fate of their relations, whom they can hardly ever communicate with.” The women of Mississippi corroborated Fremantle’s observation. One Raymond woman reported to her husband the effects of the enemy passing through, yet assured him, “I have borne it all very cheerfully, so far.” A Meridian woman also reported to her mother how she dealt with the enemy. One of the Union officers, whom she met in the passageway of her home, asked her “if I was a Southerner,” she said. “I replied, ‘Yes, a genuine Southerner, and had never been in a Northern state.’ He said, ‘You take everything very coolly.’ I said, ‘I try to, but I find it very hard to do, as I am frightened all the time.’ He said, ‘You need not be, as you shall not be disturbed.’” She was no doubt more afraid when the officers questioned her children. Her little girl “told them she did not like Yankees.” When asked if she would go home with one of the officers, she replied, “No; I am a rebel, and I do not want to be with the Yankees.”10 The initial prevailing opinion of Mississippi’s women was that Yankees were not gentlemen. “When the Federals first came I was disposed to think there was not a gentleman among them,” wrote Kate Foster in her diary, but her attitude, as that of others, changed, and she ultimately admitted that there were a few gentlemen among them. Some Southern women even courted the Federal soldiers, causing Foster to worry that it might affect morale in the army. “We ought to remember that we all have relatives, friends or lovers in our army and if they hear these things it might weaken a strong army in time of battle and sicken a stout & loving heart.” Another woman had just the opposite concern: “Oh! This cruel war! Ma, sometimes I feel about desperate, and almost wish I could take a Rip Van Winkle sleep till all is over and settled. I fear also, our husbands, will become so accustomed to roam and stay from home, that, peace will scarcely be able to counteract the habit. This consequence to a wife, so devoted as myself, would be a death blow indeed and rather than witness such, may the earth close over my unhappy remains.”11 Women bore the brunt of the contact when the Federals did arrive. Mississippians learned quickly that men were liable to be killed, captured, or beaten, but women were rarely touched. They also learned that occupied houses were 163

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less likely to be torched than abandoned ones. Thus men normally hid in the nearby swamps with anything of value, most notably livestock, while the women remained to confront the Yankees. The travails of one New Albany woman are illustrative of the encounters. When the Federals were on the way to fight the Battle of Tupelo, they camped on the Tallahatchie River at New Albany. They did so on their way back to Memphis as well. Elizabeth Jane Beach told her parents all about her ordeal, describing the marching column with “at least 150 drums & fifes, and a brass band.” “I would have enjoyed the music very much if it had been our men,” she said. When word came that the Federals were coming, “the men all put out,” she wrote, and she hid her valuables in a secret compartment over her piazza and covered it with planks so that it was not noticeable. The Federals soon arrived and searched the house, “All day working like ants,” she wrote. One soldier inadvertently leaned against the planks covering her hiding place. When they slipped, he knew he had hit the gold mine. Elizabeth told her parents how “one says run down and guard the door, don’t let another fellow come up, we’ll divide the things amongst us.” Other soldiers went through clothes, beds, blankets, and all other sorts of household items, taking what they wanted. “I stole one of them [blankets] from him after he had got it,” she told her parents. “He laid it down by him to divide the provision. I slipped up behind him and got it, there was such confusion amongst them that he never discovered it.” The enemy soldiers most of all took the food. “They left me nothing to eat at all,” she wrote, and described how they even tried to ruin the water supply; the Yankees also threw a wash pot and a windlass down a neighbor’s well.12 One young woman of Meridian enjoyed taunting Federal prisoners in a local hospital early in the war; once she even spit in a wounded soldier’s face and “called him all the Dirty dogs & Yankee pups that she could think of.” A couple of years later the recovered and exchanged Federal soldier was back in town, this time with Sherman, and he wasted no time in finding his former assailant. Gathering several friends, he went to her home. One witness remembered, “She recognized him as soon as she saw him and Begged for mercy but they would not hear to it.” They burned her house and several more to which she fled for cover.13 These women, caught as they were between opposing forces, were nevertheless compassionate to both sides when they could be. Often, loyal women’s motherly instincts took over, and they wound up aiding wounded enemy soldiers. One such example came after a woman near Franklin gave a group of Federals carrying a wounded officer a severe tongue-lashing. Stepping up to a “double log house . . . which stood in a small clearing in a lonely, desolate region,” one of the Federals wrote, the soldiers were greeted with shouts of “You

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nasty Yankees, don’t come in here.” They broke through the door anyway and met a severely agitated old woman stirring embers in her fireplace. “She was smoking a cob pipe and viciously stirring the embers with a wooded poking stick,” one of the officers remembered. “Shaking the stick at us as we entered,” he wrote, “she exclaimed in an angry tone ‘Be-gone, you Yankee thieves; I wish General [William Wirt] Adams had killed the last one of you.’” When she saw the wounded officer, however, “a wonderful change came over the lady; from a look of scorn and hate, her features softened to an expression of kindest sympathy.” “Come right in, you poor man,” he remembered her saying. “Lay him carefully on the bed.”14 On another occasion, a woman near Bolton told of her sympathies for a group of Yankee prisoners: I never imagined such a set of poor miserable wretches. Who can describe all they have suffered and endured? No one, I am certain. Nearly naked, unwashed and uncombed for months, insufficient food and of the worst quality, covered with vermin, wounded, frostbitten, swollen and blistered feet. Is it to be wondered at that they have not a wish or a hope? What miseries does not the war entail? The guards were callous to their sufferings, cared not a bit whether they were able to march along. God grant they may sometime reach their homes, even though they may return to fight against us again.15 There were quite a few women who left the state instead of remaining to meet the Federals. Almost all of them, however, soon wished to be home. One Clinton woman who took refuge across the river in Louisiana made every possible attempt to return when she heard the Federals had moved into her area. “Cousin Alex and Mr. Reilly say they think the Yankees will be whipped out of Mississippi in three or four weeks,” she wrote her mother, adding, “and then the road will be open all the way.” She later told of a botched attempt to return home. She traveled to within fifty miles of Natchez but had to turn back. “I had to wait,” she said. “If I had gone then I could have got home.” She also related that “it came very near breaking my heart. I thought I could not stand it at first, but have become more reconciled to it.” If returning was not an option, women desperately wanted to hear news from home. “I am nearly crazy to hear from home,” one Mississippi refugee wrote in her diary, but confessed, “I am almost afraid to hear from home for fear I shall have bad news.”16 The most terrible result of the war for women was the loss of a husband, father, brother, or son. “The church is gradually filling up with black dresses and mourning veils,” remembered one Mississippi woman in 1863. In describing

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the loss of several neighbor children, she went on to record her own thoughts as death struck her family: “This was sad news but ah! Not equal to the stunning blow which crushed our hearts when Pa returned without our darling Brother saying he had gone to his Savior. . . . It seems as though when he my pride left us my heart became flint. I am almost afraid to love too dearly any one now.” Another woman wrote in anguish, “My brother, my darling, darling brother Bert, my favorite, the one I loved best in the world next to my mother, and the one that loved me best, now sleeps beneath the sod.” Even the potential of losing a loved one hurt. One woman wrote, “I feel like I could stand most anything except the death of one of my dear brave Brothers. Oh! . . . that would kill me.”17 Obviously, the war became personal for many women and forced a choice between survival and winning. One woman wrote in July 1863 how Jackson and Vicksburg had fallen, concluding that “our state has gone up” and hoping she could get another letter off before “our State is entirely gone.” “I fear it hangs on a very slender thread,” she concluded, and later confided, “I want this troublesome time of war to pass away swiftly and once more to realize peace & independence.” By independence, she obviously meant a return to former days and individual freedom from occupying legions of the enemy, not national independence. The war likewise personally affected another Mississippi woman, whose petition to have her son sent home from the army went all the way to the governor. She wrote that she was “verry low in health” and that “there are many unruly negroes who are now without any white person to manage them” on her plantation. One Bolivar County woman even wrote Governor Pettus in hopes he could have the enemy return her husband, who had been captured by them. She assured the governor that although her husband was not in the army and was not conscripted, he would join the army as soon as the Federals released him. Obviously, many Mississippi women were personally suffering from the effects of war and desired to see an end to the fighting and the hope of survival for them and their families.18 Almost every Mississippi woman’s experience was different in some way. Thus perhaps it is best to examine the woman’s home front through the eyes of several representatives: a Confederate general’s wife, a plantation mistress, a smaller farm wife, and an unmarried but grown young woman. While not comprehensive in scope, these case studies can nevertheless reveal important attributes of women on Mississippi’s home front. The life described in the diary of Alice Gray Sears, the wife of a Confederate general, reveals some of the hardships brought by war as well as other problems that, while not caused by war, nevertheless compounded the afflictions during wartime. Alice Sears was originally a resident of Houston, Texas, and

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had married Claudius Wistar Sears in New Orleans in 1853. He was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and at the beginning of the war in 1861 was president and commandant of cadets at a military school, St. Thomas’ Hall, in Holly Springs.19 The early days of the war were the last thing on the Sears’s minds, however. Claudius and Alice had four children, but by March 1861 all had scarlet fever. Alice Sears’s diary vividly illustrates the care she and her husband provided, as well as the bottomless pain felt at the passing of their children.20 Alice described the loss of her youngest baby, Frankie, on March 29. Having gone into another room to get some rest after many nights and days of tending to the sick children, Alice was suddenly awakened by her husband, who had heard the child having a “spasm.” By the time they reached the baby, he had died, causing immense grief to Alice. “Poor babe, he went alone,” she wrote in her diary, “no loving arms to fold him, or watch his last breath. Oh! God, spare me another such trial in thy great mercy.” Alice could only take comfort that the baby had died “the night of Good Friday, the day our Savior suffered to ransom sinner’s souls.” Unfortunately, the next day another child, Katie, also succumbed to the fever. “I noticed a change in Katie’s breathing,” she wrote. “I called to him [her husband], and in a moment she was gone.” With the second child’s passing, Alice’s grief first turned to numbness but then she rebounded. “I could not pray at first, I did not know how,” she wrote. But she recovered enough to comfort her husband. “I scarcely seemed to feel,” she noted, “and my poor husband who loves his children so devotedly, he seemed so crushed that my own courage rose to strengthen him.” Even worse, yet another child, Claudie, lingered until April 16 but also passed away. “It seemed as though there were little left behind to make me wish to stay,” she wrote in her diary.21 Thus the Sears household was not terribly interested in the national developments in the spring of 1861. Gradually, however, despite the recovery of the fourth child and the birth of another in June, their attention was drawn to the developing war situation. As a trained military officer, Claudius Sears would no doubt be involved, and he seemed to want to go, perhaps to take his mind off the deaths of most of his children. In addition to drilling his cadets and local companies volunteering for service, in April he became captain of a group of “middle aged men who wished to drill for home defense.” When one of the companies he had been drilling, led by Winfield Scott Featherston, departed for Corinth, Claudius went with them. “I objected at first very much,” Alice wrote, “but finding Mr. Sears wanted to go, and would not unless I consented, I gave up.” As she feared, Claudius wound up staying when Featherston was elected colonel and Claudius was made captain of the company. She confided

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to her diary, “I felt dreadfully about it, and had been so lonely while he was away, that I could hardly bear it,” but Claudius told her “he did not think he was at liberty to decline, that he had had a military education, and felt that he ought to use it for his Country and so he accepted.”22 Immediately, therefore, Alice Sears was faced with the loss of three children, the birth of another, and the departure of her husband to fight in the war. Her feelings were plain; she was not at all interested in him leaving. Her concerns were valid, for the war would cause more and more grief for her as the four long years passed. Alice remained near Holly Springs for a time, feeling a deep sense of fear for herself and the two remaining children. “It was very trying for me at times,” she wrote. “I could not help feeling some fear, being so far from the town or any neighbors.” It did not help that her husband’s unit had been transferred to Virginia. She decided to travel there to be closer to her husband, or, as she said, “where I could hear oftener and quicker.” First staying with a sister in Fredericksburg, she then moved on to Leesburg, where her husband was stationed. Soon the Confederates retreated, however, which caused her departure as well. In the ensuing months, Captain Sears was often sick, but he was able to visit at times. When he was eventually promoted to colonel of the Forty-sixth Mississippi, Claudius headed back to Mississippi. “I hated dreadfully to give him up,” she wrote when he left for the western theater, “the more so as he was so unwell, but felt it my duty, with other wives, to let my husband go to his country’s defense.” Meanwhile, Alice and the children were virtual nomads. Holly Springs had been taken by the Federals, and she would not return. She remained on the run, staying much of the time in North Carolina.23 Worse news came shortly. “I was very anxious all this time about Mr. Sears,” she wrote in mid-1863, “not hearing from him at all, and my anxiety increased every day. I heard only once during the three months he was shut up in Vicksburg.” Her husband was indeed captured at Vicksburg, paroled, and then appointed a brigadier general. He led a brigade through the Atlanta campaign as well as the invasion of Tennessee in late 1864. Hearing little of him, she could only worry and dread the day that some fateful news arrived. That day came in January 1865. Several women came in, and Alice could tell something was wrong. “I thought it must be the children, but I could not move,” she wrote. Speaking of a friend, Alice wrote, “Though she laughed and talked on with the others, I knew she was hiding something from me. At last I asked her what was the matter, and she evaded me, and I asked again, and she told me to come into the other room.” Alice remembered, “I went, and learned that my dear husband was wounded, in the battle at Nashville a month before, 15th December (1864). Was wounded in the left leg, and had it amputated.” To make matters worse,

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he was in the hands of the enemy, having been captured during the retreat. “I was perfectly calm and quiet,” she noted, but confessed to her diary: “I had dreaded it. I hardly knew what exactly, but always felt opposed to his going with an invading army. Oh! How I did long to go to him, and I did not even know where he was. My faith in the abounding mercy and love of our Heavenly Father was my only support, and that I had, thank God.”24 Although her husband recovered and went on to teach for several more decades, Alice Sears’s diary is a painful account of one woman’s wartime life. Not all her hardships were caused by the war itself, but they nevertheless combined with the war’s added problems to create a heavier burden. Despite her resilience and courage, she was never terribly supportive of the war, even while her husband was serving as one of the generals prosecuting it. But she, like countless thousands of other wives and mothers, supported her husband even in doubt, calling it her duty. The life of a plantation mistress was similar to that of Alice Sears. Jane Clark Pickett was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner in Hinds and Madison counties who had also served decades earlier as state treasurer and president of the board governing the state penitentiary. In 1844 Jane married a wealthy planter, Micajah Pickett, who by 1860 owned a plantation and 181 slaves near Benton in Yazoo County. During the war, Jane kept up a lively correspondence with her mother near Jackson and a sister in Madison County. From her letters, the difficult life of this plantation mistress unfolds clearly.25 Much like other plantation owners, Jane actually had little hope of success even as the war began. In speaking of the future, she wrote, “I fear it is full of disaster and woe.” She realized what many other plantation owners knew, that even if militarily successful, they ran the chance of losing out economically if the war came to their property.26 Relatively few problems emerged prior to the major Federal invasion in mid-1863. There were some shortages on the plantation, as her description of Christmases at their home reveals: “Good ol Santa Clause did not forget his time honored mission,” she wrote in 1861, “but stopped his car on the house roof, descended the chymny and spread a bountiful repast of candies, cakes, and oranges sprinkled with evergreen on the stand. A handsome bracelet in boxes for each delighted their gaze.” The next year, December 1862, Santa came again. The war had not stopped Saint Nick, although the fare was not as great as usual due to the blockade.27 Meanwhile, Jane worked to support the Confederacy. She sent one brother to the cause, although her husband, as a wealthy planter, did not enroll. Jane did knit socks for the soldiers, however, telling her sister, “I am now on my seventeenth pair of socks for soldiers. . . . I knit night and day.” She was also

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busy consoling several local women who had lost husbands and fathers in the war. “Her sorrows were another picture of a widow[’]s wailing & anguish,” she wrote to her sister on one occasion. “I cannot describe it.”28 Suddenly, however, Jane’s world changed. Because of the Federal invasion of central Mississippi and the capture of the capital, the Picketts packed up what they could, slaves and all, and headed east to safety. Her letters describe the fear she felt for her possessions left behind. “Oh! I cannot grasp the great events passing through our much loved country,” she wrote in July 1863 from Montevallo, Alabama, where she had sought refuge while her husband was looking for a more secure place to live even farther east in Georgia. “The woe and desolation weeping all around us, we and many of our friends driven from homes, and which even now may lay in ashes,” she wrote. “We received letters continually from the overseer, and Mr. Craig whose family is at our House, if it is still standing, until the fall of Vicksburg; since then we have received none from them.”29 Jane’s husband tried to return to their plantation after Vicksburg fell, but could not get any farther than Meridian. News was bad, however. Most of their slaves had run away. “The negroes in most instances refuse to leave with their masters, and in some cases they have left the plantations in a perfect stampede,” she wrote her sister, and described how many that they brought out had left and that the others “will go to the Yankees, I suppose, when they can.” Such events were hard on all, especially her husband, who, Jane said, “is very unhappy, for the life of an exile suits him as you know[,] mother[,] less than almost any other man.” But, she wrote, “for my part I bend to my destiny, and get along quite cheerfully.”30 She did, that is, until more bad reports arrived. “The news has just come that our house and Levoy King’s has been burned down, and all the negroes taken.” She related that “Mr. Pickett cannot bear so large a loss of property,” and stated that “if the fortunes of war should threaten me with degradation I am not compelled to live.”31 Eventually, more details of the events reached Jane, telling of “the sacking [of] our houses on both places.” The enemy “told the negroes they were free & had a right to everything they saw; at that the negroes rushed into the house, and now the great effort was who could get the most.” She went on to describe, “My libraries were robbed of their contents,” and that the Yankee soldiers said “they had the greatest treat they had in Miss. in my pantry among cordials, wines, & preserves.”32 Despite later learning that their house was not actually burned, Jane was still convinced about the enemy’s alleged evil. As she wrote, she was “not compelled to live.” Such was the attitude of many Mississippi women. While they

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supported the war, they had second thoughts when it actually affected them personally. That did not necessarily mean she would go over to the enemy, however; hatred of the Yankees was even more intense than earlier. So while Jane Pickett’s letters describe a troublesome nomadic existence for a wealthy plantation family, they nevertheless also show the lessening of the will to continue even amid a growing hatred of the enemy.33 Smaller-scale farming operations were more numerous than the big plantations in Mississippi, and a New York woman who lived near Bolton left a record of her similar wartime troubles in her diary. Around thirty years old during the latter half of the war, Sarah Fitch Poates proclaimed herself an old, homelylooking woman. After moving to Mississippi before the war to teach school, Sarah had married a man of some wealth, widower John Lemuel Poates, who owned eight slaves in 1860. In her immediate family, Sarah had five children— three stepchildren and two of her own.34 Sarah Poates’s diary contains much information about the life and attitudes of women in Civil War Mississippi. She related a wealth of facts dealing with home life, describing, for instance, how the washing was done on Monday, the starching on Tuesday, and the ironing on Wednesday. Though often interrupted by soldiers, civilians, and minor calamities, this was the main schedule of her work on the small plantation. Many times Sarah told of doing the job of the certain day for many hours, sometimes working into the night to complete the task.35 Her accounts show that a woman’s place in Mississippi society was not at all glamorous. She did not have hundreds of slaves about her, and was often forced to do the cooking or other chores because of a sick hand or because slaves had run away. Some of the most telling accounts of her domestic life, however, were of the food she and her family produced and consumed. Many times Sarah related accounts of the garden work and how the garden was very shabby. “No rain, garden nearly dried up, the corn suffering much. Very dusty indeed,” she reported. To somewhat delay starvation, the Poates had to settle for other means of food production. Duck and goose hunting was frequent, with Sarah once making what she called a duck potpie. The family also raised turkeys and captured swarms of bees to make honey.36 The uncertain food supply was mirrored by the lack of clothes, shoes, and basic necessities. Often she had to sew old clothes into new ones and buy leather to make shoes. At one time the family must have been well off, because her accounts of bohemian glass and china and the surrounding area of the plantation house, rose bushes, orchards, and a separate office bespoke of some wealth. But by the latter years of the war, the Poates were down to the barest essentials.37

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Although born and raised in New York, Sarah had very quickly become a member of the Southern persuasion. She called the Yankees “rascals” and mentioned the first decent Yankee she had seen in the war. At another point, upon learning of the reelection of Lincoln, she stated that he would be “our torment” for four more years. Still, she often recalled the nostalgic memories of home in New York. Especially at Christmas she longed to be with her family instead of in a war-torn country. At other points, she reflected on her longing to see her mother.38 Sarah was a frequent observer of military maneuvers. Living on a main road, she had almost daily altercations with prisoners, soldiers, or agents. She once referred to a “little filthy, lousy courier.” On most occasions, however, she was kind and compassionate. She would feed soldiers, bandage wounds, and feel sympathy for those she could not help. She even talked a group of soldiers into letting a wagon full of slaves pass a certain point. On another occasion, she befriended a Yankee woman on the way to Jackson to see her wounded son. Her compassion was sometimes taken advantage of, however. Once, after finding that a woman she had befriended stole from her, she remarked, “so much for my kindness.”39 Sarah often told of Union raids into the interior of Mississippi, primarily from Vicksburg. The major raid recounted in her diary was the Meridian campaign. The Federals left Vicksburg in early February 1864 and traveled by two roads east. One of those roads passed the Poates’s farm. Her accounts of the destruction, devastation, burning, and pillaging were accurate pictures of that campaign. Her ordeal lasted only a couple of days, however, for after that time the Federals had gone farther east. On their return trip, though, she once more described the events. Sarah also detailed other smaller raids.40 Perhaps the most notable military information given in her diary described Sarah’s longing for the war to end and her husband to come home from the army. In the beginning, while she was not an ardent supporter of the war in her diary, she never wrote that she wanted it to end. She simply said little about it. By the time the war had run its course and involved Sarah, however, her tune changed dramatically. When she faced war firsthand and risked losing a husband, she very much despised the conflict and wanted it to end. “Last week on August 11th,” Sarah wrote in her diary in 1864, “Mr. Poates had to go to Jackson by order of conscript officers, they there gave him six days furlough. The last of this week he has to go to Enterprise. It does appear to me I cannot live if he has to stay from home. I suppose I shall endure it someway, and as others are obliged to. I do hope though that he may be permitted to stay at home.”41 John Poates would remain in service from August 1864 to May 1865, although much of the time he was stationed at Jackson and would periodically

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return home. Nevertheless, Sarah was almost beside herself with grief. “Lonely, so lonely am I this morning,” she wrote shortly after his departure. “What a sad day it is going to be for me. This is the second Sunday since Mr. Poates left. Last Sunday was quite unendurable, what will this be. Crying does no good yet I cannot keep from it, my heart feels even now as if it must burst. . . . This separation is going to be a sad trial for me. I am so lonely especially at night. I manage to get through the day by keeping myself at work all the time.” Later in her ordeal she confided, “It appears to me I cannot live and have him from home.” Her suffering became much worse as the weeks dragged into months. “Oh my dear husband how shall I live without you?” she wrote. “When will this cruel war end? I fear not soon, I am so lonely, so wretched, there is nothing to live for but sad stern duty, no further pleasure since my dear husband is away.” She later complained, “What a weary, weary existence I shall drag out separated from him whom I love so dearly. Duty, duty, only to sustain me. I have not heard a word from him this week which is most discouraging. What would I not give to see him.” By 1865, she was still suffering: “It does appear to me I cannot live with him away, I never shall become used to it.”42 Obviously, Sarah Poates’s thoughts about the war changed dramatically when it affected her personally. Even though she had endured Federal raids and destruction on their land, the major change came when her husband was claimed by the war. From the time he left she was almost beside herself, and her concern and thoughts centered on having her husband return. Such occurrences all over the South wore down the Southern will to win and ultimately doomed the Confederacy. In addition to a general’s wife, a plantation mistress, and a small farmer’s wife, an unmarried young woman’s wartime experiences can shed additional light on Mississippi women during the war. The letters of Cordelia Scales of Holly Springs, a wealthy plantation owner’s daughter, show more spunk and less worry over possessions, and thus less of the loss of will. She had yet to marry and have her own household, but what she had she defended to the hilt. The young woman was all of eighteen years old when the war began.43 Delia, as she signed her letters, was an avid supporter of the Confederacy. “I am willing to sacrifice my happiness for my country,” she wrote a friend, and bemoaned the fact that women could not join the army. “I am going in the capacity of Florence Nightingale,” she wrote. “Though I would prefer doing a little fighting to dressing wounds.”44 Even this idealistic young woman was tempted to melancholy at times, however. After Shiloh, she wrote that the citizens would “never be revisited by the gay & bright winged hours of the past.” Perhaps her sorrow was the result of her nursing efforts. “I have been very busy night & day nursing the sick &

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wounded soldiers,” saying, “our house has been nothing but a Hospital for the last two months.” Even as early as May 1862 she confided, “I think Vicksburg will be taken soon.”45 She was also sick at times, but it did little to conceal her spunk. “I was taken with cojestion of the lungs,” she wrote, and also commented that she had “inflammation of the stomach.” She was given up for dead, at least according to her, and she commented, “I had three Doctors (enough to kill any common person).” One negative result, however, was that the doctor ordered her long hair cut off so he could combat inflammation of the brain by applying ice to her head. She recovered better from the sickness than from her loss of hair.46 Ultimately, the Federals came to her neighborhood, but she did not lose heart like many other Mississippians, mainly because she lost little of her possessions and saw relatively few changes in her normal life. She continually carried a pistol and almost dared the Federals to bother her. She gave as good as she got, often sparring verbally with the Federals. One asked her why the Confederates ran out of Holly Springs like they did, saying, “our men never run, Miss.” She responded that yes, “we all knew what an orderly retreat they made from Bull Run, Manassas, & Leighsburg.” The Federal soldier grew more and more aggravated as she sparred with him, and told her he was at Leesburg and that the men “did not run far.” Delia responded, “I knew they did not, they ran as far as they could and then jumped in the river.” The other Federals were laughing at the outwitted soldier by this time, and some told Delia, “you had better inspire some of your men with your bravery.”47 While comparatively little damage was done to the Scales, their life in occupation was not totally unhindered. She and her family endured several raids and enemy columns passing through. A beautiful young woman, Delia, of course, was always the focus of many soldiers’ attention, and was often forced to sing for the Federals; one even made her write the words to one song on a sheet of paper. She did, but “put a little Confederate flag at the top of it & wrote under it ‘no northern hand shall rule this land.’” Once she described a regiment of “black republicans” camping on their grounds. “They had a large flag waving in our grove & you could not see anything but blue coats and tents,” she wrote. She also described the sheer joy she felt as wounded Federals were brought into her house, describing it with “such a placid smile on my countenance.”48 Her nerve was well known to the Federals, one sending word that if she continued to berate the soldiers and display her Confederate flag, he would shoot her in the head. She sent back word that she “did not expect anything better from Yankees” and that “two could play at that game.” One Federal soldier was overheard to tell another, “She is the damnest little Secesh I ever saw.” But she had several things going for her: a man who stated such things would

