Weapons of Mississippi

Weapons of Mississippi Weapons of Mississippi KE VIN D OUGHERT Y U N I V E RS I T Y P RE S S OF M I S S I S S I PPI ...

Author: Kevin Dougherty

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Weapons of Mississippi


KE VIN D OUGHERT Y U N I V E RS I T Y P RE S S OF M I S S I S S I PPI / J ACKSON

www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Frontis: Knife (detail) courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol. See page 49. Copyright © 2010 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2010 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dougherty, Kevin. Weapons of Mississippi / Kevin Dougherty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-60473-451-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-60473-452-2 (ebook) 1. Weapons— Mississippi—History. 2. Mississippi—History. 3. Mississippi—History, Military. I. Title. U818.D68 2010 623.409762—dc22 2009052094 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CO NTENTS

vii

3

I N T ROD U C T I ON

1. AT L AT L S, B OW S A N D A R R OW S, A ND S TRIK ING W E APONS W E A P ON S OF T H E M I S S I S S I P PI I N D I A NS

12

2. GUNS, STEEL, AND FORTS W E A P ON S OF T H E E U ROPE A N S I N M IS S IS SIPPI

28

3. M I LI T I A S, O U T L AW S, A N D K E N T UCK Y RIFLE S W E A P ON S OF T E RRI TORI A L M I S S I S S IPPI

43

4. DU E L I N G A N D S L AVE R Y W E A P ON S OF A N T E B E L LUM M I S S I S SIPPI

59

5. M I SS I S S I P P I R I F L E S W E A P ON S OF M I S S I S S I PPI A N S I N M E X ICO

71

6. I RON C L A DS A N D TOR P E DO E S W E A P ON S ON T H E WAT E R I N C I V I L WA R MISSISSIPPI

84

7. SI EG E G U N S A N D S ABE R S W E A P O N S O N T H E L A N D I N C I V I L WA R M I S S I S S I P P I

vi 116

CON TE N TS 8. RI FL E S, B OW S, A N D G U N S W E A P ON S OF M I S S I S S I PPI H U N T E R S A ND PR IVAT E CIT IZ E NS

143

9. T RA I N I N G C A M P S AN D M I L I TAR Y MOB ILIZ AT ION W E A P ON S OF M I S S I S S I PPI D U RI N G T H E T WO WOR LD WAR S

164

10. FI RE BOM BS AN D R O P E S W E A PON S OF T E RROR I N M I S S I S S I P PI

188

11. SHIPS, AIRCRAFT, AND ARTILLERY W E A PON S OF M I S S I S S I PPI’S POS T –WOR LD WAR II MI L I TA RY - I N D U S T RI A L COM P L E X

203

12. N U C L E A R T E S T I N G W E A PON S OF T H E ATOM I C AG E I N M IS S IS SIPPI

214

AFT E RWORD

217

N OT E S

241

B I B L I OG R A P H Y

255

INDEX

INT RO DU C T ION

Weapons serve many functions for many people, but perhaps the common denominator in all cases is that, broadly defined, weapons enhance control. Hunters use weapons to control animals. Criminals use weapons to control their victims. Soldiers use weapons to control their enemies. Terrorists use weapons to control the innocent. The story of weapons in Mississippi parallels this theme of control. Native Mississippians used bows and arrows to hunt deer and bear. The outlaws of the Natchez Trace used hatchets, knives, and guns to rob isolated travelers. Jefferson Davis’s First Mississippi Regiment used rifles to defeat the Mexicans at Buena Vista. The Ku Klux Klan used firebombs to intimidate blacks. All these examples show how one group used weapons to control another. The desire to control is strong, and therefore man is willing to devote much of his creative and competitive spirit to the pursuit of weapons. Technology allows for the introduction of better and more weapons. The quality of weapons is relative, and merely possessing them is not enough. The question of control is often decided by who has access to technically superior weapons. A native Mississippian hunter with an atlatl had an advantage over a competitor armed with only a spear. The steel weapons of the conquistadores defeated the wood and bone ones of the Indians. Federal ironclads outmatched the meager Confederate naval assets. Traditionally agricultural Mississippi began to industrialize largely to produce vii

viii IN TR OD U C TI O N

the military weapons required to defeat America’s enemies in World War II. Mississippi even became a nuclear test site as the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Cold War nuclear arms race. Technology, often fueled by competition, changes weapons, and Mississippi changed as a result. Finally, weapons can be both agents and products of centralization and organization. As Mississippi progressed from a sparsely populated wilderness to a structured modern society, control of weapons became one of the main requirements for establishing centralized control. Militiamen, slave patrols, military training camps, and hunting clubs are all examples of weapons used in an organized way as a result of or to enhance central authority. According to Max Weber’s classic definition, a state “successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order.”1 Indians, outlaws, runaway slaves, secessionists, and night riders have all challenged this monopoly only to be ultimately defeated by the better-armed central authority. Returning to my original assertion, weapons enhance control. Thus in many ways, those wishing to control must first control weapons. Weapons of Mississippi explores these themes of control, technology, and centralization by examining the roles that weapons have played in twelve phases of Mississippi’s history. From its prehistoric period to the present, Mississippi has served as host to a variety of interesting, lethal, and imaginative weapons. Weapons of Mississippi is partly a technical book of these devices, but also, perhaps more importantly, a way of viewing Mississippi’s history through the context of its weapons.