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not have gotten off so easily. Her youth and beauty were strengths. Yet even Delia knew when to draw the line and when to hold back. “If we did not exactly cuss,” she told a friend, “there is a great many of us that thought cuss mighty strong.”49 Delia spent the remainder of the war in occupation, writing one friend, “If you only knew how very blue I feel staying in Yankeedom.” Yet she made the best of it. As a young woman full of life, she was not ladened with the responsibilities of farming, children, and a husband off at war. In fact, she remarked, “Two dreadful epidemics have been prevailing here to an alarming extent, small pox & matrimony.” As a young woman, she could not help but fill her letters with gossip about boys, marriage, and other youthful adventures. “Notwithstanding the great secession excitement here,” she wrote early in the war, “some of the ladies seem to be in favor of ‘Union to a man.’” She also told of flirting with sick or wounded soldiers, once remarking, “The soldiers told Dr. Gray that I did them more good than his medicine.”50 Delia Scales’s courage and dedication never waned, primarily because she did not face the types of turmoil that Alice Sears, Jane Pickett, and Sarah Poates endured. Yet Delia represented a portion of Mississippi women who tolerated the war as best they could and made the best of the bad situation. The fact that she did not lose a home, a husband, or slaves, however, was the key to her dedication. Over the years, the idea has emerged that the white women of the South presented a united and loyal front against the Federals. “The cheerfulness with which they (wives, mothers, and daughters) submitted to every trial and the energy with which they provided for the welfare and comfort of the soldier, whether in the field or the hospital, cheered and sustained more than every other earthly consideration,” wrote one Natchez minister in his diary. Jefferson Davis himself spoke of the “loyalty and true-heartedness of the women of the land.” The state of Mississippi even placed a Lost Cause monument to women on the new capitol grounds in Jackson. Although some claim almost supernatural strength for Mississippi’s women during the Civil War, these preceding examples show that all women in Civil War Mississippi were neither so cheerful nor so loyal. While the vast majority were loyal, one writing in July 1865 that “now I can no more record hopes of our successful Independence,” the results of the war, the frightening episodes of the conflict, and the hardships endured by them and their families steadily ate away at the will of these women.51 But Mississippi’s women apparently separated their feelings of doom and defeat from their feelings of loyalty to their soldiers and hatred for the enemy. One woman, as the war ended in May 1865, wrote in her diary, “It has stopped; we are whipped, and I hate them more than ever, the black hearted Yankee

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villains.” Later, she wrote, “I hate them, I hate them, I love to write the words.” Another wrote: “Oh! How I wish this war was over! But I would rather die than submit to the Yankees.” For many of the state’s women, hatred of the enemy who would rule them tempered the desire for relief brought by the end of the war on any terms. It was a no-win situation.52 Of course, there were some women who fervently operated against the Confederacy. Spies were not unheard of, taking valuable information to the enemy, and sometimes they were caught. One Mississippi judge in the Delta wrote of women harboring deserters. “Nearly all the women are openly at work to weaken our army,” he wrote to Jefferson Davis. Later, he wrote Governor Clark how the women were trading with the enemy and driving down morale: “Our women are the chief instruments and agents in this business.” He went so far as to say, in regard to desertion, trading with the enemy, and disloyalty, “the women are far worse than the men & are responsible for most of it.”53 While white women garner most of the attention because few slave and free black women’s accounts exist, there is a healthy literature on the subject, which gives a detailed if generic look into Mississippi’s black women’s activities. Although African Americans in general have been examined earlier, the presence of tens of thousands of black women in the state must be noted, with some explanation as to their wartime exploits. Suffice it to say that black women’s lives were extremely difficult, with turmoil handed down from almost every direction. Slave men dominated that society, as men did in white households, and white men dominated both. Thus black women were often subjected to all kinds of inhumane treatment, with the breakup of their families and the unwanted sexual advances of masters perhaps forefront in their minds. Indeed, slave women faced all the same troubles as whites, with the lack of supplies, pillaging armies of both sides, hard male-oriented work, and difficult wartime situations affecting both black and white alike. But slave women faced an added degree of difficulty due to their bondage, having no freedom to respond to their troubles and actively seek solutions.54 Free black women in Mississippi were not much better off. Their minute numbers make sources equally unobtainable, but their experience almost fits the same pattern of slave women. Free black women were regarded as inferior, and were treated as such. Whites often looked at them as instigators of slave displeasure, and they were never allowed into the normal society. But they were free in at least some sense of the word.55 In examining the plight of Mississippi women during the war, it is easy to neglect the children of the state, who suffered just as much hardship, if not more, than the adults. In addition to the significant number of young boys who ran off to the army, the thousands of children who remained at home had

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difficult lives. Children could not always understand what was happening and were often frightened, causing more problems for mothers who had enough on their shoulders already. Such was the case even with little Annie, daughter of Governor Charles Clark. Her father was wounded twice and captured and imprisoned after the war. But smaller events caused her hardship as well, such as when Federal soldiers guarding the first family at the end of the war killed her pet squirrel, “Brownie.”56 Suffering was not limited to upper-class children. One poor Mississippian of Pontotoc County, Andrew Jackson Smith, years later remembered his fears as a child during the war. His first sight of Yankee soldiers was a little different than that which had been described by the female slave who tended to him and other children. The slave woman had described the Yankees as “horned monsters who spat fire as smoke billowed from their ears.” As it turns out, the woman would use the story of the phantom Yankees coming to get them as a threat to keep the children in line. She would also tell the children of the Yankees’ “habit of decapitating naughty children and hiding their heads where their owners could not find them.” With those thoughts in mind, one can only imagine the young lad’s sheer fright as the Federal soldiers moved toward his farm. But on this day the enemy had more to concern itself with than naughty children; the Confederates were engaging them in a running fight. “We could plainly hear the rat-a-tat-tat of the muskets,” Smith remembered, and he described how “when the firing ceased, the dead, the wounded, and the Yankee prisoners were brought back.” The enemy wounded were moved to the nearby Shady Grove Baptist Church, where bloodstains on the pews could be seen years afterward, and the Confederate wounded were brought to his house. “A carpenter’s bench in our back yard was used as an operating table,” he remembered. “I am sure that no anesthetics were used as the army surgeon, with an ordinary hand saw, amputated arms and legs.” One can likewise only imagine the nightmares the child had after watching such horror. “The ravings of these wounded soldiers rang in my ears as I lay in my little trundle bed that night,” he recalled.57 Not all children’s plight was so ghastly, but they all suffered in one form or another. Many children felt the real sorrow of losing a parent or siblings in the war. The lack of supplies and goods was also a major problem, not to mention the disruption of what schooling they received. One well-to-do Mississippi judge’s wife confided to her diary the disappointment of a meager Christmas as well as an absent father gone off to the war: “Ida is disappointed about St[.] Clause[.] Poor child, she misses her Pa.” A little girl of nine simply wrote of her father in her diary, “I have missed him very much since he went away.” Even small issues could cause a lot of heartache for children. When the enemy came

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to one Raymond girl’s home, the children hid under the bed. Spying a pair of feet, one Federal pulled the little girl out and declared that she “looked like his own little girl.” He then kissed her, which caused much embarrassment, as the other children never let the girl forget it.58 Lack of food was a major concern for growing children who needed nourishment. One Mississippi woman told the story of Sherman’s temporary occupation of College Hill, near Oxford. Mrs. Greenberry Bowles appealed to Sherman for protection for herself and her children when the general took her home as his headquarters. Sherman told them to barricade themselves in one room and not to come out; if they did so, he could not vouch for their safety as he would be gone much of the time. Mrs. Bowles loaded the room with beds, firewood, and what food she could, all under the watchful eye of Sherman, and then shut the door for good. Worrying about the dwindling food supply and the hungry mouths to feed, she was at first frightened when someone loosened a floor-board from below and stuck his hand through the floor. Her fright turned to relief when she realized it was “Pappy Dan,” one of the old slaves on her plantation. He told her he had managed to hide a cow in the Tallahatchie River swamps and had brought her milk for the children. He returned as often as he could with milk and food, and at one point “thrust the carcass of an ancient and emaciated rooster through the hole with apologies because that was all he could find.” The woman and children “day by day . . . approached him [the rooster] with mingled hope and fear—hope that they’d get through eating him this time and fear that when they did, they’d have nothing at all.”59 There was also concern that children might give away secrets, such as the case of young Minnue Hurlbut of Meridian. She awoke one night to find soldiers moving goods and supplies from her father’s store, one floor below, through her room and into the attic above. This was, of course, in preparation for Sherman’s arrival in Meridian in 1864. The next morning, she inquired as to what had happened the night before. Fearful that she would let the hiding place slip to the enemy, she was told it was all a dream.60 The children were sometimes innocent victims of the war. In Vicksburg, the bombardment terribly frightened the children. Young Lida Lord, daughter of the Christ Church minister William Lord, huddled in the basement of the church with her family. Her mother attempted to reassure the child by telling her “God will protect us,” to which little Lida responded, “But momma, I’s so ’fraid God’s killed too!” Unfortunately, Mary Loughborough told of the deaths of children resulting from the action. “A little negro child, playing in the yard, had found a shell,” she wrote. “In rolling and turning it, [the child] had innocently pounded the fuse; the terrible explosion followed, showing as the white

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cloud of smoke floated away, the mangled remains of a life that to the mother’s heart had possessed all of beauty and joy.” She also told of a young girl, [who] becoming weary in the confinement of the cave, hastily ran to the house in the interval that elapsed between the slowly falling shells. On returning, an explosion sounded near her—one wild scream, and she ran into her mother’s presence, sinking like a wounded dove, the life blood flowing over the light summer dress in crimson ripples from a death-wound in her side, caused by the shell fragment. A fragment had also struck and broken the arm of a little boy playing near the mouth of his mother’s cave. This was one day’s account. I told of my little girl’s great distress when the shells fell thickly near us—how she ran to me breathless, hiding her head in my dress without a word; then cautiously looking out, with her anxious face questioning, would say: “Oh! mamma, was it a mortar tell?” Poor children, that their little hearts should suffer and quail amid these daily horrors of war! On a positive note, there were actually reports of two different children being born in the caves, one named William Siege Green.61 Despite the problems, Mississippi children still were able to play and have fun, as all children do. A few even profited somewhat from the times. One Confederate soldier stationed in Corinth wrote of that city’s children’s ingenuity: “The little boys and girls of the neighborhood bring in sweet cakes and lemonade every day and sell them to us.” A woman of Natchez wrote of a wrecked Union gunboat in the river, reporting that “there was a good many valuable articles taken off it by little boys.”62 Still, a war environment was not the best of times for children to develop. One Mississippian, writing years later, perhaps summed up all children’s memories of the war. “Like many others throughout the country,” she wrote, “we often suffered for food being forced by dire necessity to draw rations from the enemy to keep our bodies alive. Negroes, household furniture, provisions, everything was gone, and we were reduced from a state of affluence to that of abject poverty.” She further related, “I was only a young girl, but remember how sorrowful my mother used to look and how often she regretted that she had not fired the old homestead and left before Grant’s army reached us.” “To me,” she noted, “those days seem like a black dream in the far past.”63 The cumulative result of four long years of war was a nightmarish existence for almost all women and children in Mississippi. There were no doubt some who benefited from the war or were little touched by it, but the vast majority

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of women and children in Mississippi were affected at least partially by the problems the war brought. Lack of food and goods, plunder by the enemy, loss of home and possessions, and most especially the loss of family members to the war were all major issues that faced Mississippi’s women and children. As might be expected, such suffering and loss had a huge effect on their views of the war. While some remained steadfast to the end, many were so affected by the events of the war that they began to think less of the Confederacy and more of their own well-being. The result was a loss of will among many Mississippians. It is significant to examine at what point that decline of will among women occurred. Although some people showed a lack of confidence early in the war, it was primarily not until the war actually affected these women’s own regions that they began to despair. When the Yankees finally came to their capital, farms, towns, and plantations, they knew there was little the government could do to protect them. And the large and destructive invasions into Mississippi, in late 1862 and growing in 1863, with all too frequent reoccurrence throughout the war, touched these women and children personally. Thus, in a larger statewide context, the summer of 1863 is seen as the primary time when women began to lose their will. “Truly this is a day of darkness for our nation,” wrote one Bigbee Bottom woman whose husband was away working in the arsenal at Selma, Alabama, in May 1863, “but let us hope that it is soon to pass; the darkest hour is just before day; it has been said.” Another wrote in July 1863, “I felt as though it was all up with us,” and she later commented, “I felt as if our Country had cast us off.”64 Although Mississippi women’s will was not yet totally gone, the fall of Jackson and the loss of Vicksburg played heavily upon their minds. But it was more likely the individual instances of Federal soldiers on their doorsteps during Grant’s campaign for Jackson and Vicksburg in 1863 that had the greatest effect.

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“Our Poor Country Is Getting into a Deplorable Condition” During the time noted English military officer Arthur Fremantle traveled through Mississippi in May 1863, he was inadvertently, and only tangentially, witness to some of the great events of the war. Grant had just marched inland and taken Jackson while on the way ultimately to Vicksburg. Fremantle met William Loring’s wayward division on the march, as well as the retreat-minded Joseph E. Johnston. He even spent some time in what was left of the state capital at Jackson. In such a setting, it did not take Fremantle long to form an opinion of Mississippians. After witnessing an event in which a soldier brought in a prisoner and confessed that “he surrendered so quick, I couldn’t kill him,” Fremantle commented on the mindset of what he called “these wild Mississippians.”1 Certainly, Fremantle caught the citizens of the state at a bad time, and perhaps judged them on only a small sample. To be sure, Mississippi had been a state for some forty-five years by that time and before the war boasted some of the most affluent people in the nation. It has often been said there were more millionaires around Natchez in 1860 than in all the United States combined. Certainly, there was culture and affluence on the large plantations during antebellum times; there were also libraries, newspapers, universities, theaters, churches, and other institutions of refined living throughout the state. But just about all that culture was shattered during the war as almost every shred of Mississippi’s society was altered. During the Civil War, the state’s religious, literary, and educational institutions were generally ruined. Much of the state’s cultural life faced utter destruction as a result of the political, military, and economic problems of war, forcing citizens to revert almost to frontier times to survive. In actuality, Fremantle’s comments were not far off for the times in which they were made: at the height of the state’s crisis when its very capital had fallen, Mississippians were indeed wild with humiliation, disgust, and distress.

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Unlike the topics of Unionism, women, and African Americans, historians have deeply examined Mississippi’s wartime cultural and social institutions. Religion has always been a popular topic of study, and many sources deal with the state’s spiritual activities during the war. Education has also received a lot of attention, as have newspapers and other literary efforts, presumably the result of the early historical profession’s fixation on top-down history, in which religious, educational, and literary figures played prominent roles in the politics of the period. For example, John K. Bettersworth, in Confederate Mississippi, spent only a minute portion of time on blacks and women, and only a little more on Unionism, but he delegated several chapters to the religious, educational, and literary interests of the state during the Civil War.2 It is beneficial to examine these areas again, however, perhaps from a more bottom-up approach. In doing so, it becomes readily apparent that the state’s cultural institutions followed the same pattern already developed throughout this book. These cultural bodies were literally dismantled and halted during the war, not on purpose, but as a result of other intentions. Still, their destruction was just as real as the economic and political dismantling, and it took as long, or in some cases longer, to repair the damage done. Indeed, Mississippi would remain a wild and almost frontier state full of lawlessness and disorder for many years. It would take decades for its intellectual life to catch up to where it had been prior to the war. The war drastically affected Mississippi’s religious life. In 1860 the state had a thriving religious following with everything from large congregations in beautiful houses of worship in the larger cities to tiny log cabin churches in more rural areas. Thousands of Mississippians flocked to their local meetinghouses on Sunday mornings and for midweek prayer services. The 1860 census recorded some 1,441 churches in the state with nearly 450,000 members. By far, most of these were Baptist and Methodist, with a smaller number of Presbyterian churches. Only a very small number of Episcopal, Lutheran, and Catholic churches existed. Adding to those 1860 numbers, Bettersworth has argued, “the first two years of the war were in some respects a period of spiritual growth in the churches.” Then, like everything else in the state, Mississippi’s religious institutions began to fall apart in 1863.3 These churches were primarily proslavery, pro-Southern, and, once the war erupted, pro-Confederate. The largest denominations in the state, the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, had split over the issue of slavery. Thus these Southern-leaning churches could be counted on to support slavery, states’ rights, and the Confederacy. But once the state’s religious institutions sided with the Confederacy and dove into the war, the results were not good for organized religious life in Mississippi. Although not a target of the Federal

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armies, churches were nevertheless drastically affected as a by-product of the fighting. These effects ranged from churches giving their bells to be fashioned into cannons to some churches being totally destroyed. Mississippi’s organized religious life would be all but dismantled during the war, with individual churches, pastors, and members making do as best they could amid the hard times.4 The majority of Mississippi’s ministers were supportive of the Confederacy, but plied their calling amid increasingly hard war times. Most were blunt as to the war’s causes and what the people should be doing, and they faithfully served the people of the state, many without regard to their own fortunes or ease. Some were circuit preachers, which meant they had to do a lot of traveling within dangerous territories. In order to allow them to ply their avocation, most ministers were exempt from military duty, although sometimes it was not an easy exemption. Rev. George A. Smythe, for example, was exempted by the governor after being erroneously placed on the “Military Roll.” He requested an exemption because he was “a minister of the Gospel,” which finally came through. G. W. Bachman remembered that “many efforts were made to induce me to leave my work and go into the army, but all in vain; for though after the war commenced my sympathies were all in favor of the South, yet I did not think it doing right to give up the work of the ministry for that of a soldier.” He went on to add, “Many ministers of the gospel left their pulpits and people and bore arms in defense of their country, but with all due deference to them and feelings of patriotism that moved them to act, I here record my opinion against it, believing as I do that it is inconsistent with our high and holy calling and that God does not approve of such conduct of his Ministers.” Many clergymen did not agree, however, and willingly entered the army, serving as chaplains in the various Mississippi regiments all across the South. Most chaplains came from the younger preachers, leaving the older clergy to minister at home.5 The experiences of the state’s ministers varied with the church or position they held. Rev. M. J. Blackwell of Pontotoc ministered through the various and frequent enemy raids in his area. Although desiring peace, he never gave up his ministering to the broken people. “Our poor country is getting into a deplorable condition,” he wrote his brother. “We now have to do what ought to have been done three or four months ago, and our past apathy won’t be repaired by three years effort and effusion of blood and treasure.” He went on to say, “I have been preaching for almost twenty years past that these times of trouble were near at hand and I thought they would come on about from 1859 to 1862 and yet strange to say I don’t feel fully prepared to endure the fiery trial.”6 Mississippi’s Episcopal bishop, Rev. William Mercer Green, traveled the state throughout the war. In November 1861 he moved through the eastern

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part of the state for three months, preaching in Corinth, Okolona, DeKalb, and Noxubee. Later in the war he made other trips, although Union invasion often delayed or rerouted his itinerary. Living as he did in Jackson, he was also affected by the capture of that city in May 1863. “My thresholds, it is true,” he wrote, “were spared the stain of blood; but theft and ravage, and wanton destruction marked every room in the house and every article on the premises. . . . May God forgive them for all the evil they did during the two memorable days which they spent amongst us.” When the Yankees returned in July, Green took his family to Alabama, but returned to his ministry shortly thereafter, preaching in numerous places, including the “Senate Chamber of the Capitol, which had been kindly allowed for the use of the congregation since their Church was destroyed by the enemy.”7 Bishop Green also dealt with the Federals in several cases. Sherman’s campaign in 1864 delayed him near Meridian, and he “deemed it prudent, therefore, to return home, and wait a more auspicious moment for resuming my visitation.” He was more disposed to dealing with garrisoning rather than campaigning Federals. The bishop entered Union lines and ministered at both Vicksburg and Natchez during the latter half of the war. He found the Federal officers very receptive to his caring for his people.8 A young Methodist minister, G. W. Bachman, had a similar war experience. He was an avid Southerner, although he was less enthusiastic about fighting the war than some others. “I fear they have acted too hastily,” he wrote soon after secession. He also wrote, “There is so much excitement that I cannot confine myself to my studies as I wish to do.” Despite the excitement that turned to horror as the state was invaded, Bachman remained on his circuit route until his horse died while he was in the Delta. “Being left afoot and the water rising so high,” he said, the young minister remained where he was and opened a small school. A while later, Bachman remembered, “the school was broken up” by a Federal raid. He later opened another school, having, as he said, “to preach only on Saturdays and Sundays and owing to the war there being no chance to procure school teachers.”9 Not all of Mississippi’s ministers were loyal to the Confederacy, and most who were not paid dearly for their Unionism. Bettersworth has concluded that most Unionist ministers came from the Presbyterian denomination, which did not split like the Baptists and Methodists until well into the war. The ordeal of Presbyterian James Lyon of Columbus has already been noted, but he was only one of several who preached against the war and the Confederacy. John H. Aughey was a minister in Choctaw and Attala counties, near French Camp. He seemed to revel in his Unionism, and as a result was captured and imprisoned by the Confederates. Aughey escaped and made his way into Union lines, where

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he penned an account of his ”suffering intensely from maladies induced by the rigours of the Iron Furnace of Secession, whose sevenfold heat is reserved for the loyal citizens of the South.” Confederate authorities imprisoned at least one minister early in the war for failing “to pray for the President of the Confederate States,” and one minister paid for his Unionism with his life. James Pelan of Aberdeen was shot and left to die because he had preached what was considered anti-Confederate messages. He was on the way to recovery when his assailants returned and finished him off.10 Conversely, late in the war the Federals expelled several Confederate ministers from Union-occupied Vicksburg and Natchez. After an order from Union officers that prayers for Abraham Lincoln were required in all churches, several ministers and congregants refused to do so and were sent away. Such an uproar occurred, however, that the Federal commanders soon revoked the orders.11 Many ministers on both sides cared for and ministered to the slave population as well as to the whites. Horace S. Fulkerson has written, “none of these denominations neglected the religious instruction of the colored people.” Bishop Green frequently baptized black as well as white converts, and sometimes preached to slaves on various plantations. He cared deeply about the slaves’ plight, within the context of slavery, writing in his journal, “Would to God that more of their masters and mistresses, amongst us would thus prove to the world that they owe a higher duty to their slaves than that of merely providing for their bodily wants. In the eye of God, the relation of master and servant comes next, in its awful responsibilities, to that of parent and child.” G. W. Bachman also reported preaching to blacks.12 Most Mississippi ministers’ concern for the spiritual welfare of blacks went only so far, however, and certainly did not extend to the point that they supported freeing the slaves. In fact, religion and religious leaders played a major role in the defense of slavery in the years before the war and during the conflict. Some Mississippi ministers, including Rev. James Smylie, who produced proslavery religious pamphlets on the subject, seem to have led in the early years of the proslavery movement when abolitionism began to take hold in the North. Most ministers used biblical texts as a defense of slavery, including the famous “curse of Ham” and the Apostle Paul’s letters, most notably the one to Philemon.13 The people of Mississippi themselves were overwhelmingly religious and were perhaps made even more so by the problems confronting them in wartime. One Mississippian spoke of “a bright sabbath morning. Once more gladdened by the sound of church bells.” Another went so far as to send Jefferson Davis a Bible. As times got worse, their religious fervor increased, as attested to in diary after diary and numerous letters. “I have been attending protracted

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meetings for the past twenty three or four days,” wrote one Mississippi woman in 1863. “The first meeting was a very fine one. It terminated in 33 conversions & 24 accessions to the church.” The Vicksburg Daily Whig printed a notice that “Providence permitting, there will be religious services in the Baptist Church for the soldiers every day this week.”14 Despite the religious fervor, some Mississippians could find little room in their hearts to forgive the enemy for what was happening. A Natchez woman who lost two brothers in the war admitted, “How can I ever love the Yankees as brothers when they made these deep and everlasting wounds in my heart?” She went on to say: “It is not Christian to have such a heart and yet I cannot teach my rebellious heart to be still and know it is God. I shall pray to be more like Christ to forgive as I wish to be forgiven.” Another woman, in describing a recent Yankee raid, wrote from New Albany that she would like to partake in a revival, “but I am afraid if I am aggravated much more as I have been lately, that I will become such a sinner that there will not be much chance for me to be saved.” Another wrote of Federal soldiers attending their church: “The Yankees come to our church in crowds and are by degrees filling the pews up with their hateful blue coats where ‘our grey’ last sat and listened with swelling hearts to the word of God. I cannot bear to be nearer than three or four pews. They are such dirty creatures.”15 Many Mississippians came to the conclusion that the misfortune they were facing was punishment from God. A church in College Hill put in its minutes “a mere outline of the heavy calamity which God in his providence has seen fit to inflict upon our community.” One Natchez woman recorded in her diary: “This was the day appointed by our President for fasting and prayer. We went to Church in the morning, and Mr. Stratton gave us a good sermon & told us that we were as much to blame as the North, in breaking up such a great country as the U.S. was, and that we were now being punished for it, but we must not give up, but pray earnestly, for peace, and for God to be with us in our struggle.” A pastor in Pontotoc wrote, “I greatly need divine grace to bear with meek submission the awful chastisements the Almighty is bringing upon us and on the world.”16 With the war causing so many problems, many Mississippians had only religion in which to place their hope. One pastor wrote, “since the fall of Vicksburg I suppose we may look for the whole state to be overrun,” and admitted, “we are all involved in gloom and trouble.” Suffering as they were, many Mississippians could only wish for the future in heaven. “I hope we will all meet some day where there is no war,” wrote Rachel Bell, “where it will be one continual lifetime of peace and happiness, where there will [be no] more weeping wives and Mothers on account of absent friends.” Another hoped for “God’s