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1 ATL ATLS, BOWS AND AR R OWS, A ND S TRIKING W E AP ON S W EAPONS OF THE MISSISSIPPI INDIANS

The themes of control, technology, and centralization can be traced to the first appearance of weapons in what is now Mississippi. Native Mississippians spent most of their time in a desperate effort to control a hostile environment in order to survive. Therefore the weapons of the prehistoric period in Mississippi were largely for the purpose of hunting, with spears, initially equipped with fluted points, being the common weapon. As time passed, the early spear points went through a series of gradual changes that resulted in a lance-shaped projectile point with notches on the sides and corners. The craftsmen usually rubbed the bases and stem edges smooth and serrated the edges of the blade to create many small points of contact. Larger and cruder square-stemmed points followed, and later still, the points were made smaller and their bases usually rounded and narrowed toward the bottom.1 This progression shows that the native Mississippians worked energetically to perfect the weapon that was so critical to their survival. While the spear experienced these evolutionary modifications, the largest early leap in technology came with the atlatl, a device that used mechanical advantage to increase the distance and velocity of a spear 3

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AT L AT L S, B OW S A N D A R R OW S, A N D S T R I K I N G W E A P O N S

thrown by hand. The atlatl showed the imagination, intelligence, and creativity of the native Mississippians. Even in these earliest times, man improved weapons using technology in revolutionary ways. Native Mississippian weapons technology produced other weapons, such as the bow and arrow and a variety of striking weapons. However, the technology involved in these weapons was no match for the outside technology introduced by the more centralized European society. The European metal pipe tomahawks, for example, proved more durable and powerful than the native wooden war clubs. The European metal technology that produced superior weapons was part of the same centralized society that could launch military expeditions to suppress the Indians. Even before the first contacts between the Europeans and the Indians, European centralization was creating a disparity in the weapons of the future adversaries. Once contact occurred, centralization would give the Europeans a decided weapons advantage.

AT L AT LS Technological advances expanded spears from exclusively being a stabbing weapon to one that could also be thrown with the help of an atlatl, or spear thrower.2 The atlatl was about eighteen inches long and was essentially a stick with a handle on one end and a hook or socket that engaged a light spear or “dart” on the other. Explanations of how the atlatl worked, as well as how effective it may have been, vary. The simplest and most common explanations argue that the atlatl in effect increases the length of the human arm, thereby increasing the amount of time during which force is imparted to the dart. By maintaining contact with the spear during a greater portion of the throw than does the unaided hand, the atlatl propels a light spear much faster and farther than it could be thrown by hand alone.3 Theories about how exactly the atlatl hurled the dart also vary, but perhaps the most likely explanation is that the procedure involved a straight trajectory in the launch path. According to this technique,


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The dart was inserted in the spur at the end of the atlatl, and the atlatl was then used as an extension of the thrower’s arm. The exact purpose of the weights is a matter of some debate. Illustration by Harry Smith.

the marksman took aim with the atlatl by stretching his throwing arm behind his head. His shoulders were parallel to the projected line of fire, and the thrower’s weight was on his rear leg. The thrower held both the atlatl and dart with his fingers, while the dart was secured by a spur at the end of the atlatl. Rocking forward from the rear leg, the thrower then stepped toward the target with his front leg and planted his heel. While the upper body, arms, and atlatl had now moved forward, they had not yet changed their basic position from the aiming posture. With his leading foot and leg firmly planted, the thrower then rotated his upper body and shoulders from a line parallel to the throwing path to one perpendicular to it. His body weight was now completely forward of the leading leg, his shoulders were perpendicular to the line of fire, and his throwing arm was parallel to the shoulders with a ninety-degree bend at the elbow. At this point, the thrower released his finger grip, which was holding the dart to the atlatl.

6


The atlatl served as an extension of the thrower’s arm to increase the range the dart or spear could be thrown. Illustration by Harry Smith.

The forearm and then the wrist began to rotate downward and forward. The atlatl pivoted forward and, after forming a ninety-degree angle with the arm, released the dart. Modern experiments with this technique demonstrate that a dart launched in this way travels 60 percent farther than one propelled by the unaided hand.4 In some cases, small, shaped stones were attached to the atlatls. Determining the exact purpose and utility of these atlatl weights has proved frustrating to modern researchers. Much of the experimentation with the weights’ ability to increase velocity, distance, and accuracy has yielded contradictory theories,5 but atlatl weights continue to present a fascinating mystery in early weapons in Mississippi and elsewhere.

B O W S AND ARROWS The atlatl served as the predominant weapon and hunting device until around 1000 BC, when it began to be replaced by the bow and arrow. Even with this new development, the atlatl retained certain advantages. For example, because the atlatl required just one hand, it could often be used from a canoe. Another advantage was that the atlatl could project a missile


7

that was several times heavier than an arrow.6 Still, the bow and arrow was easier to use and allowed its bearer to carry more ammunition. It soon became the weapon of choice of the native Mississippians. East of the Mississippi, Indians seem to have exclusively used the “self-bow,” a bow type made of a single piece of hard, elastic wood. Reflecting the importance of the new weapon, the Indians used the best wood available to make their bows, typically crafting them from hickory, ash, and black locust trees.7 The characteristic bow of the Indians of the Southeast was a moderately long D-bow with a length of fifty to sixty inches. These bows had a pull weight of about fifty pounds and a long pull that could propel an arrow over a substantial distance. An observer in the late sixteenth century reported Indians hitting targets at two hundred paces and one arrow penetrating as much as six inches into the base of a poplar tree.8 The typical Mississippian projectile point was a small triangular or ovoid arrow point, often made from antler tips. Bowstrings were fashioned from twisted dried deer and bear sinew and entrails. Reflecting the hostile and opportunistic environment, the Indians often slept with their bowstrings strung and arrows near at hand so as to be ready at a moment’s notice.9 Boys learned to hunt at an early age, but before graduating to the bow and arrow, they practiced the trade using blowguns. Jean-Bernard Bossu, a French naval officer who visited the Southeast between 1751 and 1762, described this weapon as being “made of a reed about seven feet long into which is placed a little arrow feathered with thistle down. When aimed right and blown into, this weapon can often kill small birds.”10 Because hooks were not introduced until the arrival of the Europeans, weapons were also used to catch fish.11 The Indians made substances from devil’s shoestring, buckeye, and crushed green walnut hulls to drug fish. These concoctions were thrown into deep holes in rivers and creeks, causing subdued catfish, drum, and bass to surface. The fish were then caught by hand, speared, or retrieved with arrows fitted with a special barb and hand line.12

8


Replicas of two different types of tomahawks. The pipe tomahawk is on top and the more utilitarian hatchet version is on the bottom. Photograph from the author’s personal collection.

S T R IKI NG W E APONS WAR C LUBS, TOMA H AWKS, AND SC ALPING KNIVE S Southeastern Indians were at their best when fighting with offensive weapons in individual, hand-to-hand combat. Consequently the war club was an essential element of Mississippian warfare. These clubs were probably made of hickory, although other suitable woods were available, and measured from one to three feet in length. They came in many shapes, including varieties with a V-shaped edge that resembled a cutlass and others with a ball carved on the distal end, designs that facilitated the club’s ability to fracture bones and skulls. Other versions sported stone celts or sometimes spikes made of shark’s teeth, animal bone, antler, or flint to inflict further injury. The business ends of still other clubs were fashioned into spatulate or mace shapes. Archaeological evidence suggests the war club was an effective weapon, because skeletal remains found at several Mississippi sites have shown fractured skulls, cracked collar bones, and lower-arm breaks, the latter likely sustained in a defensive move to ward off a war club blow. Even off the battlefield, the war club was a significant part of Mississippian society. Learning to use the war club in hand-to-hand combat must have required extensive training, and some of the moves appear to have been practiced in ritual dances that celebrated warfare. Sometimes war clubs were created as objects of art, crafted from materials such as


9

sheet copper, carved out of stone, or cut from sheets of mica, rendering them nonfunctional as weapons. Some of the more elaborately designed weapons are believed to have been reserved for elites as a symbol of high status, and decorations on the war clubs commemorated not only warfare but Indian deities such as Thunder. Obviously, the war club was both the primary instrument and the dominant symbol of warfare for the Mississippi Indians. The wooden ball-headed war clubs eventually came to be known as tomahawks, but with the passage of time and a variety of striking weapons to describe, the modern anthropological lexicon tends to reserve the word “tomahawk” to describe metal axes.13 Like the war club, axes served both functional and ceremonial purposes, and possession of some of these weapons connoted high social status. Some axes were made from cold-hammered copper, while the more utilitarian version was made from stone.14 As the Indians began to trade with the Europeans, the pipe tomahawk emerged as perhaps the most iconic of the Indian striking weapons. The pipe tomahawk was so prevalent that it became a part of the Great Seal of the Choctaw Nation. Styles varied greatly, but the basic design combined both peace pipe and war hatchet in a single unit. Thus the pipe tomahawk represented both peace and war. It was a highly prized and useful item.15 The Mississippi Indians relied on speed and agility to effectively wield striking weapons like the war club and tomahawk. To stay as unencumbered as possible, the Indians usually fought wearing only minimal clothing. It is possible they may have possessed some woven-cane and woodenslat body armor as well as shields, but there is little evidence that these defensive items played an important role in fighting. This lack of protection placed the Indians at a marked disadvantage against the heavily armored Spaniards upon the arrival of Hernando de Soto.16 Warfare was a critical component of power particularly among Choctaw men, and no male could become a man until he had participated in a successful war party. Taking part in warfare proved to others that a Choctaw boy could manipulate spiritual powers for the protection of society. Unless the Choctaw boy killed an enemy, either individually or as part of a war party, the youth remained a child. It was only by succeeding at this rite of passage