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exceeding mercy for which we have had to thank Him so often before.” In pondering the fate of Vicksburg, a Natchez woman wrote, “And if this our glorious little city does fall have we not Hope still left us in the goodness of God and we all believe He is for us.” A Mississippi pastor commented, “Oh that we may all meet in that blessed blissful heaven whose lovely coasts the storm of war can never reach.” He admitted: “I had hoped that I would be quietly sleeping in the grave while its dark dark night was lowering its shadows upon our world, but here I am to share in its scenes and afflictions. Well I desire to do and suffer all the will of God. He knows what is best for us, and He can and will provide for those who trust in him.”17 Tapping into that religious faith amid obviously waning confidence, the Confederate and state governments used religion as a tool both to seek the mercy of the Almighty and to solidify the will of the people at home. Numerous prayer and fast days were proclaimed by Jefferson Davis and governors Pettus and Clark, their frequency increasing as the war turned worse for the South. “Tomorrow is Fast Day,” one woman wrote in her diary. “I am resolved not to eat a bite all day, for I think our country is in such a condition that she needs fast.” A Methodist minister reported in his diary, “This day being set apart by President Davis for fasting and prayer, I held service at Sardis.” Some Mississippians, while not losing faith in prayer and fasting, nevertheless lost faith in their leaders to the point that they wondered if even God could save the Confederacy. “I have no objection to meeting and praying,” chafed one Attala County resident. “That’s all right enough. But I don’t intend to fast and pray just because Jeff Davis tells me to do so. When they were instigating this war, they didn’t call on the Churches to pray them into it; and now they needn’t call on them to pray ’em out of it. I don’t owe allegiance to Jeff Davis nor Abe Lincoln.” Another was even more blunt, writing: “Another one of Jeff Davis’ fast days. I really don’t know whether to fast or not. Jeff has been doing so badly lately, giving up Mississippi.” He continued: “I do not know much about it, but it looks strange that he should at every stronghold we have endeavored to keep he puts a Yankee born man at the post, Lovell at New Orleans, it fell either through his treachery or cowardice, Pemberton at Vicksburg, all the soldiers clamored for another leader, and Pemberton sold Vicksburg.—Now he has Ripley at Charleston, and Mercer at Savannah. I wonder what Yankee he will find to put at Mobile.”18 Despite the vocal appeal to religion throughout the state, normal sins and crimes were reported throughout Mississippi during the war. Normal wartime vices existed, and were exacerbated by the magnitude of the problems facing the state. Many tried to make a dollar by swindling anyone they could. Often, the helpless women, children, and elderly of the state were victims. Vices such

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as prostitution and drunkenness were common among the armies. To be sure, wartime Mississippi was a religious place, but as with any area in any time of history, there were those who drifted to the seedy side of life.19 While the war hampered the state’s religious institutions, they nevertheless continued to function. One pastor reported a Methodist conference of ministers had “not much more than one third of the preachers present.” He also observed, “Owing to the paucity of inhabitants and the frequent raids of Federal soldiers the congregations were usually small; indeed most of the people preached to were negroes.” Horace S. Fulkerson noted, “Church buildings were sadly neglected, and in some instances their bells were given to be melted up into cannon material and molded into war missiles. This was an excessive patriotism, if not a downright profanation of the house of God.” Religion in Mississippi still survived, however, despite the many destroyed churches, numerous pastors and members of congregations marching off to war, and invading armies disrupting normal religious rituals and activities. One historian of the home front has written, “these enterprises were more or less crippled during the war, but were not wholly discontinued.” The church’s endurance is mostly credited to the deep reliance of the people on God, especially in the darkest times when little else could be depended on, the historic strength of the church in the state, and the ability to continue amid alterations and disruptions. Such institutions are hard to break down totally.20 The state’s educational institutions did not fare as well. Unlike religion, which could be practiced with or without a preacher and was a staple of Mississippians’ efforts to just survive the war, education had more taxing requirements, such as the need for a literate teacher who could spend hours instructing students. Education also had less appeal to downtrodden citizens who just needed to make it through the war alive. As a result, while Mississippians clung to religion as one of their last hopes, education was primarily, yet erroneously, seen as something that could be postponed and picked up later when circumstances improved. The operational antebellum Mississippi educational system was by 1865 in shambles, with no consistency whatsoever. What instruction that was given was haphazard at best and governed on a more local than regional level.21 The state began the war with a functioning educational system, both in higher education and among the common schools. The 1860 census credited Mississippi with 1,116 common schools, in which 1,215 teachers taught some 30,970 pupils. The census also broke the schools down into academies, or high schools, of which there were 169 with 430 teachers and 7,974 students. In addition, there were thirteen colleges with fifty faculty members and 856 students. In all, the state was credited with 66,522 white citizens who attended school in

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that year, as opposed to only two free blacks. Certainly, education in Mississippi was a white institution.22 Those schools were not all the same, even before the war, and varied greatly in quality and quantity. Larger colleges and universities were fairly professional, and cities and towns had school systems, but the rural areas were more autonomous. One Mississippian, in fact, remembered the common schools had “only a fitful existence.” An early historian of Mississippi education has remarked that the common schools of the time were “crippled . . . by the want of a uniform and vigorous policy.” Often, plantation owners would band together to hire a teacher for their children, who met in a centralized area. In the poorer regions, local schools were haphazard at best, but any education provided the children was better than none at all. One historian of the common schools has argued that they were primarily “democratic,” which meant they were locally established and operated, with very little central governance from the state or even county.23 One Greenville girl left a vivid description of her plantation school, which she termed “Butterbean Academy.” There, Georgia Richardson taught the local plantation children subjects such as rhetoric, poetry, science, history, and music. The students attended class from eight to noon and two to four to allow them to go home for lunch. When the weather or any other emergency, such as war, demanded it, these hours were changed. In this one class were nine children ranging in ages from seven to sixteen. The children were required to write compositions as well as memorize poetry along with their other class work.24 Such a school was the exception rather than the rule during the war, however. One Mississippian commented that the “pay in produce or Confederate money commanded only fitful service, and the educable pupils, not in the army, were needed to work.” Another noted, “The school-master was abroad in the land, but not much. The schools were but poorly attended, as the children of school age, owing to the absence from home and presence in the army of the fathers and older sons, were much needed at home. When there were not old men or preachers to fill the position of teacher, it was frequently filled by females, when filled at all.” Sometimes, mothers had no recourse but to teach on their own. Sarah Poates, who fortunately was a teacher by trade and had come to Mississippi for that very purpose, began to teach her children when their teacher quit. In one diary entry, she placed her teaching duties in the context of her motherly activities as well: “I spent the time as I usually do, dusting, sewing, nursing and teaching.”25 As would be expected, students liked the hit-and-miss nature of the schools, except when they had to miss classes to work on their parents’ farms. Children, as always, griped at so much schoolwork, and often underperformed. One little

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girl wrote in her diary, “We went in school this morning but did not say all our lessons.” She also complained that her teacher was too hard on the students and never gave them a break. “We went in school today and always do,” she wrote in her diary, “for Miss Lizzie never does give holiday and when she was sick and when everyone told her that she ought not do it she taught school.” Unfortunately, the lack of solid educational activities put the state at a disadvantage. One historian has argued that the high illiteracy rates of the 1870 and 1880 censuses were the direct result of four lost years of education; “the growth of illiteracy at the South during these four years was enormous,” he wrote.26 The state of education in Mississippi became so serious that the government sought ways to repair the situation. The idea began as a means to provide for the relief of deceased soldiers’ children. In 1864 a committee was appointed “to examine and report upon the proper localities, plans of buildings, and systems for the government and support of the schools.” Unfortunately, Governor Clark could not see how the financially strapped state could do it and asked for the support of the churches, noting that “the clergy of several of the Christian churches have [already] entered into this work.” The idea soon expanded to aid children of all soldiers, and Governor Clark admitted that the money would have to be raised by “donations and subscriptions of money and property.” By the spring of 1865, however, the state had fallen apart on every level, and nothing ever came of the effort.27 Higher education was just as devastated as the common schools. Of the few colleges and universities in the state, most shut their doors during the conflict, including Jefferson College, Madison College, and the University of Mississippi. Often, whole companies of students, such as the “University Greys” at the University of Mississippi and the “Mississippi College Rifles” at Mississippi College, went en masse to the war. Invading armies also scattered remaining students and faculty. Such was the case when Federal armies arrived in Oxford and used the buildings of the state university there as hospitals. The campuses of Mississippi College and the Central Female Institute in Clinton were guarded by the Federals, although Mississippi College was also used as a hospital. The female institute astonishingly remained open throughout the war. The Federals destroyed the entire campus of the Holly Springs Female Institute, however.28 The University of Mississippi was hit especially hard by the war. After participating in the excitement of mobilization, in which it sent a company of troops and held a “concert for the benefit of the ‘University Greys,’” its fortunes soon changed. After Shiloh, wounded inundated the buildings. In December 1862 Grant’s army also invaded, and some damage was done before Federal officers placed guards to keep the grounds safe. The faculty was also disrupted. Geology professor Eugene W. Hilgard was tapped to work on the state’s niter

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and mining work, and mathematics professor Burton N. Harrison went to serve as Jefferson Davis’s secretary in Richmond. Perhaps the biggest obstacle the university faced was the resignation of its chancellor, Frederick A. P. Barnard. Although mostly keeping quiet, Barnard was a Unionist and made quick plans to leave the South. One of the trustees, former interior secretary Jacob Thompson, tried to talk him out of it, saying, “I as one of the Trustees would not consent to see you lay down the Chancellorship of the college.” Barnard was convinced, however, and left the state, ultimately obtaining military passes to move through the lines to the North. There, he became head of what is now Columbia University in New York City.29 Horace S. Fulkerson has summed up the results of the lack of education in Mississippi during the war. “This enforced neglect of regular systematic education for the four years of the war,” he wrote, “was felt as a great deprivation and gave to the country many sons and daughters who lacked this fitness for the duties of life; and the poverty of the people at the close of the war was such that the lost time could not be made up for, where there was a disposition to do it.” Although not an aim of the Federals as they invaded the state, this by-product of war would have a lasting effect on the people of Mississippi.30 The state’s newspapers were also disrupted during the war. In 1860 Mississippi had five daily newspapers, one biweekly, two triweekly, and sixty-five weekly papers. By 1864, the industry had been, in the words of Bettersworth, “practically wrecked,” there being a mere eight papers in the unoccupied portion of the state at that time. Many problems led to this decline, including the removal of editors, typesetters, and press workers to the army. Horace S. Fulkerson has written that the greatest problem facing newspapers during the war was “a supply of material.” It is well known that the Vicksburg Daily Citizen was printed during the siege on wallpaper. Wrapping paper was also used, although Fulkerson noted that “the destitution was not great enough to drive any of them back to the use of the vellum and papyrus of the ancients.”31 Of those newspapers that remained in print, some were small-town affairs that held little influence. Others were major political organs that made broad statements that swayed the population, with the Natchez Courier and Jackson Daily Mississippian being particularly antiadministration, whether it be Pettus or Davis. Governor Pettus complained that many of his military efforts had “been much embarrassed by the opposition of a part of the press of the State opposing the enforcement of the militia law passed at the last session of the Legislature.” By 1864, the Jackson Daily Mississippian was calling for peace on any honorable terms.32 The major newspapers were, not surprisingly, located in the larger cities such as Jackson, Vicksburg, and Natchez, although the secessionist papers in

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the ultimately occupied areas either went under or were changed to Unionist operations. The Natchez Free Trader, Natchez Courier, and Vicksburg Whig were examples. Stalwart papers of the state were the Canton Citizen, Meridian Clarion, and Jackson Mississippian, the last of which was the state printer until forced to move out of state, with the fall of Jackson in 1863, to Selma, Alabama. Its office was “gutted, the presses being broken to pieces and the type thrown into the street.” Nevertheless, the paper returned to Jackson late in the war amid a general revival of the newspaper industry in the state. The Memphis Appeal was also printed in Mississippi after Memphis fell in June 1862; Bettersworth has written that it “wandered over Mississippi, arriving in Jackson in time to be dislodged in May, 1863, by Grant’s army.” By all accounts, the state’s newspaper industry’s lowest ebb was in 1863.33 Despite Fremantle’s assertion of Mississippians being wild, with the implication that there was little culture among them, the state had fostered a sizable cultural experience prior to the war. Although having nothing like that of the refined cities of the East, Mississippi did have its share of libraries, theater, music, and other forms of entertainment and growth. Yet as with almost every other area, these cultural efforts were severely hampered during the war. In fact, these amenities were often the first to go.34 The 1860 census listed some 178,745 volumes in the state, the vast majority in the public libraries. Others were housed in college, Sunday school, and church libraries. The state’s citizens were mostly literate, with only 15,636 illiterate whites and free blacks over the age of twenty out of a population of about 355,000. This was less than a 5 percent illiteracy rate. Of course, children under the age of twenty were still involved in their education, and the illiteracy rate among them was no doubt higher. And the illiteracy rate among slaves was massive. Still, the mostly literate white Mississippi population left a wealth of information for historians in the form of letters, the main communication tool of the day.35 In addition to the state library, many plantations had large libraries, although some were destroyed during the war. In a dichotomy of irony, Mississippians’ use of libraries dwindled as they were destroyed or ravaged, while their use of letters probably increased due to the need to spread news or hear from family and friends who may have been touched adversely by the war. Those private libraries that were not damaged provided endless hours of reading for Mississippians, many of whom reported in their letters and diaries what they were reading. The mention of works by William Shakespeare, James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott, and John Bunyan illustrates the depth of Mississippians’ reading.36

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The state’s literary publishing activities were also severely curtailed during the war. Historian Charles F. Heatman has compiled a listing of Mississippi copyright entries for the time period of 1850 to 1870, during which the number of wartime publications was extremely small compared to the nonwar years. At first glance, this would seem to result from the fact that the seceded state no longer worked with the U.S. government copyright office, but the U.S. office took over and accepted all Confederate copyrights issued during the war, so the proportion is presumably correct.37 Most of the titles copyrighted during the Civil War, not surprisingly, were slavery or war related. H. C. Clarke seemed to be the most productive, issuing three volumes: Diary of War for Separation, The Southern Song Book, and The Confederate States Almanac. S. R. Ford published Trials and Triumph on the Dark and Bloody Ground, and A. O. P. Nicholson put out Appendix to the Confederate States Almanac. William B. Trotter wrote A History and Defense of African Slavery.38 There were other cultural disruptions caused by the war. One Raymond child remembered the circus coming to town regularly before the war, but few people had the time, money, or inclination for such frivolity during the conflict. The theater also was a major component of society in Jackson, Natchez, and other cities before the war, but little was heard of its existence outside the stable Union-occupied areas during the conflict. There was even a lyceum movement before the war, but it apparently was discarded in wartime as well. Secession even hindered scientific research at the state university. F. A. P. Barnard was set to receive a giant telescope for the new observatory from a New York company. When war came, this shipment was canceled. Festivals remained a common practice among Mississippians during the war, however.39 Music, like religion, could be employed no matter how large or how small a group was, and could be enjoyed even without someone who could play an instrument. Bettersworth has surmised that “life in the 1860’s was practically lived to music.” Thus music survived during the war better than most cultural activities. Many schools, even those whose existence was threatened, taught music to the students. Music was also central to the slave culture in the state and would follow blacks into freedom. Perhaps the most famous musical development during the war was the debut of the song “The Bonnie Blue Flag” in Jackson on the occasion of the state’s secession in January 1861.40 The visual arts were also a part of every Mississippian’s life during the war, although few native Mississippians were leaders in this area. Many sanctioned as well as independent artists roamed the state, mostly with the armies, and produced vivid renderings of camp life and battles. Newspapers across the state

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as well as the nation carried these Mississippi scenes, with publications such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper winning readers in large part because of their art. Some of the most famous scenes of the war were thus depicted, including camp life at Corinth and the assaults on Vicksburg. Famous artists such as Alfred R. Waud, Conrad W. Chapman, and Theodore R. Davis produced these scenes, but, unfortunately, according to the modern authority on Mississippi art, no native Mississippians made any spectacular artistic contributions during the war.41 The new art of photography also enabled Mississippians to see vivid images of the war as well as distribute images of the state and actions therein around the nation. Some of the most famous photographs of the war were taken in Mississippi, including the Vicksburg courthouse from the Mississippi River, a Mississippi regiment’s encampment before Shiloh, Jefferson Davis’s plantation house, and the dead from the Battle of Corinth. By far, most photographers were Northerners who accompanied the various Federal armies, but at least one Mississippian has been recognized: Natchez photographer Henry D. Gurney. Perhaps the most extensive use of photography in Mississippi was among individual soldiers who rushed off to the photographer even as they rushed off to war. Some of the most poignant views from the war are of the individual soldiers who stopped long enough to have their likenesses recorded for history.42 The arts of sculpture and painting were less evident in Civil War Mississippi, although there is some evidence that work of this nature did exist. A Vicksburg sculptor was apparently in the process of carving a shaft monument to Mississippi’s Mexican War soldiers during the war. With the capture of Vicksburg, Federal solders took the shaft and reworked it into a monument marking the Vicksburg surrender interview site between Grant and Pemberton on July 3, 1863. The soldiers placed the monument on the battlefield, making it one of the first Civil War monuments to go up anywhere. Although replaced by a different memorial, the shaft is still in existence today in the Visitor Center of the Vicksburg National Military Park. The only major wartime Mississippi sculptor to be identified is Jacob Faser, who served variously in the army, in arsenals, and in his private silversmith shop in Macon. Faser turned out intricate swords and other weapons, including a pair of dueling pistols for Jefferson Davis.43 Additions to Mississippi’s wealth of architecture ceased during the war years. In fact, the opposite was true, in that much destruction took place as the state became a vast battleground. With such destruction, economic problems, and interest in other areas, little building took place. Fortunately, many of Mississippi’s grand architectural treasures survived the war, such as the mansions

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of Natchez, the Vicksburg courthouse, and the state capitol and governor’s mansion in Jackson.44 In terms of entertainment, the cities, not surprisingly, were centers, with Natchez and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River offering just about any type of entertainment or society wished for, good or bad. Some inland cities had cultural attractions as well. Jackson, the state capital, contained several hotels, the largest of which was the Bowman House, a four-story brick building that housed many of the delegates to the secession convention and then many other leaders and politicians throughout the first years of the war. The hotel burned in June 1863, however. The city also had many restaurants, as well as the mineral springs resort. Schools, libraries, and newspapers were also abundant in the city, as were such activities as the theater, a coronet band, and a philharmonic society. Much of this culture was dismantled as members went off to war, as Federal armies invaded, and as the people were driven to destitution.45 As in almost all cases concerning Mississippi’s home front during the Civil War, the state’s cultural institutions were violently disrupted, not intentionally, but as a by-product of the war itself and Federal invasions. Religious institutions, educational efforts, literary and press establishments, and any cultural edifices the state had were, by the end of the war, broken if not destroyed. Many institutions functioned at a much lesser rate, but still fortunately formed the core of a rebuilding effort after the war. During the period from 1861 to 1865, however, there was little culture to be had in Mississippi. But then the state’s citizens were not much concerned with theater, literature, or even education; they just wanted to survive.

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CONCLUSION When the Civil War ended, Mississippi was a defeated, broken, and traumatized state. Little of its prewar culture and society remained, especially concerning slavery and states’ rights. But the changes that were wrought during the war went deeper than just those two major issues. The war affected every single Mississippian to some degree, and most in major ways. Citizens who lived in occupied or fought-over areas were fortunate to be alive and have any possessions left. Those who lived in less conflicted zones were nevertheless hurt by the terrible economy and lack of supplies. A large majority of the state’s citizens had loved ones in the war, and many of them did not return or were disabled by wounds or diseases. The defeat came from both outward and inward forces. The Federal war machine ripped the state apart, invading, capturing the capital, and putting the state government on the run. On smaller scales, Federal invasions also hampered county political organizations. By the end of the war, the state’s governor was in captivity, the state legislature was disrupted, and the judicial system was almost nonfunctioning. The state’s agencies nearly ceased to exist. The same was true for the state’s military capability. Originally sending some seventy-eight thousand men to the Confederate and state service, by the end of the war these regiments and batteries were literally shot to pieces, with miniscule numbers of men remaining in the regiments once numbering hundreds of soldiers. So few men were present that, often, regiments had to consolidate just to keep an effective organization. Numbers were low due to deaths, wounds, captivity, and desertion. By the end of the war, the state’s military units were only skeletons of what they once were, and the men had to surrender to survive. Similarly, the state’s infrastructure was a wreck. Federal commanders eventually learned that the infrastructure that fed, clothed, armed, and supported the armies in the field was as important as the contending enemy troops. Thus a lot of Federal effort went into destroying the state’s mills, factories, railroads, shipyards, and crops. The demise of Mississippi’s infrastructure not only limited

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the goods available both to armies and the home front, but it also severely hampered the dissemination and sale of what goods there were available. The Mississippi economy was similarly destroyed. With inflation, depreciation, lack of currency, and speculators, the state’s citizens had little hope of maintaining their economic status; in fact, most hoped only to survive. With the state in debt and much of the area in Federal hands, little revenue was available, sending Mississippi and its citizens continually down the long spiral of economic disaster. The South’s only major hope, cotton, was of little use. Thus Mississippi’s entire war effort was dismantled and destroyed by outside factors, most notably Federal armies that by the end of the war were marching at will across the state. But even as outside factors caused Mississippi’s decline during the war, an inward loss of will to win, mostly emerging in response to those outside factors, was growing among formerly prowar white Mississippians. Most Mississippians, even if they did not agree with secession, were loyal enough to the state to support the war effort and the troops in the field. But as the Federal armies began to invade the state and the people were personally affected, their support began to wane. Large defeats such as at Gettysburg in the faraway East had relatively little impact on the morale of Mississippians, except, obviously, for families who lost loved ones. Even closer defeats such as the loss of Vicksburg and the fall of Jackson, while more depressing to Mississippians because of their proximity, were not the factors that caused them to decide that they had endured enough. It was the arrival in their own neighborhoods of those Federal armies that captured Jackson and Vicksburg that brought the war personally to the citizens of Mississippi. Thus the major decline in the will to win can be traced to the summer of 1863, not so much because of Jackson and Vicksburg, and certainly not because of Gettysburg, but because that is when Federal armies first made major intrusions into the state and affected a large number of people for an extended period of time. The situation further deteriorated after the summer of 1863 as the Federals made their way almost at will throughout the state. Added to the decline in will among the people as a result of the Federal invasions was the upsurge in Unionism. While a small minority of Unionists had been vocal early in the war, they became more of a factor as Federal success began to increase. Unionism had many faces, including trading with the enemy, aiding Federal efforts, and denouncing Confederate governments, and this upsurge only helped to weaken a loyal citizenry which by 1863 was beginning to have second thoughts anyway. Perhaps the largest bloc of Unionists in Mississippi were the African Americans, who worked throughout the war to aid Federal efforts. By 1863, thousands of these former slaves were actually fighting for the Union cause,

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providing yet another crack in Mississippi’s effort to maintain a loyal Confederate front. The result of so much outward Federal activity coupled with an inward decline of will on the part of the people was a state totally defeated in its effort to break away from the United States. Mississippi was crushed in its bid for independence and suffered the consequences of the attempt. But the affliction did not end there; the state’s problems did not cease when the surrender documents were signed. Mississippi faced an unknown future in which the state would suffer the consequences of war far into the future, in some cases even to the present day.

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ABBREVIATIONS CU DU LC LSU MDAH MSU NARA OR ORN UM UNC USM

Cornell University Duke University Library of Congress Louisiana State University Mississippi Department of Archives and History Mississippi State University National Archives and Records Administration War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion University of Mississippi University of North Carolina University of Southern Mississippi

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NOTES PREFACE 1. Stephen V. Ash, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997); Daniel E. Sutherland, Seasons of War: The Ordeal of the Confederate Community, 1861–1865 (New York: Free Press, 1995); Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); Edward L. Ayers, The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War—The Eve of War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000). See also Scott Nelson and Carol Sheriff, A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America’s Civil War, 1854–1877 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 2. John K. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi: The People and Policies of a Cotton State in Wartime (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943); Percy L. Rainwater, Mississippi: Storm Center of Secession, 1856–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1938). See also Bettersworth’s condensed and revised work, “The Home Front, 1861–1865, in A History of Mississippi, ed. Richard A. McLemore, 2 vols. (Hattiesburg: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), 1:492–541.

INTRODUCTION 1. Edward M. Main, The Story of the Marches, Battles and Incidents of the Third United States Colored Cavalry: A Fighting Regiment in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–65. With Official Orders and Reports Relating Thereto, Compiled from the Rebellion Records (Louisville, Ky.: Globe, 1908), 288. 2. Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), iv, xiii, 595; “Honorable Wm. Barksdale,” Mississippi Democrat, April 6, 1861. 3. Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986). For more on the lack-ofwill and loss-of-will debate, see E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950); Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007); Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism,

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NOTES and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). 4. James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 128. 5. Gallagher, Confederate War, 20–21. 6. For more on the failure of Confederate nationalism, see Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). 7. Jefferson Davis to “My Dear Madam,” July 18, 1863, William R. Cannon Papers, LC; Jefferson Davis to J. M. Howry, August 27, 1863, Charles Bowen Howry Papers, LC. 8. For a similar breakdown in a larger context, see McPherson, Drawn with the Sword, 114. 9. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 235–236; Bobby Roberts and Carl Moneyhon, Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993). For more on the Lost Cause, see Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

CHAPTER ONE 1. “Prayer for the New-born Republic,” January 9, 1861, Whitfield Harrington Papers, MDAH; Thomas H. Woods, “A Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention of 1861,—Its Membership and Work,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, ed. Franklin L. Riley (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1902), 6:95; Edward Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar: His Life, Times, and Speeches, 1825–1893 (Nashville, Tenn.: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1896), 92; War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1891), Series 4, Volume 1: 76–77; hereafter cited as OR, with series, volume, and part number, where applicable, preceding page numbers. 2. Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, 92; “The Disunion Movement,” New York Times, January 10, 1861. 3. For background on secession, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). For the convention itself, see Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi; Rainwater, Mississippi; Christopher J. Olsen, Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); William Barney, Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004). For a short overview of the convention, see J. P. Coleman Manuscript, MDAH. The Mississippi secession convention has been treated extensively in academic literature, with Mississippi historians John K. Bettersworth and Percy L. Rainwater providing most of the early attention to the event and more modern social histories adding detail. The older books produced by the early historians, while in no small degree definitive and thus still very useful, are nevertheless extremely antiquated, both historians having worked in the World War II era. That fact in itself calls for a fresh look at the secession convention within the larger examination of the state’s home front. Even more important, however, is the fact that the convention, while examined in various works, has never been presented as the foundation of everything that later occurred in the state during the Civil War. Most histories of the convention, not surprisingly, deal mainly

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NOTES with the actual secession of the state itself two days into the proceedings. That effort, to be sure, was the dominant and most newsworthy action taken by the delegates, but after the initial flurry of patriotism and excitement of secession ended, the delegates realized that they suddenly were tasked with defending this new sovereign nation they had created. They had to pay for it, defend it, and make it fit within the international body of nations. There was a lot of work that needed to be done, and the delegates to the secession convention spent fully 85 percent of their time on issues other than the actual secession ordinance. 4. Freehling, Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay; Percy L. Rainwater, “An Analysis of the Secession Controversy in Mississippi, 1854–61,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 24, no. 1 (June 1937): 35–42. 5. Freehling, Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 395–426. 6. Condensed Proceedings of the Southern Convention Held at Nashville, Tennessee, June, 1850 (Jackson, Miss.: Fall and Marshall, Printers, 1850), 3–5. 7. Freehling, Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant. 8. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session (Jackson, Miss.: Ethelbert Barksdale, 1860), 13; Rainwater, Mississippi, 179, 182. For Pettus, see Robert W. Dubay, John Jones Pettus, Mississippi Fire-eater: His Life and Times, 1813–1867 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1975). 9. Rainwater, Mississippi, 177, 196. 10. Ibid., 203–204. 11. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861 (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 7–8; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, With an Appendix (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 149–220; Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 12. “Alphabetical List of Members of the Mississippi State Convention,” Box 8, “Secession Convention” Folder, Power Family Papers, MDAH; Rainwater, Mississippi, 196, 207; Alexander Clayton, “The Secession Convention,” n.d., J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, UNC. 13. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 3; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 93; Rainwater, Mississippi, 208; Clayton, “Secession Convention.” 14. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 3–9; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 97; Clayton, “Secession Convention.” For more on Barry, see Bruce S. Allardice, More Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 29–30. 15. John K. Bettersworth, ed., Mississippi in the Confederacy: As They Saw It (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 43–44. 16. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 9–13; Rainwater, Mississippi, 208. 17. D. C. Glenn, “Memoranda,” 1861, J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, UNC; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 10–13; Rainwater, Mississippi, 209. 18. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 6–7. 19. Ibid., 13; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 95; Hugh R. Miller to George, January 14, 1861, Miller Family Papers, MDAH; Horace S. Fulkerson, A Civilian’s Recollections of the War between the States, ed. P. L. Rainwater (Baton Rouge: Otto Claitor, 1939), 7–9; Alexander Clayton, “The Secession Convention,” n.d., J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, UNC.