10


that the boy earned an adult title, and boys who failed to demonstrate martial prowess were publicly deemed effeminate by the Choctaw chiefs.17 The ritual of proving oneself to be skilled at warfare required bringing home proof, such as a scalp. Scalping was generally accomplished by placing a knee between the victim’s shoulders while he was lying facedown on the ground. A long arc was then cut in the front of the scalp from the upper part of the forehead to the back of the neck, allowing the scalper to pull back on the hair with both hands and remove the trophy. The skin would then be scraped to remove blood and fibers and preserved. Scalping knives were designed with narrow blades that could be worked between the skull and scalp after the initial incision had been made. These knives were not native to the Indians but instead the result of trading with the Europeans. In spite of the exclusivity implied by the name, almost any knife could be used for scalping.18

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F T HE MI SS I S S IPPI INDIANS Weapons were critical to the original Indians of the lower Mississippi Valley, because their males were first and foremost warriors and hunters.19 The Indians developed weapons that were highly advanced given the tools and natural resources available to them, and native Mississippi weapons makers were expert craftsmen. They selected the finest materials for their products and showed creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness. As a result, the hunting weapons were able to kill animals that were faster, stronger, and more agile than the hunters. The weapons of war were also critical to the native Mississippian way of life and reflected the Indians’ up-closeand-personal form of warfare. In many cases, these weapons were almost extensions of the Indians themselves. With the atlatl in particular, native Mississippian weapons showed the impact of technology in what one observer likened to a “prehistoric arms race.”20 Nonetheless the Indians found themselves at a technological disadvantage in terms of weapons when the Europeans arrived. The Indians’


11

limited knowledge of metallurgy was restricted to hammering sheet copper into tools and gold and silver into ornaments. Their weapons made of wood, bone, antler, and hammered copper were no match for European iron weapons.21 Contact with European traders brought European-manufactured pipe tomahawks and scalping knives into the hands of the Indians, but the decisive weapon was the gun. By 1700, every Indian in Mississippi had heard of guns and was clamoring for one.22 For the time being, however, the Europeans would enjoy a great technological advantage as conquistadores, administrators, and settlers began exploring, exploiting, and colonizing the New World.

2 GUNS, STEEL, AND FORTS W EAPONS OF THE EUROPEANS IN MISSISSIPPI

In the fifteenth century, powerful new monarchies built on centralized authority emerged in Europe. The heads of these states were able to control financial and military resources to a degree that undermined the authority of competing nobles, and the kings built powerful armies that dominated the armored knights who were loyal to the noblemen. In the process, armies developed a broad range of bowmen, pikemen, musketeers, and artillerymen, all armed with the weapons of the new military technology. This European state building and military progress resulted in the projection of power across the seas. On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus made landfall at an island in the Bahamas, and the Spanish soon established a base of operations on the island of Hispaniola. By then, all complex Eurasian societies were skilled in using metal to make tools and weapons. At the same time, the weapons of native Mississippians were still principally of wood, stone, and bone, with the exception of a few largely ornamental pieces made of copper. The result was that when Columbus and other European explorers and conquistadores reached the New World, they possessed a tremendous weaponry advantage that they would use to control the new lands they had found.

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G UNS, ST E E L, AND FORTS

13

This print of de Soto discovering the Mississippi shows the marked contrast between the wellarmed, well-equipped Spanish conquistadores and the native Indians. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

When the Caribbean failed to produce the huge deposits of gold that the Spanish sought, they shifted their attention to the American mainland. During the early sixteenth century, the Spanish presence in the New World was advanced by conquistadores such as Hernando de Soto, who led an expedition through what is now Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama before reaching present-day Mississippi. Whenever he encountered Indians, he treated them harshly, often holding their chief captive to ensure good behavior and demanding porters to carry the Spaniards’ heavy loads.1 De Soto was able to impose his will on the Indians because of his weapons advantage. Just as de Soto was about to enter Mississippi, he fought his most deadly battle with the Indians at Mabila, a contest that pitted superior Spanish weapons technology and military hardware against Indian bravery and skill with the bow and arrow. Indeed, the battle was a harbinger for the role technology would play in weapons in Mississippi. According to one observer, “It was modern warfare—iron, steel, armor, and gunpowder— against stone arrows, clubs, and spears, and as would happen often in years

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GUN S, S TE EL, AN D FORTS

to come, modern technology carried the day.”2 Not just outsiders but their weapons as well had come to Mississippi and changed the landscape. De Soto continued to explore Mississippi and beyond until his death in 1542. The survivors of his expedition withdrew to Vera Cruz, Mexico, the next year, and with their departure, Mississippi was left undisturbed by Europeans for nearly 150 years. Still, the trauma of the violence and previously unknown weaponry introduced by de Soto was seared into the Indian consciousness.3 After the rather inglorious Spanish exit, the next European power to begin establishing settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley was France. Explorers like Louis Joliet, Jacques Marquette, René-Robert Cavelier (Sieur de La Salle), Henri de Tonty, and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne (Sieur de Bienville) helped forge a French presence in the vast region they called Louisiana, but though La Salle claimed the region in 1682, he failed to solidify the act by establishing a settlement. It was not until the late 1690s that the French government took serious steps to fortify the region and begin transforming it into a functioning colony. The introduction of forts and their weapons was a critical component in the steady march of European domination in Mississippi. In 1699, Bienville’s older brother Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, landed at present-day Ocean Springs, or Vieux Biloxy (Old Biloxi), and built Fort Maurepas. The French proceeded to fortify other key locations in the region, including Fort Rosalie at present-day Natchez, which Bienville completed in 1716. Unlike the somewhat desultory wanderings of de Soto, Forts Maurepas and Rosalie serve as examples of how Europeans used weapons to secure a fixed presence in Mississippi by leveraging technology, organization, and centralization completely foreign to the native inhabitants. However, with the increased European presence came increased trading with the Indians, including trade for weapons. At Fort Rosalie, the Indians would turn this European-acquired technology against its originators. An adage from the Bible holds that “those who live by the sword, die by the sword”;4 the French at Fort Rosalie felt the sting of this truism.


15

CO N Q UIS TA DO RE S Hernando de Soto was no stranger to conquest, having helped Francisco Pizarro ruthlessly subjugate the Incas in Peru. In the process, de Soto had accumulated great wealth and might easily have returned to Spain to live comfortably resting on his laurels. Instead his adventures in Peru only impassioned him to pursue additional challenges, being “filled with a yearning to undertake other tasks of equal if not greater consequence.”5 The result of this yearning was de Soto’s appointment as adelantado (military governor) of Florida and his ensuing Florida expedition. When de Soto landed in Tampa Bay in 1539, he had with him some six hundred men who included not just a variety of soldiers and their weapons but also the armorers and smiths who would produce and repair the Spanish tools of war.6 It is hard to imagine a better-equipped expedition. Perhaps up to half of de Soto’s men were mounted, and these horsemen were armored knights equipped with long steel lances that gave them a great advantage over natives on foot. Foot soldiers, wearing mail coats and helmets, walked near the horsemen to provide them protection and wielded steel axes for close-in fighting. To engage enemies at a greater distance, the foot soldiers had guns and crossbows. Everyone carried swords and daggers. De Soto even brought with him packs of bloodhounds and Irish greyhounds to pursue Indians.7 The European society and technology that had produced “guns, germs, and steel” gave the conquistadores an advantage that far offset their enemy’s greater numbers.8

M A B IL A In late 1540, de Soto met with Tuscaloosa (alternately Tascaluza), apparently a district chief of the local Indians, at a town also called Tuscaloosa. There de Soto demanded carriers and women. Tuscaloosa provided the carriers immediately but promised to provide the women at Mabila (alternately Mobila or Mauvila), near present-day Mobile. As Tuscaloosa

16


bought time preparing rafts for the journey to Mabila, he sent one of his people ahead, ostensibly to gather supplies and women for the Spaniards, but actually to summon warriors. Forcing Tuscaloosa to accompany him, de Soto reached Mabila on October 18. He had with him a vanguard of forty horsemen, as well as a guard of crossbowmen and halberdiers. The crossbow was a powerful weapon that could inflict horrific wounds. The Spanish had three types: the ballesta de gaffa, which was cocked by a lever, the ballesta de armatoste, which was cocked by a windlass, and the ballesta de cranequin, which was cocked by a rack-and-pinion device. The bow itself was made out of steel or horn with a string of hemp or flax fixed to a stock of straight-grained wood. Drawing the bow required leverage, which in the case of the common military crossbow was provided by a detachable goat’s-foot lever, so named for its distinctive shape. The claws of the lever were hooked over the center of the bowstring, and the prongs were then placed over the top of the stock with the ends resting on a traverse iron pin. The bowman would hold the crossbow in a level position with his left hand and pull the lever toward him with his right. The bowstring, now drawn taut, was held in place by the nut, and the projectile (the crossbow bolt) was placed in the groove. When the bowman applied pressure on the trigger, the nut was released. The nut revolved, releasing the bowstring and, with it, the projectile. Crossbow bolts came in a variety of designs, based on the specific use. However, in military situations, because the recovery of bolts and arrows was uncertain and because large quantities were needed, designs were kept simple. The most common European military crossbow bolt heads were made of ferrous metal capable of piercing armor, and many were winged with strips of leather, wood, skin, or horn. The bolts and shafts were relatively short and heavy; the shafts were wooden, fairly uniform, and usually tapered forward.9 Steel crossbows enhanced by mechanical advantage increased range and penetration, but the system left the bowman vulnerable to enemy fire as he prepared his weapon. Therefore bowmen were often accompanied by a companion who held a shield to offer protection while the bow was