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NOTES 20. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 14. 21. Ibid., 15. 22. Ibid., 16. 23. Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 96–97. 24. Ibid., 96. 25. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 16; Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, 91–92; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 31; “Disunion Movement.” 26. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 7–9; Rainwater, Mississippi, 211, 216. 27. Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 100; Rainwater, Mississippi, 211–212. 28. J. L. Power, Proceedings of the Mississippi State Convention, Held January 7th to 26th, A.D. 1861. Including the Ordinances, as Finally Adopted, Important Speeches, and a List of Members, Showing the Postoffice, Profession, Nativity, Politics, Age, Religious Preference, and Social Relations of Each (Jackson, Miss.: Power and Cadwallader, Book and Job Printers, 1861), 23. 29. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 17, 134, 144, 146–149; Dunbar Rowland, Mississippi; Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Arranged in Cyclopedic Form, 3 vols. (Atlanta: Southern Historical Printing Association, 1907), 1:510–516; Glenn, “Memoranda.” 30. “The Mississippi Convention,” New York Times, January 12, 1861; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 20–21, 31, 34–35; Hugh R. Miller to George, January 14, 1861, Miller Family Papers, MDAH; William R. Barksdale to Ferrell, January 18, 1861, William R. Barksdale Papers, MDAH; Power, Proceedings of the Mississippi State Convention, 28–29. 31. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 18–19, 27–29; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 94–95; Wiley P. Harris, “Autobiography,” in Dunbar Rowland, Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798–1935 (Jackson, Miss.: Harderman Bros., 1935), 328. 32. Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 94–95; William R. Barksdale to Ferrell, January 18, 1861, William R. Barksdale Papers, MDAH; “Reminiscences of J. A. Orr,” J. A. Orr Papers, MDAH; Ralph A. Wooster, “The Membership of the Mississippi Secession Convention of 1861,” Journal of Mississippi History 16, no. 4 (October 1954): 251. 33. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 22, 117, 136–138. 34. Ibid., 50–58, 132–134; William C. Davis, “A Government of Our Own”: The Making of the Confederacy (New York: Free Press, 1994), 15. 35. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 59–63, 122–126, 143–145. 36. Ibid., 42, 64–69, 126–132, 136, 138–141; Glenn, “Memoranda”; William R. Barksdale to Ferrell, January 18, 1861, William R. Barksdale Papers, MDAH. 37. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 24–25, 83–84. 38. Ibid., 3–5, 88. 39. Ibid., 3–5. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 6–7, 14–16; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 7–9. 42. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 84–85. 43. Ibid., 84–85, 90; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 93.

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NOTES CHAPTER TWO 1. William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, a Biography (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 295–296, 301; John J. Pettus to L. Q. C. Lamar, January 9, 1861, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, John J. Pettus, Series 758, MDAH. 2. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 136–138. 3. Ibid., 144. 4. Power, Proceedings of the Mississippi State Convention, 25, 62; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 132–134; Glenn, “Memoranda.” 5. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 53–58, 141–142; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 101. 6. Rowland, Courts, Judges, and Lawyers, 328; Davis, “Government of Our Own,” 91, 101–102, 113–115. 7. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in March, 1861 (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 3–4, 48, 77–78, 84–86, 94–95; Woods, “Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention,” 102. 8. J. A. P. Campbell to Sir, January 9, 1890, Josiah A. P. Campbell Collection, UM; “The Senators from Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi Refuse to Answer to Their Names,” Vicksburg Whig, January 14, 1861; Wiley P. Harris to Jefferson Davis, February 13, 1862, and Jefferson Davis to Wiley P. Harris, February 13, 1862, both in Davis-Harris Letters, MDAH. For a history of the Confederate Congress, see Wilfred Buck Yearns, The Confederate Congress (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960). For individual biographies of Mississippi’s Confederate congressmen, see Ezra A. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975). 9. For more on Mississippi’s governors, see W. Buck Yearns, The Confederate Governors (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 108–129; William F. Winter, “Mississippi’s Civil War Governors,” Journal of Mississippi History 51, no. 2 (May 1989): 77–88. 10. Dubay, John Jones Pettus, 6; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:410. 11. Rowland, Mississippi, 2:410–411. 12. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), 299–300. 13. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 47; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 9; Samuel G. French, Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French (Nashville, Tenn.: Confederate Veteran, 1901), 137; Davis, “Government of Our Own,” 406, 420; J. C. Campbell to E. W. Hilgard, February 5, 1861, Eugene W. Hilgard Papers, MDAH; Jackson Daily Mississippian, April 8, 1863. 14. French, Two Wars, 138–139. 15. John J. Pettus to Earl Van Dorn, September 14, 1862, Earl Van Dorn Papers, LC; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 60–75, 89. For more on states’ rights, see Frank L. Owsley, States Rights in the Confederacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925). 16. “Voters of Simpson and Copiah Counties,” Broadside, September 18, 1861, Daniel Williams Family Papers, MSU; Davis, “Government of Our Own,” 408, 415; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:415; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 33, 36. 17. Susan Ann Ragland Hewell Potts Pettus Diaries, MDAH, 5; Dubay, John Jones Pettus, 121–122. 18. Eric Clark, Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, 2004–2008, Blue Book (Jackson, Miss.: Secretary of State, 2005), 99, 145.

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NOTES 19. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 3, 5, 35; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 20–21, 31, 34–35. 20. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 6, 8–9. 21. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, January, 1861, Constitution Revised (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 28, 37, 39, 45; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 38, 40. 22. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 1861 (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 6. 23. Ibid., 7–9, 83. 24. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, July, 1861 (Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861), 38–39, 47, 57, 72; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 1861, 9, 83; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862 (Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1862), 11; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863 (Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1864), appendix, 89; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:414. 25. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 3, 11, 13, 15–16. 26. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862 (Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1862), 45, 48, 53–56, 59–66, 69, 106, 107, 142, 146; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 77; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 11–12, 96–98, appendix, 3, 85; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:416. For an original cotton advance, see “Advance on Cotton,” April 28, 1862, Jennie and Lucia Adams Collection, UM. 27. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 12. 28. Ibid., 9, 12–13. 29. Ibid., 9. 30. Ibid., 10–11, 13. 31. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863 (Selma, Ala.: Cooper and Kimball, 1864), 68–73, 81, 87–89; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 6, 33, 61, 77, 79, 96–97, appendix, 4, 85; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:417. 32. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 39; Lynda Lasswell Crist, ed., The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 11 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971–2008), 8:565–584; Luther S. Baechtel Diary, December 19 and 26, 1862, MDAH. 33. Jackson Weekly Mississippian, March 4, 1863; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 91.

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NOTES 34. OR, 1, 24, 3:821, 845, 864; “Proceedings of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, May 2, 1863; “The Capture of Jackson, Mississippi,” New York Herald, May 20, 1863; John J. Pettus Order, May 3 and 5, 1863, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, John J. Pettus, Series 758, MDAH; Special Order 135, May 5, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Military Orders, 1862–1863, Series 769, Box 951, MDAH. 35. OR, 1, 24, 3:821, 845, 864; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 116; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 89; Luther S. Baechtel Diary, May 2 and 7, 1863, MDAH; A. M. West to Carrie, May 5, 1863, Absolem West Collection, UM. 36. William Vannerson to John J. Pettus, May 26, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Harold S. Wilson, Confederate Industry: Manufactures and Quartermasters in the Civil War (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 192; Nannie M. Tilley, ed., “Letter of Judge Alexander M. Clayton Relative to Confederate Courts in Mississippi,” Journal of Southern History 6 (1940): 392–401; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 89–92, appendix, 103, 108, 132, 181. 37. OR, 1, 24, 1:723–724. 38. John P. Davis Diary, May 15, 1863, John P. Davis Papers, Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield; S. S. Farwell Letter, May 15, 1863, Sewall S. Farwell Papers, State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City; OR, 1, 24, 1:312, 754; OR, 1, 24, 3:845; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885–1886), 1:298; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 90–91; Steven E. Woodworth, Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 367; Arthur J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States: April–June, 1863 (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1863), 105, 109–110; S. M. Lathan to sister, August 4, 1863, Lucas-Ashley Papers, DU; James Meagher Affidavit, March 30, 1866, James Meagher Papers, DU; Tilley, “Letter of Judge Alexander M. Clayton”; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 90–91, appendix, 103, 108, 132, 181. The British subject was also conscripted by the Confederate authorities until he was found to be an alien. Then he was collected in the state militia before Governor Clark released him. 39. H. W. Allen to “My Dear Hunter,” June 13, 1863, Henry Watkins Allen Letter, LSU; OR, 1, 52, 2:506; John J. Pettus Order, June 11, 1863, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, John J. Pettus, Series 758, MDAH; John J. Pettus to Jefferson Davis, July 9, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Various military orders dated May 1–July 16, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Military Orders, 1862–1863, Series 769, Box 951, MDAH; French, Two Wars, 183. The governor’s orders dated through May 5 are at Jackson, with a skip in orders from May 6 through 16. The May 16 to June 4 orders are headed at Meridian and Enterprise variously, with another skip from June 5 to June 8. Those from June 9 to July 6 are back in Jackson, with another skip from July 7 to July 15, and with those from July 16 on with the heading Meridian, Macon, and elsewhere. Thus Pettus and the government returned to Jackson during the siege of Vicksburg. Other correspondence places Pettus in Jackson as late as July 9, 1863. 40. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 90–92; Luther S. Baechtel Diary, June 4, 1863, MDAH. 41. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 89; OR, 1, 24, 3:531; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Civil War, 203;

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NOTES Luther S. Baechtel Diary, August 4, 1863, MDAH; Hugh B. Ewing to wife, July 14, 1863, Hugh Boyle Ewing Letter, USM. 42. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 89–101. 43. Ibid., 92–93, 99, 101. 44. “Gen. Charles Clark,” Natchez Daily Courier, April 18, 1863; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 100. 45. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 45. 46. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 104; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:437–438, 2:419; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 53–54; Annie Eliza Jacobs, The Master of Doro Plantation: An Epic of the Old South (Columbus, Miss.: AAA Printing Word Processing, 2002), 49 (the manuscript version of The Master of Doro Plantation is in Annie E. Jacobs Manuscript, MDAH); Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 51–52. For more on Clark, see John Coleman Wade Jr., “Charles Clark: Confederate General and Mississippi Governor” (M.A. thesis, University of Mississippi, 1949). 47. Charles Clark to Lieutenant Thompson, January 19, 1864, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, Charles Clark, Series 758, MDAH; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Civil War, 206; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 154, 158–161. 48. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 83, 85, 104, 112–113, 171, 186, 217; “State Legislature Resolution,” n.d., W. E. Montgomery Papers, MDAH. 49. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863, 109, 113–123, 202, 213; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 83, 236, 247, 269, 324. 50. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863, 175, 215–217, 228–229, 232; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 155, 245, 247, 297, 325. 51. “Governor’s Message,” Macon Beacon, March 30, 1864; “House Journal,” March and April 1864, 1, Microfilm Roll 1906, MDAH. Apparently, the journals for the March and April 1864 session were never printed and are only available in handwritten form. 52. “Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Macon, March and April 1864,” Microfilm Roll 1528, MDAH. 53. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864 (Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1864), 6–11. 54. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Macon, August, 1864 (Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1864), 5–6, 24, 40, 51; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 4, 53, 91, 95, 99. 55. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865 (Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1865), 6–11. 56. Ibid., 11–14. 57. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Columbus, February and March, 1865 (Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1865), 14–15, 17, 61; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February

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NOTES and March, 1865, 3–4, 81, 82, 98; Special Order 57, May 11, 1865, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Order Book, 1863–1865, Series 770, Box 952, MDAH. 58. “Proclamation,” May 20, 1865, Mississippi Governor’s Papers, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 767, Box 953, MDAH; Charles Clark Address to Legislature, May 1865, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, Charles Clark, Series 758, MDAH; “A Bill to Be entitled ‘An Act to provide for a Convention of the people of the State of Mississippi,’” May 20, 1865, Mississippi Governor’s Papers, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 767, Box 953, MDAH; James Wilford Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York: MacMillan, 1902), 40, 57, 59–60; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:443; OR, 1, 49, 2:879; James L. Power, “The Black and Tan Convention,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1900), 3:74; “From the Southwest,” New York Times, May 18, 1865; Special Order 58, May 11, 1865, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Order Book, 1863–1865, Series 770, Box 952, MDAH. 59. E. D. Osband to Charles Clark, May 20, 1865, and Charles Clark to E. D. Osband, May 22, 1865, both in Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, Box 949, MDAH; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 40, 57, 59–60; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:443; OR, 1, 49, 2:879; “From the Southwest,” New York Times, May 18, 1865; Jacobs, Master of Doro Plantation, 113–115. 60. T. J. Wharton to John J. Pettus, n.d., Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 9; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 6–8; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:862; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 39; J. A. Orr to Hugh R. Miller, September 11, no year, Miller Family Papers, UM. For more on the Confederate judicial system, see William M. Robinson Jr., Justice in Grey: A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941). For more on the high court, see John Ray Skates, A History of the Mississippi Supreme Court, 1817–1948 (Jackson: Mississippi Bar Foundation, 1973). 61. James W. Silver, “The Breakdown of Morale in Central Mississippi in 1864: Letters of Judge Robert S. Hudson,” Journal of Mississippi History 16, no. 2 (April 1954): 103, 105, 113. 62. A. M. Clayton to Lida Perry, October 25, 1887, A. M. Clayton Letter, UM; Tilley, “Letter of Judge Alexander M. Clayton,” 392–401. 63. OR, 1, 24, 2:530–531; OR, 1, 49, 1:612–613; OR, 1, 49, 2:252; William P. Chambers, “My Journal,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Centenary Series (Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1925), 5:361; D. H. Lindsay to A. M. West, April 3, 1865, Absalom West Collection, UM. 64. Susan Ann Ragland Hewell Potts Pettus Diaries, March 14, 1866, and January 25, 1889, MDAH; Dubay, John Jones Pettus, 195; Willie Pettus Lapsley to J. L. Power, December 10, 1897, James L. Power Papers, MDAH.

CHAPTER THREE 1. John J. Pettus to H. H. Miller, n.d., Executive Journals, 1817–1887, John J. Pettus, Series 758, MDAH; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 6; Dunbar Rowland and H. Grady Howell Jr., Military History of Mississippi: 1803–1898, Including a Listing of All Known Mississippi Confederate Military Units (Madison, Miss.: Chickasaw Bayou Press, 2003), 35–36; Michael B. Ballard, Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 9. The original version of Rowland and

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NOTES Howell’s Military History of Mississippi was Dunbar Rowland, Official and Statistical Register of the State of Mississippi, 1908 (Jackson, Miss.: Secretary of State, 1908). 2. For a military history of the war in Mississippi, see Edwin C. Bearss, Decision in Mississippi: Mississippi’s Important Role in the War between the States (Jackson: Mississippi Commission on the War between the States, 1962), and the forthcoming volume in this series by Michael B. Ballard. 3. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 17, 22–23, 24–26, 35–36, 42–46, 122–126; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 37. 4. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 122–126. 5. Ibid., 29, 38, 75, 83–84, 89, 122–126, 143, 145. 6. “Honorable Wm. Barksdale,” Mississippi Democrat, April 6, 1861; February 12, 1861, entry, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; Orders of the Military Board of the State of Mississippi (Jackson: Mississippi Book and Job Printing Office, 1861), 3–10; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 37. For more on the lesser-known members, see the various biographies in Allardice, More Generals in Gray. 7. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in March, 1861, With an Appendix, 85, 87, 94–95; January 29, February 26, March 1, July 5, and August 7, 1861, entries, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, and Papers of the Military Board, 1861–1863, both in RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861 (typescript), MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 9. 8. March 24 and 25, 1861, entries, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH. 9. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:146–147. For more on the lesser-known members, see the various biographies in Allardice, More Generals in Gray. 10. Reuben Davis, Recollections of Mississippi and Mississippians (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), 405–407. 11. Ibid., 410–411. 12. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 9; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:130, 145; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 7; OR, 1, 4:387; French, Two Wars, 135; July 5, 1861, entry, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; John J. Pettus to A. M. West, July 19, 1861, Absalom West Collection, UM. 13. N. B. M. to friend, 1861, Malloy Papers, MSU; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 6; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 224, 246; OR, 1, 1:495; OR, 1, 4:387; French, Two Wars, 137; January 29, 1861, and July 5, 1861, entries, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; John J. Pettus to A. M. West, December 7, 1861, Absalom West Collection, UM. 14. Davis, Recollections of Mississippi, 404; French, Two Wars, 135–136; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 47–48, 91. 15. French, Two Wars, 136. In addition, the state’s military capacity was severely hampered when a large government arsenal in Jackson blew up on November 5, 1862, killing between thirtyfive and forty people, most of them women and children workers. The Fayette Gazette reported the “two-story brick building used as a laboratory was blown to the smallest atoms,” and that bodies lay everywhere, including “a poor girl [who] was hanging by one foot to the limb of a tree;

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NOTES she was evidently dead, but her clothes were still burning.” Luther S. Baechtel Diary, November 5, 1862, MDAH; “The Disaster at Jackson,” Fayette Gazette, November 14, 1862. 16. “Loyalty of Negroes,” Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 27, 1862; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 35–38; OR, 1, 1:329. 17. Agnes to brother, March 31, 1861, Margaret E. Blackwell Papers, UNC; Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 4, 1861; Charles E. Hooker, Mississippi (Atlanta: Confederate Publishing, 1899), 14; Chambers, “My Journal,” 227, 229. For a description of similar events at Raymond, see Howell Hobbs to Eudora, May 8, 1861, Hobbs Family Papers, MSU. 18. Chambers, “My Journal,” 230, 232. 19. Robert G. Evans, ed., The 16th Mississippi Infantry: Civil War Letters and Reminiscences (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 3–4. The original James J. Kirkpatrick diary is in the Heartman Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. 20. March 26, 1861, entry, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; OR, 1, 2:461, 539; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 38–39; Davis, Recollections of Mississippi, 409; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 1861, 9; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 12; S. T. Nicholson to brother, July 25, 1861, Samuel Timothy Nicholson Papers, MDAH. For more information on Mississippi’s early units, see John C. Rietti, Military Annals of Mississippi: Military Organizations Which Entered the Service of the Confederate States of America from the State of Mississippi (n.p.: n.p., 1895). 21. A. Shaw to mother, March 17, 1862, Thompson B. Shaw-McKell Papers, MSU; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:133, 141; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 39. 22. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:133, 141; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 39. 23. For histories of each unit, see Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi. The Second Mississippi would send its battle-scarred flag home to Governor Pettus in November 1862. Pettus responded that he would “preserve it with the archives of the State as a lasting memorial.” John J. Pettus to John M. Stone, November 10, 1862, John M. Stone Papers, MDAH. 24. For histories of each unit, see Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi. 25. Mississippi Confederate Defense Agreement, November 26, 1861, LSU; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 368–369. 26. November 22, 1861, entry, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 368–369; Davis, Recollections of Mississippi, 416. 27. Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 368–369; Davis, Recollections of Mississippi, 422, 425. 28. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862, 142–143; Davis, Recollections of Mississippi, 407, 415; November 23, 1861, entry, Minutes of the Military Board, January 29, 1861–November 23, 1861, RG 9, Series 394, Box 416, MDAH. 29. John J. Pettus to Earl Van Dorn, July 20 and 25, 1862, Earl Van Dorn Papers, LC; “The Laws of Mississippi: An Act,” Jackson Weekly Mississippian, January 14, 1862; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 499–500; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:149; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 48; Special Order, August 18, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Military Orders, 1862–1863, Series 769, Box 951, MDAH. For more on these lesser-known generals, see the various appendix biographies in Allardice, More Generals in Gray, 243–258.

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NOTES 30. Charles Clark to S. J. Gholson, February 9, 1864, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, Box 949, MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 159; Rowland and Howell, Military History of Mississippi, 540–557; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 10; Dubay, John Jones Pettus, 195; James L. Alcorn to wife, September 6, 1864, Box 2, Folder 32, Percy L. Rainwater Collection, MDAH; “General Orders 7,” January 25, 1864, Absalom West Collection, UM. 31. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 102, 113. 32. Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3 vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1908), 3:1343–1344; National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System, http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 38. For more on blacks accompanying Confederates, see Richard Rollins, ed., Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on AfroAmericans in Confederate Armies (Murfreesboro, Tenn.: Southern Heritage Press, 1994). 33. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860, xvii; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:141; National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System. 34. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:141. 35. Steven H. Stubbs, Duty, Honor, Valor: The Story of the Eleventh Mississippi Infantry Regiment (Philadelphia: Dancing Rabbit Press, 2000), 661. 36. “Statistical Table Concerning Data on Select Cavalry, Artillery, and Infantry Units, 1865,” RG 9, Series 390, Box 307, MDAH. 37. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:141; OR, 1, 10, 1:581; Noah Andre Trudeau, Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 583, 591; Kenneth W. Noe, Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 371. Vicksburg National Military Park historian Terry Winschel has written extensively on the Eleventh Mississippi at Gettysburg and has developed the 89 percent figure. See Terrence J. Winschel, “Heavy Was Their Loss: Joe Davis’ Brigade at Gettysburg, Part 1,” Gettysburg Magazine 2 (January 1990): 5–14; Terrence J. Winschel, “Heavy Was Their Loss: Joe Davis’ Brigade at Gettysburg, Part 2,” Gettysburg Magazine 3 (July 1990): 77–86. 38. Chambers, “My Journal,” 275, 283. 39. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:141. 40. Richard B. Harwell, ed., Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 14, 22, 26–27. 41. Chambers, “My Journal,” 353; W. A. Rorer to Susan, January 15, 1863, James M. Willcox Papers, DU (typescripts of the Rorer letters are also available in W. A. Rorer Letters, MDAH); Jason Niles Diary, October 21, 1864, UNC; E. Capers to Joseph Palmer, August 7, 1863, Joseph Palmer Papers, DU. 42. Rowland, Mississippi, 1:141; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 107–108. 43. J. F. Pierce Compiled Service Record, NARA. 44. “Descendants of J. F. Pierce,” in author’s possession; “Receipt for Deserters from the Army Arrested by the Sheriff of Chickasaw County, 1863–1864,” Substitutes and Deserters, RG 9, Box 8372, MDAH. 45. Special Order 252, November 6, 1863, Special Order 405, March 8, 1863, and Special Order 9, May 6, 1863, all in Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Military Orders, 1862–1863, Series 769, Box 951, MDAH; “Circular to Sheriffs,” November 16, 1864, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 767, Box 953, MDAH; G. W. Bradley to Charles Clark, February 8, 1864, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863– 1865, Series 768, Box 949, MDAH.

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NOTES 46. S. J. Gholson to John J. Pettus, August 13, 1863, and W. R. Clark to John J. Pettus, June 28, 1863, both in Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:134; Jones S. Hamilton to M. R. Clark, August 2, 1862, Adjutant General’s Correspondence, Series 400, Box 16, 708, MDAH; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 106–107; The Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America, Commencing with the First Session of the First Congress, 1862 (Richmond, Va.: R. M. Smith, 1862), 29–32; The Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America, Passed at the Second Session of the First Congress, 1862 (Richmond, Va.: R. M. Smith, 1862), 61–62. For an example of the exemption of a twenty-slave plantation owner, see the William Shaw exemption, April 1864, Thompson B. ShawMcCallum Papers, MSU. For more on conscription, see Albert Burton Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (New York: Macmillan, 1924). 47. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: October, November, and December Session of 1865 (Jackson, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1866), appendix, 50–54.

CHAPTER FOUR 1. OR, 1, 32, 1:176; OR, 1, 32, 2:498. For more on the development of hard war, see Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For Sherman’s hard war efforts in Mississippi, see John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (New York: Free Press, 1993); Buck T. Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006). 2. Manufactures of the United States in 1860: Compiled From the Original Returns of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865), 294; Francis A. Walker, A Compendium of the Ninth Census (June 1, 1870) Compiled Pursuant to a Concurrent Resolution of Congress and Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), 688–689, 699, 798; James H. McLendon, “The Development of Mississippi Agriculture,” Journal of Mississippi History 13, no. 2 (April 1951): 81. 3. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 138–139; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 139. 4. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 146; Power, Proceedings of the Mississippi State Convention, 58. 5. For more on Southern industry, see Wilson, Confederate Industry. 6. OR, 1, 17, 1:29, 58. 7. OR, 1, 10, 1:815; OR, 1, 17, 1:368. 8. OR, 1, 24, 2:183, 436, 495, 517, 576. 9. OR, 1, 32, 1:245, 248. 10. Narvell Strickland, “A History of Mississippi Cotton Mills and the Sanders Magnolia Mill Village” (M.A. thesis, Southern Louisiana University, 1995), 10–15, 19–21; OR, 1, 10, 2:562; OR, 1, 17, 1:29; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 134; Wilson, Confederate Industry, 100, 104. There was one cloth factory in Woodville, one in Bankston, and two in Jackson. For more on wartime manufacturing in the state, see Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Civil War, 266–267. 11. OR, 1, 24, 2:685; OR, 1, 24, 1:754; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:298. The Greens later filed a claim with the Southern Claims Commission, but it, as well as a second claim, was denied. See “J. and T. Green,” April 3, 1874, “43 Cong., 1 Sess., House Report, No. 376,” MDAH. 12. OR, 1, 39, 2:565–566; OR, 1, 45, 2:506; OR, 1, 45, 1:852; Edwin C. Bearss, “Grierson’s Winter Raid on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad,” Military Affairs 24, no. 1 (Spring 1960): 20–37.