17

being prepared. Another disadvantage of the crossbow was its slow rate of fire compared to the bow and arrow.10 In many respects, the crossbow was “the blunderbuss of archery,” but the fact that it did not require much skill, practice, or strength to use made it a popular weapon.11 De Soto regularly had axmen remove the vegetation surrounding his camp to the radius of a crossbow shot to give his men clear fields of fire.12 Crossbows figured so heavily in Spanish warfare that archaeologists consider the presence of numerous bolts to be a key indicator of the presence of de Soto.13 If such firepower was not reassuring enough, de Soto had further reason for confidence when his party was met by seemingly friendly messengers from Mabila who brought bread made from chestnuts. This hopeful situation, however, did not last for long. In spite of the pretense of welcome, Spanish scouts soon delivered reports that the Indians had prepared a defense of the town, gathering both warriors and weapons and strengthening the town’s palisades. With many of his men scattered to forage in the neighboring villages, de Soto entered Mabila with just forty soldiers. Tuscaloosa, arguing that he had completed his task of delivering the Spanish to Mabila, asked to be released, and when de Soto delayed in answering the request, the Indians attacked. Firing their bows, they killed five Spaniards and wounded several others, including de Soto. The Indians quickly drove the Spanish out of the town, and de Soto’s men retreated with haste. In the process, the Indians had captured some of the Spanish weapons, including swords and halberds, and turned them against their former owners. Spanish swords were individually crafted and came in a variety of styles, but they were usually long with double-edged blades.14 The halberd was a polearm, a family of weapons that includes the lance. The halberd bore an ax head balanced by a beak or flute and capped by a sharp point. The bottom of the shaft was usually finished with a cap of iron or brass known as the ground iron, butt cap, or foot. Halberds were sometimes used as a combat weapon but were more often carried as symbols of rank by noncommissioned officers.15 The lance was the trademark of the conquistadores. It was between ten and fourteen feet long and served as the horseman’s spear. A leaf-shaped

18


George Gibbs’s illustration Back and Forth They Charged (1898) depicts a Spanish horseman using his lance to attack an Indian at Mabila. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

steel head was attached to the wooden shaft either by a socket or a tang, and the shaft was constructed of either a single piece of wood or several longitudinal strips. Contrary to what was common on other polearms, the shaft of the lance usually had no iron augmentation to protect it from sword strokes, but against the Indians this vulnerability presented little danger. The shaft was usually widest just before the grip, and this point was often protected by a circular metal shield called a vamplate. The diameter of the grip itself was


19

This drawing of a conquistador armed with a harquebus shows the weapon’s requirement for an abundance of match cord. Courtesy of Pearson Scott Foresman.

reduced where the weapon was grasped, and then increased and quickly tapered to the butt.16 In spite of these weapons, the Indians believed the Spanish to be routed. Thus emboldened, the Indians pursued, and with this tactical error, the tide of the battle quickly turned. The Spanish wheeled and, on the signal of the firing of a harquebus, launched an assault on the town. The harquebus (sometimes arquebus) was the earliest and mechanically the crudest of the handheld firearms. It was a cumbersome weapon that was slow to load and not particularly accurate. Because the Indians fought from a crouched position, darting from position to position and dodging missiles fired at them, they presented a difficult target for the slow-firing harquebus.17 Another of the weapon’s chief vulnerabilities was that it was fired by touching a piece of lighted match cord, like a slow-burning fuse, to the powder hole. To be always ready for action, the conquistador had to maintain the match cord in a lighted condition, a requirement that not only

20


presented problems in moist and rainy conditions but also consumed great quantities of match cord. In spite of these drawbacks, a ball or shot fired from a harquebus had much greater velocity than an arrow and gave the Spanish a firepower advantage in terms of penetrating power, as well as a considerable psychological effect.18 The penetrating power of the Spanish weapons, as well as the protection afforded by Spanish armor, gave the conquistadores a marked advantage, as several anecdotes from the battle indicate. Captain Baltasar de Gallegos, one of de Soto’s most trusted officers, “gave an Indian a slash [with his sword] that, as he wore no defensive armor nor even any clothing except the mantle, laid open his whole side, and with his entrails all protruding he immediately fell dead, without having a chance to shoot the arrow.”19 For his part, de Gallegos later was fired on by six or seven arrows but was unharmed “because the Spaniard was well protected with armor.”20 Even the marginal protection worn by de Gallegos’s brother, a Dominican friar named Fray Juan de Gallegos, proved sufficient. While trying to give his brother a horse, the friar was struck by an arrow in the back but was wounded only slightly “because he wore his two cowls and all the other robes that those of his order usually wear, which are many, and over all this he had a large felt hat that was fastened around his neck with a cord and hung down over his shoulders. The arrow wound the Indian gave him with such good will was not mortal because of all these defenses.”21 As these examples show, the Indians’ crude weapons could wound the heavily armored Spaniards but seldom kill them. While the Indians were exceedingly brave warriors and expert bowmen, they could not overcome their disadvantages in terms of weapons’ power and protection. Of even more consequence was the Spanish possession of horses, an animal that many of the Indians had never seen before. The shock and speed of a horse’s charge, its maneuverability, and the raised and protected firing platform it offered left the dismounted and unprotected Indians nearly helpless.22 The shock effect was dramatic, and the Spanish used their horses to charge and scatter the Indians. Realizing the disadvantage they had against the Spanish horsemen in an open field, the Indians withdrew behind the walls of their town. Seeing