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NOTES 13. OR, 1, 24, 1:754; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 143–144; Les Crocker, “An Early Iron Foundry in Northern Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 35, no. 2 (May 1973): 117, 119. 14. OR, 1, 24, 3:406; The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894–1922), Series 1, Volume 25: 8, hereafter cited as ORN, with series and volume number preceding page numbers; William N. Still Jr., “Confederate Shipbuilding in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 30, no. 4 (November 1968): 291–303. 15. Alex Ventress to Charles Clark, February 6, 1864, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, MDAH; W. C. Turner to John J. Pettus, June 26, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; McLendon, “Development of Mississippi Agriculture,” 82; D. Clayton James, “Mississippi Agriculture, 1861–1865,” Journal of Mississippi History 24, no. 3 (July 1962): 129, 139; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 135. There was at least some mechanization and scientific experimentation on Mississippi plantations. As an example, see the Francis Terry Leak Papers, UNC. 16. A. C. Cobb to J. M. Wells, January 3, 1861, James Scarborough Papers, MSU; James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 135; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 150–152. 17. James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 136; J. A. Strother to James Harlan, November 21, 1865, James Harlan Papers, DU. 18. Sarah Poates Diary, July 7–8 and 23, 1863, Asa Fitch Papers, CU. 19. Ibid., February 5, 1864. 20. List of Plantation Losses, 1862, and “Statement of Stock Mules Horses Hay Fodder Ham Taken by the U States Army from Duncan,” February 29, 1864, both in Stephen Duncan Family Papers, MDAH; “Amount of Stock and Property Consumed and Taken Off by Gen. U. S. Grant’s Army 1863,” Confederate Collection, Series 608, Box 398, MDAH; Fonsylvania Plantation Diary, May 23, 25, and 31, 1863, MDAH; “A List of Names and Ages of Negroes Belonging to Howell Hobbs of Hinds County & Made Free by Acts of the Government of the States and Their Cash Valuation at the Time They were Made Free,” n.d., Hobbs Family Papers, MSU; “Claim Against US Government,” n.d., Calhoun-Kincannon-Orr Family Papers, MSU; Claim of Josiah M. Stephenson, September 7, 1871, Josiah M. Stephenson Collection, UM; E. E. Holman to J. W. Denver, April 25, 1871, E. E. Holman Letter, UM. There is a wealth of material concerning damages to Mississippians in the files of the Southern Claims Commission. See Consolidated Index of Claims Reported by the Commissioners of Claims to the House of Representatives from 1871 to 1880 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892), and the thousands of pages of testimony and affidavits in “Records of Committees Relating to Claims,” RG 233, “Records of the United States House of Representatives,” NARA; “Records of the Land, Files, and Miscellaneous Division,” RG 217, “Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury,” NARA. The Southern Claims Commission, operating from 1871 to 1880, dealt with over 22,000 claims, with 2,233 of them from Mississippi. Only a small fraction of the claims were awarded, with most being disallowed or barred because of lack of evidence. The claimants had to pass a test of Unionism as well as property ownership to be awarded damages. See Frank L. Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 89, 117, 157, 168–169. There is also a wealth of information in “Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians,” “Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians,” and “Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms,” all in RG 109, “War Department Collection of Confederate Records,” NARA. 21. “List of Furniture Burned in the Dwelling House at Bowling Green, by Federal Troops, Oct. 5th, 1864,” J. Burruss McGehee Papers, LSU.

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NOTES 22. George G. Meade to M. W. Stokes, November 5, 1867, George G. Meade Letter, LSU; W. Maury Darst, ed., “The Vicksburg Diary of Mrs. Alfred Ingraham: May 2–June 13, 1863,” Journal of Mississippi History 44, no. 2 (May 1982): 148, 155, 166; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 156–158. 23. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 117–119; “Provost Marshal’s Office Natchez,” May 2, 1862, Broadside, UM. 24. “Remarks,” Vicksburg Daily Whig, May 1, 1863, copy in Civil War Economy File, MDAH. 25. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 236. 26. W. C. Turner to John J. Pettus, June 26, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 94–96, appendix, 187–189; Unknown to E. W. Hilgard, August 4, 1862, Eugene W. Hilgard Papers, MDAH. 27. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 11. 28. W. A. Evans, “Steamboats on the Upper Tombigbee in the Early Days,” Journal of Mississippi History 4, no. 4 (October 1942): 222–224. 29. Timothy B. Smith, “Victory at Any Cost: The Yazoo Pass Expedition,” Journal of Mississippi History, 67, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 147–166. 30. ORN, 1, 25:45, 289, 329, 740, 891. 31. Ibid., 285–286. 32. Ibid., 723, 755; Harry P. Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy: River Trade in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), 68. 33. ORN, 1, 27:269; ORN, 1, 25:290, 756; Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy, 69. 34. OR, 1, 7:888. 35. John Hebron Moore, “Railroads of Antebellum Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 41, no. 1 (February 1979): 53–81. 36. Ibid.; N. G. Bryson to A. J. McConnico, April 10, 1861, Southern Railroad Company Letter, USM. 37. Moore, “Railroads of Antebellum Mississippi,” 53–81. 38. Ibid.; “Mississippi Central Railroad Receipts,” June 22, 1862, and “Mississippi Central Consignment Receipts,” June 11, 1864, both in Aldrich-Treadwell Collection, UM. 39. For more on Southern railroads, see Robert C. Black III, Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952). 40. OR, 1, 10, 1:872. 41. Ibid., 862. 42. Ballard, Vicksburg, 101–128. 43. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:296–301. 44. OR, 1, 24, 1:754; Marszalek, Sherman, 222. 45. OR, 1, 24, 1:523–524; OR, 1, 24, 2:576, 685; Edwin C. Bearss, “McArthur’s Expedition against the Mississippi Central Railroad,” Journal of Mississippi History 28, no. 1 (February 1966): 1–14. 46. For more on the Meridian campaign, see Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign; Margie Riddle Bearss, Sherman’s Forgotten Campaign: The Meridian Expedition (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1987). 47. OR, 1, 32, 1:176. 48. OR, 1, 39, 2:565; OR, 1, 39, 3:902; OR, 1, 24, 3:1029, 1036–1037; Jeffery N. Lash, “Major George W. Whitfield and Confederate Railway Policy, 1863–1865,” Journal of Mississippi History 42, no. 3 (August 1980): 172–193.

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NOTES 49. OR, 1, 45, 2:506; OR, 1, 45, 1:846, 852; “Amount of Damage Done by the United States Forces to Private Property Belonging to Mrs. E. D. Edwards, 30th Day of December 1864, The Command Under General Grierson,” Edward D. Edwards Family Papers, MSU. 50. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 141, 140–146. 51. Sallie B. McCrae Diary, April 26, 1862, Ray Fulton Collection, UM (copies are also in the Sallie B. McCrae Diary, MSU); Ben Wynne, Mississippi’s Civil War: A Narrative History (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006), 90–91; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 263; Luther S. Baechtel Diary, May 7, 1863, MDAH. For more on railroad accidents, see Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 261–263. 52. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 141, 140–146. 53. OR, 1, 45, 1:845, 852; OR, 1, 24, 1:524. 54. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 37; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, appendix, 89, 95, 108–109, 117, 130; David G. Sansing, The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 106–117. 55. W. M. McKinney to cousin, June 9, 1862, W. M. McKinney Papers, DU; Martha Boman, “A City of the Old South: Jackson, Mississippi, 1850–60,” Journal of Mississippi History 15, no. 1 (January 1953): 1–32. 56. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, July, 1861, 52–53, 61–66; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862, 90, 108–109, 114; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863, 146, 213–215; “Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature,” 79–80. 57. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 104, 310; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 44. 58. “A Word to Our People in Mississippi,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, April 27, 1863.

CHAPTER FIVE 1. William R. Barksdale to Ferrell, January 18, 1861, William R. Barksdale Papers, MDAH. 2. For more on Confederate finances, see Douglas B. Ball, Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991). 3. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 36–37, 64, 67, 69. 4. Ibid., 126–127, 132; Alfred B. Butts, “Public Administration in Mississippi,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Centenary Series (Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1919), 3:189. 5. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 136, 145. 6. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861, 7. 7. Ibid. 8. “Proclamation,” July 12, 1861, Absalom West Collection, UM; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson,

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NOTES July and August, 1861, 6–7; Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, 36, 51, 85. 9. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 1861, 7. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 8. 12. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 13. 13. Ibid., 13–14. 14. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 96–97. For examples of these taxes and receipts for their payment, see various land, military, and personal tax receipts in the James Scarbrough Papers, MSU. For an original advance on cotton, see “Advance on Cotton,” April 28, 1862, Jennie and Lucia Adams Collection, UM. 15. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862, 53–56, 136–138; James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 133; Unknown to “My Dear Friend,” October 16, 1862, J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, LC. 16. Rowland, Mississippi, 2:416; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 101. 17. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, appendix, 4, 6. 18. Ibid., appendix, 87; Luther S. Baechtel Diary, May 2 and 7, 1863, MDAH. 19. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 45; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:419. 20. McLendon, “Development of Mississippi Agriculture,” 81. For more on King Cotton diplomacy, see Frank L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations and the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931). 21. James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 130–131. 22. Ibid., 133–134, 140. 23. “Governor’s Message”; Rowland, Mississippi, 1:441. 24. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 6–8; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Macon, August, 1864, 23–25; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 44. 25. James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 137; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Columbus, February and March, 1865, 3–10; W. A. Rorer to cousin, March 4, 1864, James M. Willcox Papers, DU (copies of the Rorer letters are also at MDAH). 26. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 6, 8. 27. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: October, November, and December Session of 1865, 12–13, 82–83. 28. OR, 4, 2:328–329; Louisia Henry to “Ma,” March 28, 1864, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, appendix, 97, 99. 29. A. Shaw to mother, March 23, 1863, Thompson B. Shaw-McKell Papers, MSU; Loulie to A. W. Feemster, March 10, no year, Oakley Papers, MSU. 30. Mary J. Welsh, “Makeshifts of the War between the States,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1903), 7:101; Bettie Black Mayo Diary, January 6, 1863, MDAH; Jane Clark Pickett to sister, December 25, 1862, Box 1, Boddie Family

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NOTES Papers, MDAH; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 43; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, appendix, 195–201. 31. Luther S. Baechtel Diary, June 17, 1863, MDAH; Hugh Lorrance to sister, February 16, 1863, George F. Davidson Papers, DU. 32. “Prices in the Confederacy,” Civil War Economy Subject File, MDAH; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 105–107. Frances Harrison to cousin, n.d., Hoffa Papers, MSU. For a much more detailed look at prices, see Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 49–50; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:418; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 258–259. For a comparison of the abundance of goods even in a small country store prior to the war, see Willie D. Halsell, “A Country Merchant’s Stock of Goods in 1860,” Journal of Mississippi History 12, no. 1 (January 1950): 46–48. 33. “Prices in the Confederacy,” Civil War Economy Subject File, MDAH; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 95, 124; Sister to Burton N. Harrison, March 20, 1864, Burton Norvell Harrison Papers, LC; “Refusing Confederate Money,” Canton American Citizen, July 3, 1863; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862, 78–81; “Salt for Bacon, Wheat, or Flour,” Meridian Daily Clarion, August 5, 1864; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 44; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Columbus, February and March, 1865, 3–10; Mississippi Slave Document, November 11, 1864, LSU; Jason Niles Diary, January 22, 1863, UNC. 34. Charles Hillman Brough, “The History of Banking in Mississippi,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, 3:340; Main, Story of the Marches, Battles and Incidents of the Third United States Cavalry, 165, 280. 35. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, appendix, 6. 36. M. D. Haynes to Charles Clark, January 2, 1865, and Charles Clark to unknown, January 3, 1865, both in Executive Journals, 1817–1887, Charles Clark, Series 758, MDAH; A. J. Gillespie to Charles Clark, January 1, 1865, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, Box 950, MDAH; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 25–27; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 123.

CHAPTER SIX 1. Dan P. Kinard, Footprints of Jacob Kynerd, Kinard, Kynard, Kinerd and His Descendants (Montgomery, Ala.: Herff Jones Yearbooks, 1986), 89–90. 2. Ibid., 88. 3. The debate over the lack-of-will thesis has been heavy, to say the least. Coulter, in Confederate States of America, and Bell I. Wiley, The Road to Appomattox (Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1956), were early proponents of this thesis. Beringer et al., Why the South Lost, is the most thorough explanation of this school. Hattaway and Jones, in How the North Won, also look at the issue. Recently, there has been a developing school in opposition to the lack-of-will thesis. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword, 128, argues that it was not really a lack of will but a loss of will. Perhaps the most cogent analysis of the opposition to the lack-ofwill thesis is in Gallagher, Confederate War. A more recent study arguing that Confederate will remained strong throughout the war is Phillips, Diehard Rebels. The debate has naturally extended

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NOTES to the Confederate nationalism arena as well. See Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism, and Escott, After Secession, for more on the nationalism debate. Gallagher, Confederate War, 17–28, has the best historiographical treatment of these controversial issues. 4. Thomas A. H. Scarborough, “The Bislands of Natchez: Sugar, Secession, and Strategies for Survival,” Journal of Mississippi History 58, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 37–38; Mack Swearingen, “Thirty Years of a Mississippi Plantation: Charles Whitmore of “Montpelier,” Journal of Southern History 1, no. 2 (May 1935): 198–211; Wendell Holmes Stephenson, “A Quarter-Century of a Mississippi Plantation: Eli J. Capell of ‘Pleasant Hill,’” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 23, no. 3 (December 1936): 355–374. 5. “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” August 1926, Gillespie Family Memoirs, UM, 2; Main, Story of the Marches, 111; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 135; Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 124. For more on the common people of the Confederacy, see Bell Irvin Wiley, The Plain People of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943). 6. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 145–147. 7. Joseph Miller Free, “The Ante-Bellum Theater of the Old Natchez Region,” Journal of Mississippi History 5, no. 1 (January 1943): 14–27. 8. For numerous false rumors, see Thomas A. Burditt Diary, July 16, 1864, and April 25 and 27, 1865, William A. Stone Papers, MDAH; “From the Yazoo,” Natchez Daily Courier, May 30, 1863; Jackson Daily Mississippian, June 16, 1864; OR, 1, 45, 2:761; Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, October 3 and 14, 1863, and March 7, May 27, and June 23, 1864, UNC (copies are also in the Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary at MSU); Jason Niles Diary, January 4, February 11, and March 26, 1864, UNC. For a modern examination of rumors, see Phillips, Diehard Rebels, 116–146. 9. J. D. Harris to Charles Clark, n.d., Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Military Telegrams, 1863–1865, Series 767, Box 953, MDAH; “Proceedings of Board of Police,” Fayette Gazette, November 14, 1862; Carroll County Board of Police Minutes, 1861–1865, 58, 91, 95, 523–524, 536, 538, 540; Lowndes County Board of Police Minutes, 1861–1865, 224, 226, 235–236; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 104; “Board of Police,” Fayette Gazette, October 3, 1862; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 11; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 10; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 95; Jason Niles Diary, November 4, 1862, UNC; Noxubee County Petition, 1863, UM. For more on the boards of police, see the individual county records at each county seat. These records are also on microfilm at MDAH. Not all counties have existing records due most likely to frequent fires at county courthouses. Two counties, Carroll and Lowndes, are cited and are primarily illustrative of the rest. Probably 90 percent of each board’s work dealt with local issues such as roads and bridges. 10. For examples of the paperwork, see “Schedule of Free Goods Introduced into the Confederate States of America,” May 18, 1861, Confederate States of America Customs Form, USM; “Entry of Merchandise,” May 21, 1861, Confederate States of America, Port of Holly Springs, Miss., 1861, USM; R. H. Forrester to D. Stewart, June 30, 1862, John M. Stone Papers, MDAH. See also various tax receipts, passes, and other forms of paperwork in the Ashley Family Collection, Raymond Stiles Family Papers, Mary C. Rambo Papers, McReynolds Papers, and James Scarborough Papers, all in MSU. 11. Unknown to “My Dear Friend,” October 16, 1862, J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, LC; John H. Aughey, The Iron Furnace: Or, Slavery and Secession (Philadelphia: William S. and Alfred Martien, 1863), 52; Beulah M. D’Olive Price, ed., “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton, 1860–1862,”

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NOTES Journal of Mississippi History 17, no. 3 (July 1955): 198. The citation in the full diary is April 29, 1862, Walter Alexander Overton Diary, MDAH; R. H. Forrester to D. Stewart, June 30, 1862, John M. Stone Papers, MDAH. 12. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 10; Josie Frazee Cappleman, “Local Incidents of the War between the States,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1901), 4:83; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Confederacy, 227; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 162; Winthrop D. Jordan, Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy: Revised Edition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). 13. “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 11; John N. Waddel Diary, December 22, 1862, LC; James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 134–135; Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 82; Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign, 38; Felix Walthall to sister, July 4, 1863, Felix Walthall Letter, USM. For more on substitutions, see Mary Elizabeth Massey, Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutions on the Southern Home Front (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1952). 14. “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 7; Undated Memorial to the Mississippi Delegation in the Confederate Congress, Confederate States of America, Congress, Papers, 1861–1865, DU. For more context on the Confederate salt issues, see Ella Lonn, Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy (New York: Neale, 1933). 15. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 10–11, 95; W. C. Turner to John J. Pettus, June 26, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH. 16. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 95, appendix, 187–189; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 155; Thomas H. Watts to Charles Clark, May 27, 1864, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, Box 949, MDAH. 17. Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 83; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 45; Rowland, Mississippi, 2:419. 18. “Provost Marshal’s Office Natchez”; Frank L. Riley, ed., “Diary of a Mississippi Planter, January 1, 1840 to April, 1863,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1909), 10:476; “Governor’s Message”; Main, Story of the Marches, 76. 19. Frances Harrison to Melchoir, January 26, 1865, Hoffa Papers, MSU; Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 80–81. 20. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 10, 96; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 6; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 116. 21. Riley, “Diary of a Mississippi Planter,” 472, 475, 478, 480. 22. Main, Story of the Marches, 272–273. 23. Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, June 27, 1864, UNC; Maud Morrow Brown, “The War Comes to College Hill,” Journal of Mississippi History 16, no. 1 (January 1954): 23–24. 24. Sid Champion to wife, May 18, 1863, Sydney S. Champion Papers, DU (the same Sydney S. Champion Papers are at the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield, Kennesaw, Georgia). Ironically, the home was destroyed by fire in August 1863. See “Descendant Clarifies Champion Hill History,” Jackson Daily News, May 24, 1984. For Champion Hill, see Timothy B. Smith, Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (New York: Savas Beatie, 2004). 25. Lizze to cousin, July 12, 1863, Matthew N. Love Papers, DU; “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 10; Fannie Lamar to B. A. Walthall, May 15, 1864, Fannie Lamar Letters, UM. For more on refugee life in the Confederacy, see Mary Elizabeth Massey, Refugee Life in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964).

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NOTES 26. Kate Briscoe Scholars, “Memoirs of Plantation Life,” David Todd Collection, UM, 10; John N. Waddel Diary, December 17 and 18, 1862, LC. 27. U. S. Grant to W. T. Sherman, May 3, 1863, U. S. Grant Papers, MDAH; Anne to Emma, June/July 1863, Shannon-Crutcher Family Papers, MDAH; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:258. 28. Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 83. 29. Brown, “War Comes to College Hill,” 23. 30. Allen C. Ashcraft, ed., “Mrs. Russell and the Battle of Raymond, Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 25, no. 1 (January 1963): 38–40. Perhaps Russell was convincing herself why her “loyal” slaves left her. 31. “The Siege of Vicksburg, and Some Personal Experiences Connected Therewith,” n.d., Ida Barlow Trotter Papers, MDAH. 32. Mary to Edwin, January 4, 1862, Miller Family Papers, UM; Chauncey E. Barton to sister, April 14, 1864, Chauncey E. Barton Letter, LC; “Interesting Correspondence,” Vicksburg Whig, n.d.; Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign, 68–69, 76–77, 81. 33. Howard T. Dimick, “Motives for the Burning of Oxford, Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 8, no. 3 (July 1946): 117–120; OR, 1, 39, 1:400; “The Burning of Oxford,” Oxford Falcon, November 23, 1865, found in Oxford, Mississippi, Collection, UM. 34. William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman: Written by Himself, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1875), 1:298; Hugh B. Ewing to wife, July 14, 1863, Hugh Boyle Ewing Letter, USM. 35. U. S. Grant to J. A. McClernand, May 13, 1863, U. S. Grant Papers, MDAH; Anne to Emma, June/July 1863, Shannon-Crutcher Family Papers, MDAH; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 1:340. 36. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 159; Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 201–204. 37. Emma Balfour Diary, May 19, 1863, MDAH; Sherman, Memoirs, 1:305; Hugh Lorrance to sister, February 16, 1863, George F. Davidson Papers, DU. 38. OR, 1, 32, 2:115; OR, 1, 32, 3:635. 39. Special Order 127, May 1, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Military Orders, 1862–1863, Series 769, Box 951, MDAH; Special Order 12, December 7, 1863, Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Order Book, 1863–1865, Series 770, Box 952, MDAH; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 78–81; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 126. 40. George Kline Shank Jr., “Meridian: A Mississippi City at Birth, during the Civil War, and in Reconstruction,” Journal of Mississippi History 26, no. 4 (November 1964): 276–277. 41. “Gen. Sherman’s Raid: A Woman’s Account of the Doings at Meridian,” New York Times, March 27, 1864; OR, 1, 32, 1:246; Shank, “Meridian,” 278. 42. “Gen. Sherman’s Raid”; Shank, “Meridian,” 281. 43. J. Whitner Kennedy, “The Life of The Reverend Benjamin Chase, As Recorded in His Own Hand, In a Two Volume Diary,” in Reverend J. Whitner Kennedy Manuscript, MDAH, 1, 9. 44. Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 202; Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 81. 45. Emma Balfour Diary, May 19, 1863, MDAH; Annie Louise Harris Broidrick, “A Recollection of Thirty Years Ago,” Annie Louise Harris Broidrick Collection, UNC, 15. 46. Emma Balfour Diary, May 20 and 23, 1863, MDAH. 47. Mary Loughborough, My Cave Life in Vicksburg: With Letters of Trial and Travel (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), 60–61. 48. For context on occupation, see Stephen V. Ash, “Poor Whites in the Occupied South, 1861–1865,” Journal of Southern History 57, no. 1 (February 1991): 39–62; Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). 49. “Soldier’s News-Letter,” 1, no. 2, May 17, 1862, Ship Island Newsletter, UM; Timothy B. Smith, “Civil War Corinth: At the Crossroads of History,” Mississippi History Now, October 2008.

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NOTES 50. Henry S. Clubb to Anne, August 24, 1863, Henry Clubb Collection, UM; Chauncey C. Barton to sister, April 14, 1864, Chauncey E. Barton Letter, LC; Peter F. Walker, Vicksburg: A People at War, 1860–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 201–222; Betty Robbins Davis, “Vicksburg: The Occupied City” (M.A. thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, 1978); Captain A. H. Robinson to J. C. Cox, October 1863, United States Army Office of Subsistence Report, USM. See various passes to and from Vicksburg in Wright Civil War Papers, MSU. 51. John Stanford Coussons, “The Federal Occupation of Natchez, Mississippi, 1863–1865” (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1958); Leslie Smithers, “Profit and Corruption in Civil War Natchez: A Case History of Union Occupation Government,” Journal of Mississippi History 64, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 17–32; Ralph North to Sergeant Prentiss Nutt, January 29, 1883, Ralph North Letter, USM; T. C. Prescott to unknown, December 11, 1864, Thomas C. Prescott Letter, USM. 52. “Proceedings of a General Court Martial, Natchez,” July 22, 1864, Winthrop Sargent Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (copies are also in the LC; Alexander McBride Compiled Service Record, NARA; William Thomas Compiled Service Record, NARA). 53. OR, 1, 24, 2:530–531; Andrew J. Keller to George W. Brent, July 4, 1864, George William Brent Papers, DU. James M. McPherson, in What They Fought For, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 15, has noted that he found much less evidence of the rich man’s war, poor man’s fight mentality among soldiers, which corresponds to the lack of that sentiment on the home front. At least in Mississippi, there appears to be very little evidence of that class construction, while the majority of the demoralization came as a result of disloyal citizens trading with the enemy. 54. Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 196, 199, 202. 55. George B. Wilkinson to D. C. Glenn, December 9, 1862, David Chalmers and Archibald Glenn Papers, MDAH; OR, 1, 17, 2:839; OR, 1, 24, 1:505. 56. OR, 1, 24, 3:932; OR, 1, 24, 2:685; James L. Alcorn to wife, August 19, 1863, Box 2, Folder 30, and James L. Alcorn to wife, August 17, 1863, Box 2, Folder 31, both in Percy L. Rainwater Collection, MDAH; Harris, “Autobiography,” 326–327. 57. Jefferson Davis to J. M. Howry, August 27, 1863, Charles Bowen Howry Papers, LC. 58. OR, 1, 26, 2:543; OR, 1, 32, 1:346; OR, 1, 32, 3:626. 59. OR, 1, 32, 3:634; OR, 1, 39, 2:583. 60. OR, 1, 39, 2:684; OR, 1, 39, 1:572; OR, 1, 39, 3:860, 899. 61. OR, 1, 49, 2:1287; Richard Taylor to G. W. Brent, February 17, 1865, and E. R. Holcomb to G. W. Brent, April 17, 1865, both in George William Brent Papers, DU. 62. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 104–105, 119; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), 135. 63. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 89–90; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 9. 64. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 119.

CHAPTER SEVEN 1. Sherman, Memoirs, 1:297; “Our Internal Foe,” Macon Beacon, April 16, 1862. 2. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi. For a modern, though limited in quantity, account of Unionism in Mississippi, see M. Shannon Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People’: Opposition to the Confederacy in Civil War Mississippi,” North and South 6, no. 4 (May 2003):

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NOTES 78–86. For a wider description, see Michael Shannon Mallard, “‘Faithful Found among the Faithless’: Popular Opposition to the Confederacy in Civil War Mississippi” (M.A. thesis, Mississippi State University, 2002). See also William W. Freehling, The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 3. Rowland, Mississippi, 2:415, 419; Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 78. 4. For context on disloyalty, see Georgia Lee Tatum, Disloyalty in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934). 5. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 214–245; Mary Floyd Sumners, “Politics in Tishomingo County, 1836–1860,” Journal of Mississippi History 28, no. 2 (May 1966): 151. 6. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 4; Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign, 68. 7. S. P. Chase to B. F. Flanders, February 6, 1864, William Newton Mercer Papers, DU; Rebecca M. Dresser, “Kate and John Minor: Confederate Unionists of Natchez,” Journal of Mississippi History 64, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 198–199. For more on the Minor family, see Rebecca M. Dresser, “The Minor Family of Natchez: A Case of Southern Unionism” (M.A. thesis, California State University, Northridge, June 2000). 8. Dresser, “Kate and John Minor,” 204–205. 9. Ibid., 189, 202–203. 10. Herbert H. Lang, “J. F. H. Claiborne at ‘Laurel Wood’ Plantation, 1853–1970,” Journal of Mississippi History 18, no. 1 (January 1956): 8–10. 11. Ibid., 10–13. 12. ORN, 1, 20:848; Lang, “J. F. H. Claiborne at ‘Laurel Wood’ Plantation,” 13, 15. 13. “Reform on the Subject of the Marriage & Parental Relations of Slaves,” January 17, 1865, James Adair Lyon Journals, Lyon Family Papers, MSU, 112; John K. Bettersworth, ed., “Mississippi Unionism: The Case of the Reverend James A. Lyon,” Journal of Mississippi History 1, no. 1 (January 1939): 37–38, 40, 46. 14. Bettersworth, “Mississippi Unionism,” 3, 45, 47. 15. Main, Story of the Marches, 105–106. For more on LeFlore, see James Taylor Carson, “Greenwood LeFlore: Southern Creole, Choctaw Chief,” Journal of Mississippi History 65, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 355–373. 16. Andrew Jackson Donelson to unknown, April 8, 1865, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LC; Mark R. Cheathem, “Slavery, Plantation Life, and Debt in Tennessee and Mississippi: The Example of Andrew Jackson Donelson,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 61 (2007): 50–53. For more on Donelson, see Mark Renfred Cheathem, “Republicanism, Self-interest, and Failure: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson, 1799–1871” (Ph.D. diss., Mississippi State University, 2002); Mark R. Cheathem, Old Hickory’s Nephew: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007). 17. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3:1343–1344; National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System; Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 83. 18. Michael B. Ballard and Thomas D. Cockrell, Chickasaw, a Mississippi Scout for the Union: The Civil War Memoir of Levi H. Naron as Recounted by R. W. Surby (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), x, 2, 27, 72, 144, 160–161. 19. Ibid., 167. 20. Percy Lee Rainwater, “Scouting on the Big Black, Or Taming the Yankee Lessees,” Box 5, Percy L. Rainwater Collection, MDAH. 21. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 178–192; Rainwater, “Scouting on the Big Black.” 22. Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 78–79, 82.

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NOTES 23. John N. Waddel Diary, December 18, 1862, LC. 24. W. C. Taylor to Thomas N. Wendel, March 18, 1863, Longstreet-Hinton Collection, UM; “From General Grant’s Army,” Memphis Daily Appeal, December 26, 1862, in Oxford, Mississippi—1862 Report from General Grant’s Army Camp, UM. 25. James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 131–132; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 110. For a Federal trader’s view of trade with Mississippians, see the four letters in the John C. Pedrick Papers, DU. For context on trade, see E. Merton Coulter, “Commercial Intercourse with the Confederacy in the Mississippi Valley, 1861–1865,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 5, no. 4 (March 1919): 377–395. 26. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 120; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 110. 27. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 110. 28. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 43–45. 29. “From General Grant’s Army”; Currie, “Freedmen at Davis Bend,” 122; OR, 1, 17, 1:83; OR, 1, 10, 1:857; Ben Earl Kitchens, Rosecrans Meets Price: The Battle of Iuka, Mississippi (Florence, Ala.: Thornwood Book Publishers, 1987), 159; Frank Moore, The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, With Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Events, Poetry, Etc., 8 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1863), 5:156; “Occupation of Corinth Miss.,” MDAH. 30. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 101–102. 31. For Alcorn, see Lillian A. Pereyra, James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966); James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 132. 32. James L. Alcorn to wife, October 5, 1861, James L. Alcorn Letter, MDAH. 33. Charles J. Swift, “James Lusk Alcorn,” James L. Alcorn Papers, MDAH, 16; James L. Alcorn Diary, March 5, 1863, MDAH; James L. Alcorn to wife, March 16, 1863, Box 2, Folder 30, and James L. Alcorn to wife, January 21, 1865, Box 2, Folder 33, both in Percy Lee Rainwater Collection, MDAH. 34. James L. Alcorn to wife, February 24 and March 16, 1863, Box 2, Folder 30, and James L. Alcorn to wife, March 22, 1864, Box 2, Folder 32, all in Percy Lee Rainwater Collection, MDAH; James L. Alcorn Diary, February 26, 1863, MDAH. 35. James L. Alcorn to wife, November 25 and December 18, 1862, Box 2, Folder 28, and James L. Alcorn to wife, February 8, 1865, Box 2, Folder 33, all in Percy Lee Rainwater Collection, MDAH; Pereyra, James Lusk Alcorn, 59, 62–63; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 62; Undated Memorial to the Mississippi Delegation in the Confederate Congress, Confederate States of America, Congress, Papers, 1861–1865, DU. 36. OR, 4, 2:856–857; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 6–11. 37. Unknown to John J. Pettus, May 10, 1863, Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 211–212. 38. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 102, 116; William L. Amonett to Dr. Ward, September 30, 1865, William L. Amonett Letter, MDAH. 39. OR, 1, 32, 3:633, 755; OR, 1, 39, 2:777. 40. Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy, 5; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 106, 112–113. 41. OR, 1, 45, 1:1246–1248. 42. OR, 1, 32, 3:755. 43. B. C. Duckworth to Charles Clark, June 14, 1864, and W. H. Howry to Charles Clark, February 8, 1864, both in Mississippi Governor, Charles Clark, Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865, Series 768, Box 949, MDAH; Alexander L. Bondurant, “Did Jones County Secede?”

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NOTES in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1898), 1:106; Goode Montgomery, “Alleged Secession of Jones County,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1904), 8:22; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 227, 235. For a modern account of Jones County, see Victoria E. Bynum, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 44. Bynum, Free State of Jones, 100–101, 104–105, 117–118. 45. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 106, 111. 46. Ibid., 102–103. 47. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 9; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 9; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 11. 48. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 104; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 205–207. 49. Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 106; OR, 1, 32, 3:632–633, 663. 50. OR, 1, 32, 3:662–663; OR, 1, 52, 2:657; H. Grady Howell, Going to Meet the Yankees: A History of the “Bloody Sixth” Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A. (Jackson, Miss.: Chickasaw Bayou Press, 1981), 210–216. 51. Howell, Going to Meet the Yankees, 210–216.

CHAPTER EIGHT 1. John P. Worthing to mother, June 28, 1863, John P. Worthing Letters, USM; Main, Story of the Marches, 176, 295; OR, 1, 49, 2:879; Power, “Black and Tan Convention,” 74; “Mississippi: Gov. Clark and His Legislature,” New York Times, June 4, 1865; Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, and Ken Burns, The Civil War: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 253. 2. For more on blacks in the Civil War, see James M. McPherson, ed., The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War of the Union (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965). By far, the major wartime emphasis on minorities was on women and blacks, but some attention was paid to Native Americans as well. There was some concern on the part of state officials with Native Americans, in particular an effort by the state to recruit Choctaw Indians for Confederate service. See “Petition in Favor of Recruiting Choctaw Indians,” n.d., Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH. 3. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi. 4. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860, iv, xiii, 595; James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 138; Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan, The Barber of Natchez (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954); Jonathan Beasley, “Blacks—Slave and Free— Vicksburg, 1850–1860,” Journal of Mississippi History 38, no. 1 (February 1976): 17; Nik Ribianszky, “‘She Appeared to Be Mistress of Her Own Actions, Free from the Control of Anyone’: PropertyHolding Free Women of Color in Natchez, Mississippi, 1779–1865,” Journal of Mississippi History 67, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 232–233. 5. James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 138. For more context on slave life, see Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). 6. OR, 1, 10, 1:795; OR, 1, 17, 2:604, 738; “List of Captured Slaves Forwarded to Provost Marshal at Meridian, Miss., by Provost Marshal at Jackson, Miss.,” August 29, 1864, Confederate Collection, Series 608, Box 398, MDAH. 7. OR, 1, 10, 2:192; OR, 1, 17, 2:60; OR, 1, 24, 1:437, 467; OR, 1, 24, 2:489, 506; OR, 1, 24, 3:875; OR, 1, 39, 1:109; John P. Worthing to mother, June 28, 1863, John P. Worthing Papers, USM.

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NOTES 8. Henry S. Clubb to Anne, December 21, 1862, Henry Clubb Collection, UM; OR, 1, 10, 1:858; OR, 1, 10, 2:192; OR, 1, 17, 1:139. 9. OR, 1, 17, 1:25, 651; OR, 1, 24, 1:48, 439. 10. OR, 1, 24, 1:460, 480; OR, 1, 24, 3:507. 11. Riley, “Diary of a Mississippi Planter,” 472; Fonsylvania Plantation Diary, May 30, 1863, MDAH. 12. Hugh Lorrance to sister, February 16, 1863, George F. Davidson Papers, DU; “Vandalism of Sherman and His Army,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, June 3, 1864; OR, 1, 39, 1:571; Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign, 53, 144–145, 151–152, 194; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage, 1967), 273; Sallie B. McCrae Diary, June 3, 1862, MSU; J. Russell to “My Dear Friend,” April 17, 1863, J. Russell Letter, LSU. 13. Hugh Lorrance to sister, February 16, 1863, George F. Davidson Papers, DU; Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 99. 14. Anne to Emma, June/July 1863, Shannon-Crutcher Family Papers, MDAH; Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, October 6, 1863, UNC; Hugh Lorrance to sister, February 16, 1863, George F. Davidson Papers, DU; Ashcraft, “Mrs. Russell,” 40; Main, Story of the Marches, 273–274; Kate Foster Diary, July 4, 1863, DU (a typescript copy of Kate Foster’s diary is at MDAH). 15. “Loyalty of Negroes,” Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 27, 1862; Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 4, 1861. 16. OR, 1, 17, 2:15, 113, 158–159, 396. 17. OR, 1, 24, 3:505; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 57. 18. Jim Barnett and H. Clark Burkett, “The Forks of the Road Slave Market at Natchez,” Journal of Mississippi History 63, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 186; James T. Currie, ed., “Freedmen at Davis Bend, April 1864,” Journal of Mississippi History 46, no. 2 (May 1984): 121, 123–124. 19. George N. Carruthers, “Incidents and Deductions from Army Life in the Southwest,” 1864, George North Carruthers Papers, LC; Joseph E. Brent, Occupied Corinth : The Contraband Camp and the First Alabama Infantry of African Descent, 1862–1864 (Corinth, Miss.: City of Corinth, 1995), 9–10, 14. For more on the Corinth camp, see Cam Walker, “Corinth: The Story of a Contraband Camp,” Civil War History 20, no. 1 (March 1974): 5–22. In 2004 the National Park Service built a new interpretive center at Corinth, with one of its main functions being the preservation and interpretation of the contraband site. 20. Brent, Occupied Corinth, 10–11, 13–14; “Letter from Corinth,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, June 20, 1863. 21. “Letter from Corinth.” 22. Ibid. 23. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3:1732; Brent, Occupied Corinth, 14. 24. OR, 1, 24, 3:505. 25. Ibid., 382, 584. For more on black troops, see Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: Free Press, 1990); Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956). 26. OR, 1, 17, 2:656; OR, 1, 24, 3:542; OR, 1, 32, 3:55; J. Russell to “My Dear Friend,” April 17, 1863, J. Russell Letter, LSU. 27. “Runaway in Jail,” Fayette Gazette, October 3, 1862; “Negro Dogs,” Jackson Daily Mississippian, November 14, 1861; Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, August 12, 1863, UM; “Price of Negroes,” Jackson Weekly Mississippian, March 18, 1863. For context on fear of slave rebellions, see Armstead L. Robinson, “In the Shadow of Old John Brown: Insurrection Anxiety and

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NOTES Confederate Mobilization, 1861–1863,” Journal of Negro History 65, no. 4 (Autumn 1980): 279–297; Davidson Burns McKibben, “Negro Slave Insurrections in Mississippi, 1800–1865,” Journal of Negro History 34, no. 1 (January 1949): 73–90; Jordan, Tumult and Silence. 28. OR, 1, 24, 1:234; OR, 1, 24, 3:505, 1044; Main, Story of the Marches, 298. 29. OR, 1, 32, 1:367, 385; Hugh B. Ewing to wife, July 14, 1863, Hugh Boyle Ewing Letter, USM. 30. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3:1343–1344, 1720–1721, 1732–1734. These figures are taken from the National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System. For more context, see David Slay, “Abraham Lincoln and the United States Colored Troops of Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 70, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 67–86. 31. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3:1213–1214, 1734. No numbers for the light batteries are available in the National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System, but there are for the regiment of U.S. Colored Troops into which they morphed as companies. An average of each is determined by dividing the total number of soldiers by the nine companies that made up the regiment. 32. Ibid., 3:997, 1214. 33. Ibid., 3:1213–1215, 1642–1644, 1736. These units were the Eighty-eighth Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops, the First Tennessee Regiment Heavy Artillery (African Descent), and the Memphis Light Battery (African Descent), all raised in Memphis; the First and Second Tennessee Regiments Infantry (African Descent), raised in LaGrange; the Third Louisiana Battery Light Artillery (African Descent), raised in Helena; the Eighth and Tenth Louisiana Regiments Infantry (African Descent), raised at Lake Providence; and the Eleventh Louisiana Regiment Infantry (African Descent) raised at Milliken’s Bend. 34. Ibid., 3:1213–1214, 1721, 1732. 35. George N. Carruthers, “Historic Record, 51st U.S. Cold. Infantry,” n.d., George North Carruthers Papers, LC. For a history of a similar Mississippi black regiment, see Edwin L. Hobart, Semi-history of a boy-veteran of the Twenty-eighth Regiment Illinois Infantry Volunteers, in a Black Regiment: A Diary of 28th Ill. from Organization to Veteranizing : History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry, with some closing reminiscences with the former, and a rounding out of my long service with the latter regiment: Some startling incidents of the great Civil War not heretofore found in histories and of interest to every soldier of the Western Army : Sultana disaster, explosion of Marshall’s Warehouse at Mobile, Ala., Chattanooga Campaign, Meridian Expedition with expedition from Yazoo City under Colonel Coats, and expedition from Memphis under General William Sooy Smith, itinerary of the 17th Army Corps with full report of General Marcelus M. Crocker, commanding Fourth Division (Denver: n.p., 1909). 36. George N. Carruthers, “Incidents and Deductions from Army Life in the Southwest,” 1864, George North Carruthers Papers, LC; Carruthers, “Historic Record.” 37. Carruthers, “Incidents and Deductions from Army Life”; George N. Carruthers Diary, January 16, 1865, and Regimental Monthly Reports, July 31, 1865, both in George North Carruthers Papers, LC; Carruthers, “Historic Record.” 38. Main, Story of the Marches, 78–243, 269; E. D. Osband to James B. McPherson, December 14, 1863, E. D. Osband Civil War Letter, MSU. 39. OR, 1, 32, 3:318; OR, 1, 52, 1:676; Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3:1720; Main, Story of the Marches, 190. 40. Foner, Reconstruction, 66–67. 41. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863, 81–87, 211–212; Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862, 119; Laws of the State of Mississippi

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NOTES Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, July, 1861, 55; “List of Captured Slaves Forwarded to Provost Marshal at Meridian, Miss, by Provost Marshal at Jackson, Miss.,” August 29, 1864, Confederate Collection, Series 608, Box 398, MDAH. 42. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862, 11; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 93. 43. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 94; James, “Mississippi Agriculture,” 138. 44. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 12; Bill G. Reid, “Confederate Opponents of Arming the Slaves, 1861–1865,” Journal of Mississippi History 22, no. 4 (October 1960): 249–270. See also Bruce Levine, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 45. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 12–13. 46. Ibid., 13. 47. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: October, November, and December Session of 1865, appendix, 44. 48. Ibid.

CHAPTER NINE 1. Brown, “War Comes to College Hill,” 30. 2. Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, June 11, 1864, UNC; Giselle Roberts, “‘Our Cause’: Southern Women and Confederate Nationalism in Mississippi and Louisiana,” Journal of Mississippi History 62, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 106. 3. For more on women in the Civil War, see Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); George C. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). For a narrower view of women in Mississippi and Louisiana, see Giselle Roberts, The Confederate Belle (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003). 4. Roberts, “‘Our Cause,’” 109–110; Susan C. Young to husband, February 8, 1863, William Humphreys Young Letters, MSU. See also J. M. Porter to J. E. Hagood, 1864, Crigler Collection, MSU; Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 144. 5. Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 86; Young Ladies of Pontotoc to H. R. Miller, October 15, 1861, Miller Family Papers, MDAH. 6. Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 199; Sallie B. McCrae Diary, April 9, 1862, MSU; Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 107; Amanda Worthington Diary, February 11, 1862, UNC. There were other accusations of travelers being covert operators. The people of Jackson took Englishman Fremantle as a spy. 7. Rachel Bell to daughter, July 1862, Rachel Bell Letter, MSU; George Alphonso Gibbs, “Recollections of the Spring and Summer of 1861,” ed. Lawrence Lee, Journal of Mississippi History 26, no. 1 (February 1964): 50; Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 200; Malinda Chambers to sister, April 26, 1861, Matthew N. Love Papers, DU.

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NOTES 8. Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, February 2, 1863, UM; Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 4, 1861; Canton American Citizen, July 6, 1861; Sallie B. McCrae Diary, May 8, 1862, MSU; Malinda Chambers to sister, October 27, 1861, Matthew N. Love Papers, DU. 9. Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 83, 86; Kate Foster Diary, November 15, 1863, DU. The literature surrounding the changing world of women and the blurring of gender roles is vast. See Clinton and Silber, Divided Houses; Rable, Civil Wars; Faust, Mothers of Invention; Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress (New York: Pantheon, 1984); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Joan E. Cashin, ed., A Woman’s War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). 10. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 100; Ashcraft, “Mrs. Russell,” 40; “Gen. Sherman’s Raid.” 11. Kate Foster Diary, September 20, 1863, DU; Louisa Henry to “Ma,” March 28, 1864, ClarkBoddie Family Papers, MDAH. 12. Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, June 10, 1864, UNC; Mrs. W. F. Smith, “Notes and Documents: The Yankees in New Albany: Letter of Elizabeth Jane Beach, July 29, 1864,” Journal of Mississippi History 2, no. 1 (January 1940): 42–48. 13. Chauncey E. Barton to sister, April 14, 1864, Chauncey E. Barton Letter, LC. 14. “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 11; “A Praiseworthy Act,” Canton American Citizen, June 12, 1863; Main, Story of the Marches, 286. 15. Sarah Fitch Poates Diary, March 26, 1865, Asa Fitch Papers, CU. 16. Sophie Collins to mother, June 9, 1863, Emmett L. Ross Papers, MSU; Lemuella Brickell Fontaine Diary, August 11 and 15, 1863, Edward Fontaine Papers, MSU. 17. Kate Foster Diary, September 20 and November 15, 1863, DU; Amanda Worthington Diary, October 11, 1864, UNC; Percy L. Rainwater, ed., “Notes and Documents: The Civil War Letters of Cordelia Scales,” Journal of Mississippi History 1, no. 1 (July 1939): 174. 18. Kate Foster Diary, July 18, 1865, DU; Roberts, “‘Our Cause,’” 117–119, 121; Lizze to cousin, July 12, 1863, and Lizze to cousin, September 12, 1863, both in Matthew N. Love Papers, DU; Mary M. Smith to John J. Pettus, June 30, 1863, and Unknown to Capt. Webb, n.d., both in Mississippi Governor, John J. Pettus, Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863, Series 757, MDAH. For an opposing viewpoint regarding women’s decline in will, see Gallagher, Confederate War, 75–81. 19. For more on Sears, see Karlem Riess, “Claudius Wistar Sears, Soldier and Educator,” Journal of Mississippi History 11, no. 2 (April 1949): 123–137; Claudius Wistar Sears Diaries, MDAH. 20. Alice Gray Sears Diary, March 29–April 16, 1861, Sears-Featherston Sword Research Collection, MDAH. 21. Ibid., March 29 and 30, and April 16, 1861. 22. Ibid., April 22, May 27, and June 9, 1861. 23. Ibid., July 21, August 29, and December 25, 1861, January 11, April 23, September 15, and December 25, 1862, and January 5 and September 17, 1863. 24. Ibid., June 5, 1863, and January 1865. 25. Finding Aid, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH; 1860 Census Slave Schedules, Yazoo County, 497–498. 26. Jane Clark Pickett to sister, February 1, 1861, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH. 27. Jane Clark Pickett to sister, January 6 and December 25, 1862, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH. 28. Jane Clark Pickett to sister, January 6, 1862, and January 31, 1863, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH.

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NOTES 29. Jane Clark Pickett to mother, July 25, 1863, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Jane Clark Pickett to mother, September 23, 1863, Clark-Boddie Family Papers, MDAH. 33. Ibid. 34. Sarah Fitch Poates Diary, November 27, 1864, Asa Fitch Papers, CU; “May Agnes Marston, the Lady of the Diary or the Little Yankee Goes South,” Asa Fitch Papers, CU; Introduction to Sarah Fitch Poates Diary, Asa Fitch Papers, CU; 1860 Census Slave Schedules, Hinds County, 233. 35. Sarah Fitch Poates Diary, May 29–31, 1865, Asa Fitch Papers, CU. 36. Ibid., November 2, 1863, April 26, 1864, and April 15 and June 3, 1865. 37. Ibid., July 8, 1863, and May 22, 1864. 38. Ibid., July 7 and December 24, 1863, and March 4, April 7, and May 9, 1865. 39. Ibid., March 19, 1864, and March 8, 17, and 26, 1865. 40. Ibid., February 4–6, 1864. 41. Ibid., August 14, 1864. 42. Ibid., August 28 and 30, September 3, 4, and 18, December 27, 1864, and April 21, May 5, and July 16, 1865. 43. Bradley G. Bond, ed., Mississippi: A Documentary History (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 117; Rainwater, “Notes and Documents,” 169–181; Cordelia Lewis Scales Letters, MDAH; Cordelia Lewis Scales Gray, Dear Darling Loulie: Letters of Cordelia Lewis Scales to Loulie W. Irby during and after the War between the States, ed. Martha Neville Lumpkin (Clarksville, Tenn.: Ben Gray Lumpkin, 1980). 44. Rainwater, “Notes and Documents,” 170. 45. Ibid., 173–174. 46. Ibid., 175. 47. Ibid., 176. 48. Ibid., 177–179. 49. Ibid., 176, 179. 50. Ibid., 171, 173, 180–181. 51. Kennedy, “Life of the Reverend Benjamin Chase,” 10; Jefferson Davis to J. M. Howry, August 27, 1863, Charles Bowen Howry Papers, LC; Kate Foster Diary, July 18, 1865, DU; Roberts, “‘Our Cause,’” 117–119, 121; Lizze to cousin, July 12, 1863, and Lizze to cousin, September 12, 1863, both in Matthew N. Love Papers, DU. 52. Lemuella Brickell Fontaine Diary, May 13, 1865, Edward Fontaine Papers, MSU; Amanda Worthington Diary, April 30, 1862, UNC. 53. Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 84; Silver, “Breakdown of Morale,” 102, 110, 113; OR, 1, 32, 3:633. 54. For more on slave women, see Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985); Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 55. Beasley, “Blacks,” 17; Ribianszky, “‘She Appeared to be Mistress of Her Own Actions,’” 232–233. 56. Jacobs, Master of Doro Plantation, 115; “Children in the Army,” Corinth Chanticleer, June 12, 1863. For context, see James Marten, “Fatherhood in the Confederacy,” Journal of Southern History 63, no. 2 (May 1997): 269–292; James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

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NOTES 57. Walter M. Jones, “Growing Up in the Flatwoods: Jack Smith’s Memories of the 1860s,” Journal of Mississippi History 42, no. 2 (May 1980): 145–146. 58. Price, “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton,” 201; Belle Strickland Diary, July 25, 1864, UM; “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 9. 59. Brown, “War Comes to College Hill,” 23–25. 60. Shank, “Meridian,” 277. 61. Terrence J. Winschel, Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign (Mason City, Iowa: Savas, 1999), 152–154; Loughborough, My Cave Life in Vicksburg, 91–92; Terrence J. Winschel, Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, Vol. 2 (New York: Savas Beatie, 2006), 93–114. 62. N. B. M. to friend, 1861, Malloy Papers, MSU; Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, March 26, 1863, UM. 63. Cappleman, “Local Incidents,” 80–81. 64. Loulie to husband, May 17, 1863, John Oakley Family Papers, MSU; Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, July 7 and 10, 1863, UM.

CHAPTER TEN 1. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 124. 2. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 267–350. 3. Statistics of the United States (Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866), 418–419; Margaret DesChamps Moore, “Religion in Mississippi in 1860,” Journal of Mississippi History 22, no. 4 (October 1960): 223–238; Francis Allen Cabaniss and James Allen Cabaniss, “Religion in AnteBellum Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 6, no. 4 (October 1944): 191–224; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 293–294; Diocese of Mississippi, Convention Journal of the Thirty-Fifth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Mississippi. Held in Christ Church, Holly Springs, April 25, 26 and 27, 1861 (Jackson: Mississippian Book and Job Office, 1861). For a modern overview of religion in Mississippi, see Randy J. Sparks, Religion in Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001). 4. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 135–136; James W. Silver, ed., Mississippi in the Confederacy: As Seen in Retrospect (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 223; Edward R. Crowther, “Mississippi Baptists, Slavery, and Secession, 1806–1861,” Journal of Mississippi History 56, no. 2 (May 1994): 129–148; G. W. Bachman Journal, UM, 16; J. L. Boyd Sr., “History of the Baptist in Rankin County,” Journal of Mississippi History 12, no. 3 (July 1950): 162– 168; Walter B. Posey, “The Baptists and Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” Journal of Negro History 41, no. 2 (April 1956): 117–130. 5. George A. Smythe to John J. Pettus, March 16, 1863, and George A. Smythe Exemption, June 22, 1864, both in George A. Smythe Papers, MDAH (copies of Smythe’s correspondence and exemption are in L. E. Nelson Collection, MSU); G. W. Bachman Journal, n.d., UM, 12; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 127, 138–142. For a memoir of an army chaplain, see Thomas W. Caskey, Caskey’s Last Book: Containing an Autobiography Sketch of His Ministerial Life, With Essays and Sermons (Nashville, Tenn.: Messenger, 1896). 6. M. J. Blackwell to brother, February 20, 1862, Margaret E. Blackwell Papers, UNC; Nash K. Burger and Charlotte Capers, “Episcopal Clergy of Mississippi, 1790–1940,” Journal of Mississippi History 8, no. 2 (April 1946): 59–66. 7. Charlotte Capers, ed., “The Civil War Journal of Bishop William Mercer Green,” Journal of Mississippi History 8, no. 3 (July 1946): 141, 143–144.