21

this development, de Soto ordered his mounted soldiers, who were better armed than the infantry, to dismount and pursue. Using their shields for protection and their axes to break down the gates, the Spaniards fought their way into the town. Some two hundred Spaniards rushed through the gates while others used their axes to knock through the mud-and-straw mortar that secured the top logs to the walls, and gained entry by that means. The ruthless Spaniards set fire to the stockade, and many Indians chose to hang themselves with their bowstrings rather than to burn to death or be captured. No one knows the exact count, but de Soto claimed to have killed 2,500 to 3,000 Indians, a figure no doubt exaggerated, compared to just 22 of his own men killed and 148 wounded with a total of 680 wounds. Even by conservative estimates, the Battle of Mabila was the bloodiest single day of combat on American soil until the Battle of Shiloh over three hundred years later.23 The high number of Spanish wounds demonstrates that the Indians’ arrows, though accurate, lacked the power to kill. Spanish horses, firearms, polearms, axes, and armor provided a superiority in weapons technology that the Indians simply could not match.24 Nonetheless, the close brush with disaster convinced de Soto to discontinue his planned march southward and undoubtedly gave him pause as he considered the tenacious fighters who inhabited the region.

FORTS Where de Soto merely traveled through the area that is now Mississippi, other Europeans used weapons to establish a more permanent presence. Among these was Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, who led the colonization of Louisiana. Iberville was a good choice for the task. A native of the French colony in Montreal, Canada, he had gained a reputation as a bold warrior in colonial wars with Britain, having captured Fort Severn at the mouth of the Severn River on Hudson Bay in 1690, as well as conducting a campaign against British interests in Newfoundland from 1695 to 1697. Iberville then returned to France as a hero and was selected to

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lead an expedition to rediscover the mouth of the Mississippi River and colonize Louisiana. With this purpose in mind, Iberville’s ships arrived off the Gulf Coast in January 1699. He anchored off Ship Island on February 10 and went ashore three days later at present-day Ocean Springs. He moved quickly to win the friendship of the local Biloxi Indians by providing them food and gifts, and he also was able to impress them with the superior European weapons. Iberville arranged for the Biloxi to participate in a harquebusfiring demonstration, but when the Indians saw the powder catch fire, “they threw out their arms, dropped the guns, and shrank back from the fear they had of them.”25 The new technology was alarmingly foreign to the Biloxi, but Iberville’s decision to make a gift of the guns would foreshadow an era when the Indians would lethally use European weapons against Iberville’s successors. After failing to locate a suitable site for a fort along the Mississippi River, Iberville returned to the coast. Finding a channel of sufficient depth to accommodate seagoing ships, he ordered the construction of a fort on the eastern side of Biloxi Bay in April 1699. Fort Maurepas, named in honor of the French minister of marine and colonies, became the setting for the first European settlement in Mississippi and the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Fort Maurepas, like most of the European forts built in early North America, was unimpressive by later standards.26 These structures usually consisted of a common layout that included bastions, walls (sometimes called curtains), stockades, and exterior works. The bastion is the part of the fort that projects out from the wall for the purpose of providing firing positions to cover the wall.27 A palisade is a wall enclosure made of timbers placed vertically in the ground. The timbers formed a wall generally from fifteen to eighteen feet in height, and the tops of the timbers were usually sharpened. The words “palisade” and “stockade” are often used interchangeably, although there is sometimes the connotation of a stockade having its timber stakes placed more tightly together and being very thick.28 Like most French forts, Fort Maurepas was made of timber and had four bastions with loopholes, or small openings, for firing. Its two strongest


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Bastions on the four corners of Fort Maurepas allowed defenders to deliver a deadly crossfire in front of the fort’s walls. Illustration by Harry Smith.

bastions stood at diagonally opposite corners of the fort, were built of logs, and included a platform for positions on the upper level. Unlike in a typical stockade, the logs for these bastions were squared to result in a more solid construction. The other two bastions were made from vertical logs, and the curtain walls were made of a double row of logs inserted vertically. Inside, Fort Maurepas contained several structures such as barracks, a storehouse, and a chapel. It was surrounded by a ditch, and its exterior works included an additional timber stockade with redans around the fort.29 Redans were small forts, open at the rear, which provided additional firing positions to supplement the main fire from the fort. Fort Maurepas