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NOTES 8. Ibid., 143–144. 9. G. W. Bachman Journal, n.d., UM, 11, 14, 16, 19. 10. Bettersworth, “Mississippi Unionism,” 37–52; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 288–289; Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 82; Aughey, Iron Furnace, 5–6; OR, 1, 15:738; Daniel B. Chesebrough, “Dissenting Clergy in Confederate Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 55, no. 2 (May 1993): 119. 11. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 298. 12. Capers, “Civil War Journal of Bishop William Mercer Green,” 140; G. W. Bachman Journal, n.d., UM, 16; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 138. 13. Sparks, Religion in Mississippi, 119–123; Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 200–201, 263. For a broader look at supporters of slavery in the South, see Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988). 14. John M. Anderson Pocket Diary, December 7, 1862, UM; Jefferson Davis to “My Dear Madam,” July 18, 1863, William R. Cannon Papers, LC; Vicksburg Daily Whig, April 23, 1863; Loulie to A. W. Feemster, September 23, 1863, Oakley Papers, MSU; Lizze to cousin, September 12, 1863, Matthew N. Love Papers, DU; Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, January 19, 1863, UM. 15. Smith, “Notes and Documents,” 43; Kate Foster Diary, September 20, 1863, and July 18, 1865, DU. 16. Brown, “War Comes to College Hill,” 27; Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary, March 27, 1863, UM; M. J. Blackwell to brother, February 20, 1862, Margaret E. Blackwell Papers, UNC. 17. M. J. Blackwell to sister, July 15 and 27, 1863, Margaret E. Blackwell Papers, UNC; Rachel Bell to daughter, July 1862, Rachel Bell Letter, MSU; M. J. Blackwell to brother, October 31, 1862, Margaret E. Blackwell Papers, UNC; Kate Foster Diary, July 9 and September 20, 1863, DU. 18. Amanda Worthington Diary, February 27, 1862, UNC; G. W. Bachman Journal, n.d., UM, 11; “A Day of Fasting and Prayer,” Jackson Weekly Mississippian, November 12, 1861; Jason Niles Diary, March 24 and December 10, 1863, UNC; Lemuella Brickell Fontaine Diary, August 18, 1864, Edward Fontaine Papers, MSU; Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary, April 8, 1864, UNC; Thomas A. Burditt Diary, November 16, 1864, William A. Stone Papers, MDAH. 19. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 281–283. 20. G. W. Bachman Journal, n.d., UM, 15–16; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 128, 138. 21. R. Paine to Charles Clark, December 13, 1864, Charles Clark and Family Papers, MDAH; Nita Kothern Pyburn, “Public Schools in Mississippi before 1860,” Journal of Mississippi History 21, no. 2 (April 1959): 130. This apathy toward education was of course not the case regarding military colleges in the state. 22. Statistics of the United States, 505–507. 23. Welsh, “Makeshifts of the War between the States,” 111; Edward Mayes, History of Education in Mississippi (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), 282; Pyburn, “Public Schools in Mississippi,” 130. 24. Clifford C. Norse, “School Life of Amanda Worthington,” Journal of Mississippi History 34, no. 2 (May 1972): 109–114; “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 12. 25. “Boys School,” Macon Daily Clarion Extra, April 2, 1864; “Who Has Children to Educate?” Jackson Daily Mississippian, November 14, 1861; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 128; Welsh, “Makeshifts of the War between the States,” 111; Sarah Fitch Poates Diary, November 19 and December 1, 1863, and September 12, 1864, Asa Fitch Papers, CU. 26. Belle Strickland Diary, January 5 and March 29, 1865, UM; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 128–129.

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NOTES 27. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864, 7–8; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865, 8–9. 28. Mayes, History of Education in Mississippi, 35, 51, 63, 87; “From General Grant’s Army”; Charles Hillman Brough, “Historic Clinton,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1903), 7:297, 306. See also David G. Sansing, Making Haste Slowly: The Troubled History of Higher Education in Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990). 29. Mayes, History of Education in Mississippi, 151–158; Mallard, “‘I Had No Comfort to Give the People,’” 80; “From General Grant’s Army”; Burton N. Harrison to sister, September 13, 1864, Burton Norvell Harrison Papers, LC; F. A. P. Barnard to E. W. Hilgard, April 15, 1861, Jacob Thompson to F. A. P. Barnard, September 9, 1861, and various military passes from February to June 1862, all in F. A. P. Barnard Papers, Columbia University (copies of the Barnard Papers are at UM). See also Sansing, University of Mississippi, 106–124. For more on Barnard, see F. A. P. Barnard, “Autobiographical Sketch of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard,” in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1912), 12:107–121. 30. Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 128. 31. Anne to Emma, June/July 1863, Shannon-Crutcher Family Papers, MDAH; Fulkerson, Civilian’s Recollections, 129; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 329–330, 336, 339. For more on the Southern press, see J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970). 32. Natchez Courier, January 11 and February 13, 1861; Jackson Daily Mississippian, April 8, 1863; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863, 99; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 59, 209. 33. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 329, 332–333, 339; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Civil War, 204, 330. 34. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 124; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 267–270. 35. Statistics of the United States, 505, 508, 510. 36. Charles Clark to F. A. Whiting, January 6, 1865, Executive Journals, 1817–1887, Charles Clark, Series 758, MDAH; “List of Furniture Burned in the Dwelling House at Bowling Green”; Jason Niles Diary, January 7 and July 29, 1863, and January 7 and 13, May 26, and April 26, 1864, UNC. 37. Charles F. Heartman, “Mississippi Copyright Entries, 1850–1870,” Journal of Mississippi History 2, no. 2 (April 1940): 79–87. 38. Ibid., 82–88. 39. “Recollections of Letitia Dabney Miller,” 19; Bettersworth, Mississippi in the Civil War, 314; “The Strawberry Festival,” Natchez Courier, June 2, 1863; Laura D. S. Sturdivant, “The Development of the Lyceum Movement in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 31, no. 3 (August 1969): 187–201; “From General Grant’s Army.” 40. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 7, 277–278; Ben E. Bailey, “Music in Slave Era Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 54, no. 1 (February 1992): 29–58. For more on music, see Richard B. Harwell, Confederate Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950). 41. Patti Carr Black, Art in Mississippi, 1720–1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 107–108. 42. Ibid., 109–111. For more on Mississippi photography, see Roberts and Moneyhon, Portraits of Conflict.

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NOTES 43. Timothy B. Smith, The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008), 14–15; Black, Art in Mississippi, 110–112. 44. See the extensive discussion of architecture before and after the war in Black, Art in Mississippi. Note the lack of any description of wartime architecture. 45. Boman, “City of the Old South,” 1–32.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY MANUSCRIPTS Columbia University F. A. P. Barnard Papers Cornell University Asa Fitch Papers Duke University George William Brent Papers Sydney S. Champion Papers Confederate States of America, Congress, Papers, 1861–1865 George F. Davidson Papers Kate Foster Diary James Harlan Papers Matthew N. Love Papers Lucas-Ashley Papers W. M. McKinney Papers James Meagher Papers William Newton Mercer Papers Joseph Palmer Papers John C. Pedrick Papers James M. Willcox Papers Illinois State Historical Library John P. Davis Papers Library of Congress Chauncey E. Barton Letter William R. Cannon Papers George North Carruthers Papers J. F. H. Claiborne Papers Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers Burton Norvell Harrison Papers Charles Bowen Howry Papers Winthrop Sargent Papers Earl Van Dorn Papers John Newton Waddel Diary Louisiana State University Henry Watkins Allen Letter

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BIBLIOGRAPHY J. Burruss McGehee Papers George G. Meade Letter Mississippi Confederate Defense Agreement Mississippi Slave Document J. Russell Letter Massachusetts Historical Society Winthrop Sargent Papers Mississippi Department of Archives and History James L. Alcorn Diary James L. Alcorn Letter William L. Amonett Letter Luther S. Baechtel Diary Emma Balfour Diary William R. Barksdale Papers Boddie Family Papers Carroll County Board of Police Minutes, 1861–1865 David Chalmers and Archibald Glenn Papers Charles Clark and Family Papers Clark-Boddie Family Papers J. P. Coleman Manuscript Confederate Collection Davis-Harris Letters Stephen Duncan Family Papers Fonsylvania Plantation Diary Kate Foster Diary Ulysses S. Grant Papers Whitfield Harrington Papers Eugene W. Hilgard Papers Annie E. Jacobs Manuscript Reverend J. Whitner Kennedy Manuscript Lowndes County Board of Police Minutes, 1861–1865 Bettie Black Mayo Diary Miller Family Papers W. E. Montgomery Papers Samuel Timothy Nicholson Papers Occupation of Corinth Miss. J. A. Orr Papers Walter Alexander Overton Diary Susan Ann Ragland Hewell Potts Pettus Diaries Power Family Papers James L. Power Papers Percy L. Rainwater Collection Percy L. Rainwater Papers W. A. Rorer Letters Cordelia Lewis Scales Letters Claudius Wistar Sears Diaries Sears-Featherston Sword Research Collection Shannon-Crutcher Family Papers

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BIBLIOGRAPHY George A. Smythe Papers State Government Records Adjutant General’s Correspondence Charles Clark Correspondence and Papers, 1863–1865 Charles Clark Military Telegrams, 1863–1865 Charles Clark Order Book, 1863–1865 Executive Journals, 1817–1887 House Journal, March and April, 1864 Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Macon, March and April 1864 Minutes of the Military Board Papers of the Military Board, 1861–1863 John J. Pettus Correspondence and Papers, 1859–1863 John J. Pettus Military Orders, 1862–1863 Statistical Table Concerning Data on Select Cavalry, Artillery, and Infantry Units, 1865 John M. Stone Papers William A. Stone Papers Substitutes and Deserters Ida Barlow Trotter Papers Subject Files Bankston Civil War Economy M. D. Haynes Mississippi State University Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary Ashley Family Collection Rachel Bell Letter Calhoun-Kincannon-Orr Family Papers Tom White Crigler Collection Edward D. Edwards Family Papers Edward Fontaine Papers Hobbs Family Papers Hoffa Papers Lyon Family Papers Malloy Papers Sallie B. McCrae Diary McReynolds Papers L. E. Nelson Collection John Oakley Family Papers E. D. Osband Civil War Letter Mary C. Rambo Papers Emmett L. Ross Papers James Scarborough Papers Thompson B. Shaw-McCallum Papers Thompson B. Shaw-McKell Papers Raymond Stiles Family Papers Daniel Williams Family Papers Wright Civil War Papers

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BIBLIOGRAPHY William Humphreys Young Letters National Archives and Records Administration 1860 Census Slave Schedules RG 109—War Department Collection of Confederate Records Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms RG 217—Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury Records of the Land, Files, and Miscellaneous Division RG 233—Records of the United States House of Representatives Records of Committees Relating to Claims Compiled Service Records Alexander McBride J. F. Pierce William Thomas State Historical Society of Iowa Sewall S. Farwell Papers University of Mississippi Jennie and Lucia Adams Collection Aldrich-Treadwell Collection John M. Anderson Pocket Diary G. W. Bachman Journal F. A. P. Barnard Papers Broadside Elizabeth Christie Brown Diary Josiah A. P. Campbell Collection A. M. Clayton Letter Henry Clubb Collection Ray Fulton Collection Gillespie Family Memoirs E. E. Holman Letter Fannie Lamar Letters Longstreet-Hinton Collection Miller Family Papers Noxubee County Petition Oxford, Mississippi Collection Oxford, Mississippi—1862 Report from General Grant’s Army Camp Ship Island Newsletter Josiah M. Stephenson Collection Belle Strickland Diary David Todd Collection Absalom West Collection University of North Carolina—Southern Historical Collection Samuel Andrew Agnew Diary Margaret E. Blackwell Papers Annie Louise Harris Broidrick Collection J. F. H. Claiborne Papers Alexander Clayton, “The Secession Convention” D. C. Glenn, “Memoranda”

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Francis Terry Leak Papers Jason Niles Diary Amanda Worthington Diary University of Southern Mississippi Confederate States of America, Port of Holly Springs, Miss., 1861 Confederate States of America Customs Form Hugh Boyle Ewing Letter Ralph North Letter Thomas C. Prescott Letter Southern Railroad Company Letter United States Army Office of Subsistence Report Felix Walthall Letter John P. Worthing Letters University of Texas James J. Kirkpatrick Diary

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Maud Morrow. “The War Comes to College Hill.” Journal of Mississippi History 16, no. 1 (January 1954): 22–30. Capers, Charlotte, ed. “The Civil War Journal of Bishop William Mercer Green.” Journal of Mississippi History 8, no. 3 (July 1946): 136–145. Cappleman, Josie Frazee. “Local Incidents of the War between the States.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, 4:79–87. Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1901. Caskey, Thomas W. Caskey’s Last Book: Containing an Autobiography Sketch of His Ministerial Life, With Essays and Sermons. Nashville, Tenn.: Messenger, 1896. Chambers, William P. “My Journal.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Centenary Series, 5:221–386. Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1925. Condensed Proceedings of the Southern Convention Held at Nashville, Tennessee, June, 1850. Jackson, Miss.: Fall and Marshall, Printers, 1850. Consolidated Index of Claims Reported by the Commissioners of Claims to the House of Representatives from 1871 to 1880. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892. Crist, Lynda Lasswell, ed. The Papers of Jefferson Davis. 11 vols. to date. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971–2008. Currie, James T., ed. “Freedmen at Davis Bend, April 1864.” Journal of Mississippi History 46, no. 2 (May 1984): 120–129. Darst, W. Maury, ed. “The Vicksburg Diary of Mrs. Alfred Ingraham: May 2–June 13, 1863.” Journal of Mississippi History 44, no. 2 (May 1982): 148–179. Davis, Reuben. Recollections of Mississippi and Mississippians. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890. “Descendants of J. F. Pierce.” N.p.: n.p., n.d. Diocese of Mississippi. Convention Journal of the Thirty-fifth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Mississippi. Held in Christ Church, Holly Springs, April 25, 26 and 27, 1861. Jackson: Mississippian Book and Job Office, 1861. Fremantle, Arthur J. L. Three Months in the Southern States: April–June, 1863. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1863. French, Samuel G. Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French. Nashville, Tenn.: Confederate Veteran, 1901. Fulkerson, Horace S. A Civilian’s Recollections of the War between the States. Ed. P. L. Rainwater. Baton Rouge, La.: Otto Claitor, 1939. Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. 2 vols. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885–1886. Gibbs, George Alphonso. “Recollections of the Spring and Summer of 1861.” Ed. Lawrence Lee. Journal of Mississippi History 26, no. 1 (February 1964): 47–55. Gray, Cordelia Lewis Scales. Dear Darling Loulie: Letters of Cordelia Lewis Scales to Loulie W. Irby during and after the War between the States. Ed. Martha Neville Lumpkin. Clarksville, Tenn.: Ben Gray Lumpkin, 1980. Halsell, Willie D. “A Country Merchant’s Stock of Goods in 1860.” Journal of Mississippi History 12, no. 1 (January 1950): 46–48. Harris, Wiley P. “Autobiography.” In Dunbar Rowland, Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798–1935. Jackson, Miss.: Harderman Bros., 1935. Harwell, Richard B., ed. Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. Hobart, Edwin L. Semi-history of a boy-veteran of the Twenty-eighth Regiment Illinois Infantry Volunteers, in a Black Regiment: A Diary of 28th Ill. from Organization to Veteranizing: History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry, with some closing reminiscences with the former, and a rounding out of my long service with the latter regiment: Some startling

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BIBLIOGRAPHY incidents of the great Civil War not heretofore found in histories and of interest to every soldier of the Western Army : Sultana disaster, explosion of Marshall’s Warehouse at Mobile, Ala., Chattanooga Campaign, Meridian Expedition with expedition from Yazoo City under Colonel Coats, and expedition from Memphis under General William Sooy Smith, itinerary of the 17th Army Corps with full report of General Marcelus M. Crocker, commanding Fourth Division. Denver: n.p., 1909. Jacobs, Annie Eliza. The Master of Doro Plantation: An Epic of the Old South. Columbus, Miss.: AAA Printing Word Processing, 2002. Jones, Walter M. “Growing Up in the Flatwoods: Jack Smith’s Memories of the 1860s.” Journal of Mississippi History 42, no. 2 (May 1980): 145–151. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Called Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, July and August, 1861. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: At a Regular Session Thereof, Held in the City of Jackson, November and December, 1861, and January, 1862. Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1862. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session. Jackson, Miss.: Ethelbert Barksdale, 1860. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Columbus, February and March, 1865. Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1865. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, at Macon, August, 1864. Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1864. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: Called Session, January 1861. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: December Session of 1862, and November Session of 1863. Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1864. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi: October, November, and December Session of 1865. Jackson, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1866. Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi, Called Session, January, 1861. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi at a Called Session Thereof in the City of Jackson. Jackson: E. Barksdale, 1861. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in January, 1861, With an Appendix. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Journal of the State Convention and Ordinances and Resolutions Adopted in March, 1861, With an Appendix. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Kennedy, Joseph C. G. Population of the United States in 1860: Compiled From the Original Returns of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called and Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Jackson and Columbus, Dec. 1862 and Nov. 1863. Selma, Ala.: Cooper and Kimball, 1864. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Columbus, February and March, 1865. Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1865. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in Macon, August, 1864. Meridian, Miss.: J. J. Shannon, 1864. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, January, 1861, Constitution Revised. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861. Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Called Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, July, 1861. Jackson, Miss.: E. Barksdale, 1861.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature Held in the City of Jackson, November and December 1861, and January, 1862. Jackson, Miss.: Cooper and Kimball, 1862. Loughborough, Mary. My Cave Life in Vicksburg: With Letters of Trial and Travel. New York: D. Appleton, 1864. Main, Edward M. The Story of the Marches, Battles and Incidents of the Third United States Cavalry: A Fighting Regiment in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–5. With Official Orders and Reports Relating Thereto, Compiled from the Rebellion Records. Louisville, Ky.: Globe, 1908. Manufactures of the United States in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865. Moore, Frank. The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, With Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Events, Poetry, Etc. 8 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1863. The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. 30 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894–1922. Orders of the Military Board of the State of Mississippi. Jackson: Mississippi Book and Job Printing Office, 1861. Power, James L. “The Black and Tan Convention.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, 3:73–83. Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1900. ———. Proceedings of the Mississippi State Convention, Held January 7th to 26th, A.D. 1861. Including the Ordinances, as Finally Adopted, Important Speeches, and a List of Members, Showing the Postoffice, Profession, Nativity, Politics, Age, Religious Preference, and Social Relations of Each. Jackson, Miss.: Power and Cadwallader, Book and Job Printers, 1861. Price, Beulah M. D’Olive, ed. “Excerpts from Diary of Walter A. Overton, 1860–1862.” Journal of Mississippi History 17, no. 3 (July 1955): 191–204. Rainwater, Percy L., ed. “Notes and Documents: The Civil War Letters of Cordelia Scales.” Journal of Mississippi History 1, no. 1 (July 1939): 169–181. Rietti, John C. Military Annals of Mississippi: Military Organizations Which Entered the Service of the Confederate States of America from the State of Mississippi. N.p.: n.p., 1895. Riley, Frank L., ed. “Diary of a Mississippi Planter, January 1, 1840 to April, 1863.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, 10:305–481. Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1909. Russell, William Howard. My Diary North and South. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863. Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman: Written by Himself. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1875. Silver, James W., ed. “The Breakdown of Morale in Central Mississippi in 1864: Letters of Judge Robert S. Hudson.” Journal of Mississippi History 16, no. 2 (April 1954): 99–120. ———, ed. Mississippi in the Confederacy: As Seen in Retrospect. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961. Smith, Mrs. W. F. “Notes and Documents: The Yankees in New Albany: Letter of Elizabeth Jane Beach, July 29, 1864.” Journal of Mississippi History 2, no. 1 (January 1940): 42–48. Statistics of the United States (Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866. The Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America, Commencing with the First Session of the First Congress, 1862. Richmond, Va.: R. M. Smith, 1862. The Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America, Passed at the Second Session of the First Congress, 1862. Richmond, Va.: R. M. Smith, 1862.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Tilley, Nannie M., ed. “Letter of Judge Alexander M. Clayton Relative to Confederate Courts in Mississippi.” Journal of Southern History 6 (1940): 392–401. Walker, Francis A. A Compendium of the Ninth Census (June 1, 1870) Compiled Pursuant to a Concurrent Resolution of Congress and Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872. Woods, Thomas H. “A Sketch of the Mississippi Secession Convention of 1861,—Its Membership and Work.” In Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, ed. Franklin L. Riley, 6:91–104. Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1902. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1891.

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WEB SITES National Park Service Civil War Soldier and Sailor System, http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss.

250

INDEX A. O. Tyler, 50 Aberdeen, Mississippi, 53, 109, 161, 185 Adams, B. B., 105 Adams, John, 12 Adams, William Wirt, 13, 63, 165 Adams County, 126, 128 Adams Troop, 128 Adjutant General of Mississippi, 34, 52, 54–55 African Americans, 4, 8, 62, 102, 143–60, 176, 182, 197 Alabama, ix, 3, 16–17, 22, 28, 39, 77, 81–82, 92–93, 104, 107, 110, 123, 154, 156, 170, 180, 184, 192 Alabama Troops: 1st Regiment Infantry (African descent), 150–51, 154; 1st Regiment Siege Artillery (African descent), 154 Alcorn, James L., 14–18, 21–22, 25, 43, 52–53, 60–61, 121, 127, 135–36 Alexander, James M., 150 Alien Act, 12 Allen, Henry W., 40 Anderson, Patton, 71 Antietam, Battle of, 24, 59, 101 Appendix to the Confederate States Almanac, 193 Appomattox, 59 Architecture, 194–95, 134n44 Arkansas, 47, 49, 68, 78, 136, 154, 156 Arkansas, CSS, 36, 73 Army of Mississippi, 52–53, 59, 65 Army of Northern Virginia, 59, 62, 158 Army of the Potomac, 76 Army of Ten Thousand, 59–60, 135 Army of the Tennessee, 38, 75, 82, 110, 146 Art, 194 Atlanta, Georgia, 59, 103, 119, 168

Atlanta Appeal, 79 Attala County, 18, 138, 184 Aughey, John H., 184 Augusta, Georgia, 45, 158 Bachman, G. W., 183–85 Baechtel, Luther, 39, 97 Baldwyn, Mississippi, 82 Balfour, Emma, 114, 117 Ballard, Michael B., xii, 50 Ball’s Bluff, Battle of, 33 Baltimore, Maryland, 56 Bank of Jackson, 35, 44–45, 92 Bank of Mobile, 92 Banks, Nathaniel P., 129 Bankston, Mississippi, 73, 213n10 Baptists, 46, 177, 182, 184, 186 Barksdale, Ethelbert, 30, 76 Barksdale, William, 52–53, 58–59, 63 Barksdale, William R., 21, 88 Barnard, Frederick A. P., 191, 193 Barry, William S., 13–15, 17, 19, 21–22, 25–26, 28–29, 43, 51, 58, 130 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 83, 120; Arsenal, 55; Battle of, 43 Bay Springs Factory, 72 Beach, Elizabeth Jane, 164 Belgium, 55 Bell, Rachel, 186 Benjamin, Judah P., 129 Benton, Mississippi, 153, 156, 169 Beringer, Richard, 102 Berry, Micajah F., 61 Bettersworth, John K., x–xi, 4, 27, 32, 88, 125– 26, 139, 144, 160, 182, 184, 191–93, 202n3

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INDEX Big Black River, 78, 127, 131, 154 Bigbee Bottom, Mississippi, 180 Bisland Family, 102 Blackwell, M. J., 183 Blockade, 34, 56, 77, 90–93, 96–97, 106, 139, 169 Bolivar County, 42, 130, 166 Bolton, Mississippi, 109, 165, 171 Bondurant, Alexander L., 139 “Bonnie Blue Flag,” 18, 193 Booneville, Mississippi, 82 Boston, Massachusetts, 87 Bowles, Mrs. Greenberry, 178 Bowling Green, Kentucky, 60, 162 Bowling Green Plantation, 76 Bowman House, 20, 40, 195 Bradford, Benjamin M., 61 Bradley, G. W., 66, 140 Brandon, Mississippi, 57, 106, 128 Brandon, William L., 138 Brantley, William F., 51, 59 Brices Cross Roads, Battle of, 85, 148, 155, 160 Brierfield Plantation, 113, 149 Broiderick, Annie, 116 Brooke, Walker, 14, 17–18, 21–22, 25, 28 Brookhaven, Mississippi, 72 Brown, Albert Gallatin, 30, 90 Brown, Joseph, 32 Brown, William H., 55 Bruinsburg, Mississippi, 146 Bunyan, John, 192 Burt, Erasmus R., 35

Cayuga, Mississippi, 127 Central Bank of Alabama, 93 Central Female Institute, 190 Chalmers, James R., 19, 51, 58 Chambers, Hal, 90 Chambers, William Pitt, 56–57, 64 Champion, Matilda, 109 Champion, Sidney S., 109 Champion Hill, Battle of, ix, 109, 116 Chapman, Conrad W., 194 Charleston, South Carolina, 103, 187 Chase, Benjamin, 116 Chattanooga, Tennessee, 81, 101 Chickamauga, Battle of, 59 Chickasaw Bayou, Battle of, 68, 70, 146 Chickasaw County, 66, 95, 106, 131 Chillicothe, USS, 136 Christmas, 37, 169, 172, 177 Choctaw County, 85, 184, 225n2 Choctaw Indians, 130, 225n2 Christ Church, 178 Chunky, Mississippi, 65 Cincinnati, Ohio, 42, 50 Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 150 Civil Rights Era, 144 Claiborne, John F. H., 128–29 Clark, Annie, 177 Clark, Charles, 22, 30, 42–47, 49, 52–53, 58–59, 61–62, 66, 74, 77, 87, 90, 93–95, 98, 107–8, 113, 123, 126, 133–34, 140, 157–58, 169, 176–77, 187, 190 Clark Family, 35 Clarke, H. C., 193 Clayton, Alexander M., 22, 28, 48 Cleburne, Patrick, 158 Clinton, Mississippi, 165, 190 Coahoma County, 135 Coffeeville, Mississippi, 82, 97, 114 Colbert, Bruce, 58 Coldwater River, 71, 78 College Hill, Mississippi, 109, 111, 160–61, 178, 186 Collier, Anna, 56–57 Columbia University, 191 Columbus, Kentucky, 60, 81 Columbus, Mississippi, 13, 41, 43–44, 46, 73, 129–30, 184

Cadle, Cornelius, 39 Cairo, USS, 36 Calhoun, John C., 12 Calhoun Institute, 45 Camp Dodge, 151 Camp Pettus, 58 Campbell, Josiah A. P., 22, 28 Canton, Mississippi, 81 Canton Citizen, 192 Carroll County, 1, 130, 161, 219n9 Carroll County Manufacturing Company, 87 Carrollton, Mississippi, ix, xii, 1, 13 Catchings Family, 64 Catholics, 182

252

INDEX Committee on a Southern Confederacy, 20, 22, 28 Committee on Citizenship in Mississippi, 19, 28 Committee on Federal Jurisdiction and Property, 19 Committee on Military and Naval Affairs, 20, 22, 51 Committee on Postal, Financial, and Commercial Affairs, 20, 23, 89 Committee on the State Constitution, 20, 22, 28 Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, A, 153 Confederate Guards, 161 Confederate Mississippi, x, 125, 144, 160, 182 Confederate States Almanac, The, 193 Confederate States of America, 5, 22, 29, 159; Congress, 28–30, 34–35, 48, 66, 91, 94, 158; Conscription, 66, 101, 115, 120, 136, 139; Constitution, 26, 28–29, 77 Contraband Camps, 136, 143, 149–51, 154–56, 226n19 Cooper, James Fennimore, 192 Copiah County, 58 Corinth, Mississippi, 36, 54, 56–57, 60, 64, 68, 70–71, 81–82, 103, 105, 113, 116–18, 120, 131, 134, 137, 145–46, 149–52, 154–55, 161–62, 167, 179, 184, 194; Contraband Camp, 149–51, 154–55, 226n19 Corinth House, 64 Cornyn, Florence M., 150 Cotton Notes, 35, 92, 94 Covington County, 56, 137, 141 Craig Family, 170 Crippled Deer Mills, 71 Crocker, Marcellus M., 39–40 Crum’s Mill, 71 Crystal Springs, Mississippi, 57 Cuba, 56 Culture, 181–95 Cumming, Kate, 64 Curse of Ham, 185

113, 121–22, 124, 131–32, 134–37, 139, 149, 175–76, 185, 187, 191, 194 Davis, Joseph, 59, 63 Davis, Reuben, 22, 30–33, 43, 53–54, 60, 126 Davis, Theodore R., 194 Davis Bend, 113, 149 Davis County, 4 Declaration of Immediate Causes, 23–25 Declaration of Independence, 15, 24 Deer Creek, 78, 156 DeKalb, Mississippi, 184 Delta, 1, 13, 74, 78, 98, 127, 131, 138, 140, 151, 176, 184 Democratic Party, 13, 15, 32, 43, 53 Demopolis, Alabama, 39, 81 Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, 123 Desertion, 4, 6–7, 36–37, 41, 45, 47, 58, 62–63, 65–66, 108–9, 122–23, 126–27, 136–42, 146, 151, 176, 196 DeSoto Bridge Company, 87 Dew, Charles, 13 Dewoody, Sam, 134 Diary of War for Separation, 193 Dillon, Edward, 122 Dodge, Grenville, 149–51 Donelson, Andrew Jackson, 130 Drane, James, 33 Duck Hill, Mississippi, 85 Duncan Plantation, 75 Dyer, Frederick H., 153–54 Economy, 87–98 Education, 188–91, 232n21 Edwards Depot, Mississippi, 145 Egypt, 13, 150 Egypt, Mississippi, 84 Emancipation Proclamation, 24, 101, 119, 149, 151, 156, 159 England, 24, 40, 55 Enterprise, Mississippi, 41, 56, 58, 92, 172, 207n39 Episcopalians, 182–83 Ewing, Hugh B., 113 Exemption, 45, 51, 66, 104, 120, 123, 136, 139, 183, 213n46

Dahlgren, Charles G., 53 Davis, Jefferson, 3, 22, 27, 29–30, 32, 37–38, 40, 44, 46, 48–49, 52–54, 56, 58–59, 61, 90, 102,

253

INDEX Farmington, Mississippi, 71 Farrall Bridge Company, 87 Faser, Jacob, 194 Fayette Gazette, 210n15 Featherston, Winfield S., 13, 59, 167 Florida, 17, 56, 68, 156 Foote, Henry S., 30 Force Bill, 12 Ford, S. R., 193 Forks of the Road, 149 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 122 Fort Barrancas, 156 Fort Donelson, 59, 119 Fort Pemberton, 78 Fort Pickens, 56 Fort Pillow, 113, 153 Fort Pulaski, 47 Fort Sumter, 58 Foster, Kate, 163 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 194 Franklin, Battle of, 59 Franklin, John Hope, 147 Franklin, Mississippi, 164 Fredericksburg, Virginia, 168 Free State of Jones, 139 Fremantle, Arthur, 40, 85, 147, 163, 181, 192, 228n6 French, Samuel G., 31–32, 52, 54–56, 59, 156 French Camp, Mississippi, 184 Frierson, Em, 111 Fulkerson, Horace H., x, 31, 55, 131–32, 185, 188, 191

Graves, John M., 90 Greeley, Horace, 148 Green, William Mercer, 183 Green, William Siege, 179 Greene Family, 73 Greensborough, Mississippi, 73 Greenville, Mississippi, 161, 189 Greenwood, Mississippi, 1, 78, 148 Grenada, Mississippi, 37, 56, 60, 81–82, 84, 121–22 Grierson, Benjamin, 70, 73, 83–85, 156 Griffith, Richard, 52–53, 58–59 Gulf of Mexico, 50, 70, 78, 129, 144 Gurney, Henry D., 194 Halleck, Henry W., 70, 148 Hardin, A. M., 86 Harper’s Weekly, 194 Harrington, Mr., 134 Harrington, Whitfield, 11 Harris, Wiley P., 13–16, 21–22, 26, 28–29, 31, 58, 121 Harrison, Burton N., 191 Harrison, James T., 22, 28 Hartford Convention, 12 Hatchie River, 71 Hattaway, Herman, 102 Haynes, M. D., 92, 98 Hazelhurst, Mississippi, 72 Heatman, Charles F., 193 Hebrews, 150 Hebron’s Plantation, 154 Helena, Arkansas, 78, 136, 154, 227n33 Henry, Louisa, 95 Herod, 13 Higginbottom, M. A., 130–31 High Court of Errors and Appeals, 47 Hilgard, Eugene W., 190 Hillsboro, Mississippi, 162 Hinds County, 169 History and Defense of African Slavery, A, 193 Hobbs, Howell, 75 Holly Springs, Mississippi, 73, 81–82, 111, 154, 167–68, 173–74, 190 Holly Springs Female Institute, 190 Honey Island, 138 Hood, John B., 123

Gallagher, Gary, 2 George, James Z., 13–15, 21, 23, 61, 89, 145 Georgia, ix, 3, 17, 32, 45, 47, 73, 110, 158, 170 Gettysburg, Battle of, 2, 59, 63, 76, 119, 197 Gholson, Samuel J., 23, 61 Gillespie, A. J., 98 Gladden, Adley, 114 Goodrich Landing, Louisiana, 155 Governor’s Mansion, 35, 40–41, 44, 195 Grand Gulf, Mississippi, 156 Grand Junction, Tennessee, 81, 110 Grant, Ulysses S., 37–38, 40, 48, 70, 72–73, 75– 76, 78–79, 82–83, 85, 96, 104, 110–11, 113–14, 119, 145–46, 149, 152, 179–81, 190, 192, 194

254

INDEX Hooker, Charles, 13 House Chamber, Mississippi, 20, 40 Houston, Lock E., 33, 43 Houston, Texas, 166 Hudson, Robert S., 47, 122–23, 135, 138, 140–41 Humphreys, Benjamin, 59, 63, 158–59 Hurlbut, Minnie, 178 Hurlbut, Stephen A., 115

Kansas, 131 Kemper County, 30, 48, 85, 97 Kentucky, 12, 13, 60, 81, 135 Kentucky Resolution, 12 King, Levoy, 170 King Cotton Diplomacy, 93 Kirkpatrick, James Judson, 57 Knight, Newton, 139, 141 Kosciusko, Mississippi, 97

Illinois Troops: 4th Cavalry, 156; 5th Cavalry, 156; 11th Cavalry, 156; 28th Infantry, 119; 30th Infantry, 40; 66th Infantry, 150 Impressment, 76, 115, 139, 145, 157; Act, 133 Indian Territory, 130 Indiana Troops, 59th Infantry, 39 Infrastructure, 68–87 Ingraham, Elizabeth, 76 Institute for the Blind, Mississippi, 40, 86, 103 Institute of the Deaf and Dumb, Mississippi, 86, 103 Iowa Troops, 31st Infantry, 40 Irving, Washington, 192 Iuka, Mississippi, 56, 71, 81, 86, 117, 131, 134

La Grange, Tennessee, 154 Ladies Military Aid Society, 148 Lake, William, 33 Lake Providence, Louisiana, 154, 227n33 Lamar, L. Q. C., 13–17, 21 Laurel Wood Plantation, 129 Leaf River, 141 Leake County, 48, 138 Lee, Robert E., 158 Lee, Stephen D., 117, 121–22, 149, 152–53 Leesburg, Virginia, 4, 168, 174 LeFlore, Greenwood, 130 Leggett, Mortimer D., 115 Lessees, 131–32 Liberty, Mississippi, 121, 123 Libraries, 192–93 Lincoln, Abraham, 12–13, 24, 30, 39, 46, 101, 119, 123, 149, 151–52, 156–57, 172, 185, 187 Lord, Lida, 178 Lord, William, 178 Loring, William W., ix, 181 Lost Cause, 4, 67, 125, 139, 175 Loughborough, Mary, 117, 178 Louisiana, 13, 15, 17, 34, 40, 54–56, 77, 81, 83, 106, 110, 122–23, 137–38, 152, 154, 156, 165 Louisiana Troops: 1st Battery Light Artillery (African descent), 154; 2nd Battery Light Artillery (African descent), 154; Third Battery Light Artillery (African descent), 227n33; 7th Regiment Infantry (African descent), 154; 8th Regiment Infantry (African descent), 227n33; 9th Regiment Infantry (African descent), 154; 10th Regiment Infantry (African descent), 227n33; 11th Regiment Infantry (African descent), 227n33 Lovell, Mansfield, 44, 187

Jackson, Andrew, 12, 72, 130 Jackson, Mississippi, xii, 2–3, 6–7, 11–15, 20, 27, 29, 31, 35, 37–46, 48–49, 53, 64–65, 68, 70, 72–73, 75, 81, 83–87, 92, 96, 103, 113–14, 118–20, 125, 127, 143, 148, 154, 156, 166, 169, 172, 175, 180–81, 184, 191–93, 195, 197, 207n39, 213n10; Concert Hall, 20, 148; Masonic Hall, 20; Public Square, 40 Jackson Daily Mississippian, 31, 37, 87, 191 Jackson Mississippian, 192 Jackson Weekly Mississippian, 148 James, D. Clayton, 74 Jasper County, 138 Jefferson, Thomas, 12 Jefferson College, 190 Johnson, Andrew, 46 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 36, 59 Johnston, Joseph E., 37–40, 181 Jones, Archer, 102 Jones County, 4, 138–41, 157 Judea, 13

255

INDEX Lowndes County, 95, 219n9 Lowrey, Mark P., 59 Lowry, Robert, 141 Lunatic Asylum, Mississippi, 40, 86 Lutherans, 182 Lyon, James A., 129–30, 184 Lyon, Theodoric, 130

Memphis Appeal, 192 Mercer, Hugh W., 187 Meridian, Mississippi, ix, 39, 41, 56–57, 81, 83–85, 92, 101, 103, 115, 152, 163, 170, 178, 207n39 Meridian Campaign, 3, 44, 61, 65, 68, 70, 72, 75, 79, 83–84, 95, 112, 115, 117–18, 128, 147, 149, 156, 164, 172, 178, 184 Meridian Clarion, 192 Meridian Manufacturing Company, 44 Methodists, 182, 184, 187–88 Mexican War, 22, 42, 53, 131, 194 Mexico, 49 Military Board, 22, 35, 42–43, 51–61, 135 Military Fund, 35, 89, 92 Miller, Hugh R., 20 Milliken’s Bend, 152, 154–55, 227n33 Minor, John, 128 Minor, Kate, 128 Minor Family, 128–29 Minute Men, 61, 161 Mississippi: Constitution, 19–20, 22, 25–26, 28, 33–34, 44–45, 158–59; Geological Survey, 34, 86; House of Representatives, 11, 13–14, 20, 30, 54, 76; Judiciary, 47–48; Legislature, 5–6, 13, 18, 20, 23, 25, 29–30, 33–38, 40–47, 49, 54, 59–62, 73, 76–78, 86–87, 90–95, 97–98, 104–5, 107–8, 123, 130, 134–35, 140, 157–59, 191, 196; Secession Convention, x, 4–26, 28–31, 33–34, 42, 51, 55, 57–59, 69, 88–91, 121, 127, 130, 135, 195, 202n3; Senate, 30, 33, 40, 184; State Capitol, New, 175; State Capitol, Old, 11, 14, 29, 32, 35, 39–40, 44, 46, 184, 195; State Library, 86, 192; Treasury Department, 39, 41, 85, 94, 97, 118 Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, 71, 81–82 Mississippi Central Railroad, 39, 70, 73, 81–84, 90 Mississippi City, Mississippi, 51 Mississippi College, 190 Mississippi College Rifles, 190 Mississippi River, 3, 13, 23, 34, 38, 49, 50–51, 56, 70, 73–74, 78, 81, 83, 102, 110, 117–18, 121–22, 126–27, 131, 144, 146, 149, 151, 155–56, 194–95 Mississippi Troops: Adams’s Cavalry, 63; State

Macon, Georgia, 73 Macon, Mississippi, 41, 44–45, 48, 106, 194, 207n39 Madison, James, 12 Madison College, 190 Madison County, 95, 109, 169 Madisonville, Mississippi, 72 Malmaison Plantation, 130 Manassas, Battle of First, 32, 174 Manassas Junction, 34 Mangum, William H., 140 Manning, W. J., 64 March to the Sea, 70 Marine Brigade, United States, 152 Marion County, 139 Marshall, Charles K., 14 Marshall, T. A., 21 Marshall County, 121 Marshall Manufacturing Company, 73, 87 Martin, Lucien B., 39 Martin, William T., 128 Maury, Dabney, 138 Maury, Harry, 141 Mayo, Bettie Black, 96 McBride, Alexander, 119 McClernand, John A., 76 McGehee, Miles, 90 McGehee Family, 76 McMillan, Maggie, 161 McPherson, James B., 71, 113, 152 McPherson, James M., 2 McRea, John J., 30 Meade, George G., 76 Medical College of Louisiana, 15 Memphis, Tennessee, 35–36, 62, 70–71, 73, 81–84, 87, 97, 103, 114, 117, 121–22, 133–34, 137, 145, 147, 151–52, 154–55, 164, 192, 227n33 Memphis and Charleston Railroad, 70, 81–82, 84, 117, 155

256

INDEX Troops, ix, 6, 22, 31–32, 36–39, 42, 44–45, 50, 57, 59–62, 104, 113, 128, 135, 191, 207n38; Wood’s Cavalry, 63 Civil War Confederate: 2nd Infantry, 58–59; 3rd Infantry, 65; 5th Infantry, 58; 6th Infantry, 63, 128, 141; 8th Infantry, 58; 9th Infantry, 58; 10th Infantry, 58; 11th Infantry, 63, 212n37; 16th Infantry, 57; 20th Infantry, 141; 28th Cavalry, 109; 34th Infantry, 63; 35th Infantry, 43; 36th Infantry, 57; 46th Infantry, 56–57, 64, 168 Civil War Union: 1st Cavalry (African descent), 153; 1st Heavy Artillery (African descent), 153; 1st Infantry (African descent), 153, 155; 1st Mounted Rifles, 62; 2nd Heavy Artillery Cavalry (African descent), 153; 2nd Infantry (African descent), 153; 3rd Infantry (African descent), 153; 4th Infantry (African descent), 153; 5th Infantry (African descent), 154; 6th Infantry (African descent), 153 Mexican War: 1st Infantry, 22, 131; 2nd Infantry, 42, 53, 211n23 Missouri, 147 Missouri Troops, 3rd Infantry, 155 Mobile, Alabama, 39, 64, 81, 92–93, 96, 129, 145, 155–56, 187 Mobile and Ohio Railroad, 44, 73, 77, 81–85, 87, 90 Monroe County, 95, 106 Montevallo, Alabama, 170 Montgomery, A. J., 148 Montgomery, Alabama, 22, 26, 28–30, 93, 156 Moon Lake, 136 Moore, John, 161 Moore, Thomas O., 55 Morton, Mississippi, 96, 112 Mott, Christopher H., 22, 52–53, 58 Music, 193

Nassau, Bahamas, 87 Natchez, Mississippi, 51, 75, 78, 102–3, 105, 116–19, 128, 133, 137, 144, 149, 152–56, 165, 175, 179, 181, 184–87, 191–95 Natchez Courier, 191–92 Natchez Free Trader, 192 National Park Service, 226n19, 227n31 Native Americans, 20, 31, 43, 130, 225n2 Neshoba County, 48, 138 New Albany, Mississippi, 164, 186 New England, 12, 72 New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad, 81, 83, 85 New Orleans, Louisiana, 55, 70, 72–73, 81, 103, 120, 129, 133, 167, 187 New York, 68, 171–72, 193 New York City, 191 Newspapers, 191–94 Newton County, 48, 65, 141 Newton Station, Mississippi, 83, 86 Nicholson, A. O. P., 193 Nightingale, Florence, 173 North Carolina, 13, 32, 168 Noxubee County, 184 Nullification, 12 Occupation, 118–19, 131–32 O’Ferrall, John W., 53, 58 Official Records, 71, 146 Ohio, 68 Ohio Troops, 46th Infantry, 145 Okolona, Mississippi, 84, 87, 107, 111, 162, 184 Ord, E. O. C., 72 Orders of the Military Board of the State of Mississippi, 52 Ordinance of Secession, Mississippi, 11, 15–18, 25, 40, 58, 127, 135, 203n3 Osband, Embury D., 156 Osterhaus, Peter, 145 Overton, Walter, 113–14 Oxford, Mississippi, xii, 13, 15, 84, 86, 97, 111–13, 160, 178, 190 Panola, Mississippi, 72 Panola County, 121 Pascagoula Indians, 43 Pascagoula River, 122

Naron, Levi H., 131 Nashville, Battle of, 168 Nashville, Tennessee, 12, 120

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INDEX Paul the Apostle, 185 Pearl River, 40, 45, 78, 83, 87, 127, 138, 156 Pelan, James, 185 Pemberton, John C., 37–38, 44, 109, 121, 145, 187, 194 Penitentiary, Mississippi State, 39–40, 47, 73, 86, 96, 103, 169 Pennsylvania, 68 Pensacola, Florida, 56, 58, 156 Pereyra, Lillian A., 136 Perry County, 66, 140–41 Perryville, Battle of, 63 Petersburg, Virginia, 59, 153 Pettus, John, 33 Pettus, John J., 12–15, 18, 30–42, 47, 49–51, 53–55, 57–60, 61, 66, 77–78, 89–92, 105–6, 108, 123, 126, 129, 135, 140, 157, 166, 187, 191, 207n39, 211n23 Pettus, Pamelia Winston, 33 Pettus, Susan Potts, 33 Phelan, James, 30 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 56 Philemon, Book of, 185 Phillips, Z. A., 77, 107 Photography, 194 Pickett, Jane Clark, 169–71, 175 Pickett, Micajah, 169–70 Pierce, James F., 65–66 Pillow, Gideon, 32 Poates, John L., 74–75 Poates, Sarah, 75, 171–73, 175, 189 Poindexter, Dr., 48 Poindexter, George, 15 Polk, Leonidas, 84, 122, 141 Pontotoc, Mississippi, 112, 161, 183, 186 Pontotoc County, 20, 177 Pontotoc Minute Men, 161 Pool, Samuel, 15 Pope, F. A., 15 Pope’s Station, 72 Port Gibson, Battle of, 110 Port Gibson, Mississippi, 110, 113, 146 Port Hudson, Siege of, 152 Porter, David D., 73–74, 146 Posey, Carnot, 59 Post Offices, 118 Postmaster General, Mississippi, 20, 23, 69, 89

Power, James L., 62–65, 67 Prairie Station, Mississippi, 161 Presbyterians, 116, 129, 182, 184 Prussia, 130 Publishing, 193–94 Quarles, William H., 140 Quartermaster General, Mississippi, 39, 46, 52, 94, 145 Queen Victoria, 40 Quitman, John A., 134 Quitman, Mississippi, 72 Rainwater, Percy L., x, 13–14, 18, 202n3 Rankin County, 19 Rayburn, R. S., 90 Raymond, Battle of, 39, 111 Raymond, Mississippi, 110–11, 113, 147, 163, 178, 193 Religion, 57, 182–88 Richardson, Georgia, 189 Richmond, Virginia, 29–30, 38, 43–44, 81, 94, 121, 135, 152, 191 Ripley, Mississippi, 146 Ripley, Roswell S., 187 Rolling Fork, Mississippi, 149 Ross, Lawrence S., 153, 156 Rowland, Dunbar, 20 Russell, E. P., 96 Russell, Mrs. J. W., 111–12 Saltillo, Mississippi, 87 Saltville, Mississippi, 106 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 42 Santa Claus, 96, 169, 177 Sardis, Mississippi, 187 Sargent, George Washington, 119 Savannah, Georgia, 47, 187 Scales, Cordelia, 173–75 Scales, J. P., 33 Scott, Burwell, 90 Scott, Sir Walter, 192 Scott County, 57, 162 Sears, Alice Gray, 166–69, 175 Sears, Claudie, 167 Sears, Claudius W., 59, 167–69 Sears, Frankie, 167

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INDEX Sears, Katie, 167 Seddon, James A., 121, 129 Sedition Act, 12 Selma, Alabama, 31, 84, 89, 180, 192 Semmes, Mary, 115 Senate Chamber, Mississippi, 40, 184 Shady Grove Baptist Church, 177 Shaifer Family, 110 Shakespeare, William, 192 Sharkey, William L., 12, 47–48, 120 Sharp, Jacob H., 59 Sherman, William T., 37–38, 41, 44, 48, 61, 65, 68, 70, 72–73, 75, 79, 83–85, 95, 110–15, 117, 125, 128, 131, 146–49, 152–53, 156, 164, 178, 184, 213n1 Shiloh, Battle of, 36, 43, 57, 59, 63–64, 70, 82, 113, 120, 128, 131, 151, 173, 190, 194 Ship Island, 56, 118 Sholars Family, 110 Singleton, Otho R., 30 Smedes, Charles E., 61 Smith, Andrew Jackson, 177 Smith, George R., 101–2 Smith, Robert W., 101 Smith, William “Sooy,” 70 Smith County, 140, 141 Smylie, James, 185 Smythe, George A., 183 South Carolina, 11–13, 16, 65 Southern Claims Commission, 128, 213n11, 214n20 Southern College of Medical Surgery, 44 Southern Railroad, 81, 83–85 Southern Song Book, The, 193 Spanish Moss Bend, 72 Spotsylvania, Battle of, 59 St. Thomas’ Hall, 167 State Auditor, Mississippi, 35, 95, 98 State Street, 11 Steele’s Bayou, 68, 70, 78, 146 Stephens, Marcus D. L., 58 Still, William, Jr., 102 Stockade Redan, ix Stones River, Battle of, 101 Strong Family, 148 Substitution, 66, 120 Sunflower River, 78–79

Superintendent of Army Records, Mississippi, 62, 64–65, 67 Swain, Alex, 109 Tallahatchie River, 78, 114, 122, 164, 178 Taylor, Richard, 122–23 Tennessee, x, 12, 30, 32, 38, 81–82, 104, 110–11, 131, 154–55, 168 Tennessee River, 50 Tennessee Troops: 1st Heavy Artillery (African descent), 227n33; 1st Infantry (African descent), 227n33; 2nd Infantry (African descent), 227n33; Memphis Light Battery (African descent), 227n33 Texas, 68, 130, 147, 166 Thirteenth Amendment, 156, 159 Thompson, Jacob, 13, 33, 90, 112, 126, 191 Thornton, John J., 19, 58, 127–28 Tippah County, 132 Tishomingo County, 48, 130 Tishomingo Hotel, 64 Tombigbee River, 78 Tourism, 86 Trans-Mississippi, 78 Treasury Notes, 35, 37, 44–46, 89, 91–94, 97 Trials and Triumph on the Dark and Bloody Ground, 193 Trotter, William B., 193 Tunica County, 121 Tupelo, Battle of, 131, 164 Tupelo, Mississippi, 81–84 Tupper, Tullius C., 61 Turner, W. C., 106 Unionism, x, 4, 7–8, 13–18, 22, 25, 31, 47, 62, 102–3, 105, 119–20, 125–42, 182, 184–85, 191–92, 197, 214n20 United States: Congress, 16, 29; Constitution, 29, 43, 113, 156; Military Academy, 22, 52, 167; Navy, 4, 36, 50, 70, 73–74, 78–79, 116, 119, 146; Secret Service, 131; Senate, 27 United States Colored Troops, xii, 62, 154, 227n31; 3rd Cavalry, 1, 143, 153, 156; 5th Heavy Artillery, 153; 6th Heavy Artillery, 153; 51st Infantry, 154–56; 52nd Infantry, 154; 53rd Infantry, 154; 55th Infantry, 150; 58th Infantry, 154; 66th Infantry, 154;

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INDEX 70th Infantry, 154; 71st Infantry, 154; 88th Infantry, 227n33 University Greys, 190 University of Mississippi, 190 Utica, Mississippi, 127

Wilson County, Tennessee, 30 Winona, Mississippi, 84 Winston County, 138 Winter, Richard H., 61 Wisconsin Troops, 2nd Cavalry, 156 Women, 160–80 Wood, John W., 18 Woods, Thomas H., 14, 21 Woodville, Mississippi, 72, 121, 156, 213n10 World War II, 202n3

Van Dorn, Earl, 22, 52–53, 59 Vance, Zebulon, 32 Verona, Mississippi, 85 Vicksburg, Mississippi, ix, 2–3, 6–7, 20, 34, 36–38, 40–41, 44, 50–52, 59, 61, 64–65, 68, 70–71, 75–76, 78, 81–85, 101, 103–4, 110–14, 116–20, 125, 131–34, 136–37, 139–40, 144–45, 147–49, 152–56, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 178, 180–81, 184–87, 191–92, 194–95, 197, 207n39, 222n50 Vicksburg Courthouse, 194–95 Vicksburg Daily Citizen, 191 Vicksburg Daily Whig, 186 Vicksburg National Military Park, 194 Vicksburg Surrender Monument, 194 Vicksburg Whig, 192 Virginia, x, 32–35, 57–59, 62–63, 77, 123, 130, 158, 168 Virginia Resolution, 12

Yalobusha River, 78 Yazoo City, Mississippi, 73, 79, 153, 156 Yazoo County, 47, 140–41, 169 Yazoo Pass, 70, 74, 135–36 Yazoo River, 13, 36, 71, 74, 78–79, 138, 146 Yerger, Jacob S., 14, 16, 21, 48, 120 Yocona River, 78 Young, Susan, 161

Waddel, John N., 110 Walthall, Edward C., 59 War Department, Confederate States, 53, 59, 114, 122 War of 1812, 12 Warren County, 17, 126 Warrenton, Mississippi, 154 Washington, D.C., 16, 27, 30 Water Valley, Mississippi, 82 Watson, John W. C., 30 Waud, Alfred R., 194 West, Absalom M., 38, 43, 53, 106, 126 West Point, Mississippi, 81 West Point, New York, 22, 52 Westbrook, W. Ivie, 15 Wetumpka, Alabama, 39 Wharton, Thomas J., 47 Whig Party, 14, 53 Why the South Lost the Civil War, 2, 102 Wilkinson County, 76 Wilson, William S., 22, 28–29

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