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had twelve artillery pieces and was built to withstand the standard European weapons of the day. Throughout the remainder of 1699, the fort, garrisoned by approximately eighty men, served as a base of operations for further exploration of the area. Fort Maurepas did not last long. The hot temperatures, lack of fresh water, crop failures, and poor discipline among the soldiers conspired against the settlement, and it was only thanks to the help of the Biloxis that the fort survived as long as it did. In 1701 the French settlement moved to Mobile to be closer to France’s ally Spain in the event that a war with England broke out. By the spring of 1702, Fort Maurepas was abandoned.30 In spite of the failure of Fort Maurepas, France continued its efforts to establish a presence along the Mississippi River. The high bluffs and fertile soil of Natchez made it especially attractive, and in 1716 the French built Fort Rosalie there. Fort Rosalie was a hastily built post of rectangular shape with a bastion on each corner and only a small stake fence to offer exterior protection.31 Despite its designation as a fort, the compound appears to have served more as a strategic control point for monitoring traffic on the river and as a trading post than a defensible military outpost. In fact, Fort Rosalie remained in an unimproved condition until its destruction in 1729.32 Inhabiting the region around Fort Rosalie were the Natchez Indians, who numbered perhaps three thousand in 1700 when Iberville visited them. At first the two groups enjoyed good relations, with the Natchez offering Iberville the calumet (pipe) of peace. Iberville reciprocated by leaving two young boys with the Natchez to learn their language, and he also gave Grand Soliel, the Natchez chief, a gun, lead, powder, hatchets, and knives. When Bienville succeeded Iberville, he continued the practice of arming the Natchez, and in October 1722 he presented Grand Soliel “many munitions which is an indication that I do not distrust thee at all.”33 At the time, trade relations such as these were a critical component of the international diplomacy of the region. It was by trade that the colonial powers sought to gain and maintain the allegiance of the Indians.34 However, it is unlikely that either Iberville or Bienville imagined that these gifts foreshadowed a day when the Natchez would use European weapons to destroy Fort Rosalie.35


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Fort Rosalie had suffered from a want of supplies and priority from its very inception. Bienville complained that he was allocated only a few raw recruits and a minimum amount of supplies to complete the project. He lamented that “there is nobody here who thinks that I shall be able to succeed in even building the fort.” Nonetheless, he reassured himself that even if defenses were scarce, he had “great influence over the minds of the Indians.”36 Events would come to suggest that Bienville should have put greater stock in weapons than psychology. Instead Fort Rosalie remained a picture of unpreparedness. One observer reported that “there were not as many as 100 palisades” standing in the fort and that “it was possible to enter it on foot from all sides.”37 In spite of the fort’s relatively weak defenses, the French aggravated the local Natchez Indians by treating them harshly. There were several outbreaks of violence, including a small war in 1723, but the situation reached a crisis in 1729 when Boucher de La Perier, who had succeeded Bienville as governor in 1726, appointed the Sieur de Chepart as commander of the fort. Chepart was a tyrant who mistreated not just the Indians but his own subordinates as well. He was found guilty of abuse of power by the Superior Council in New Orleans and dismissed from office, only to be restored by Perier. Seemingly emboldened by this show of support, Chepart continued his mistreatment of the Indians. The abuse reached a climax in 1729 when the French demanded land that included the White Apple Village, a sacred ceremonial center of the Natchez. For the Indians, this affront was the last straw, and they began to develop a plan to attack the fort. What enabled the Natchez to go on the offensive was in large part the weapons they had acquired from the French. Weapons also played an important role in the ruse the Natchez developed to precede the attack. On the morning of November 28, 1729, a large party of Natchez arrived at the French settlement, asking to use French weapons for a hunting expedition. They also asked to see Chepart to present him a gift from their harvest. When Chepart came to the door of his cabin, the Natchez immediately opened fire from several well-placed locations. At the time of the attack, only three officers and twenty-five enlisted men were at the fort. The ensuing battle lasted most of the day, and in the end, 144 men, including all but one of the soldiers, thirty-five women, and

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fifty-six children were killed. Many others were taken captive and later released. As a final sign of total victory, the Natchez burned Fort Rosalie, once a symbol of French authority, to the ground.38 The French quickly sent forces to retaliate against the Natchez and within two years had virtually destroyed the tribe. Some found refuge with the Chickasaw and others with the Cherokee, but the end result was that the Natchez people were too widely scattered and too few in number to again challenge the French. Fort Rosalie was eventually repaired and regarrisoned, but the French were never able to restore the vibrant settlement at Natchez that had been their dream.39 Fort Rosalie nonetheless serves as a testimony to how the growing European presence introduced more lethal weapons to the Mississippi region and escalated violence.

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F T HE E URO PE ANS IN MIS S IS S IPPI Technology gave the Europeans a tremendous weapons advantage over the native people they encountered in America. Nonetheless weapons alone were not sufficient to completely subjugate the Indians at this point. While the Europeans possessed guns, germs, and steel, they were still isolated and outnumbered. Indian bravery and war-fighting skills, the inhospitable environment, and the equalizing effects of trade on weapons technology all served to lessen the European advantage. Mabila was a victory for de Soto, but nearly a disastrous one. De Soto’s military machine was well equipped and genuinely superb, and a variety of weapons ranging from firearms to crossbows to polearms gave de Soto an advantage that offset his numerical weakness. Though not technically weapons, the horse and armor proved to be other decisive tools available to de Soto. Even with these capabilities, de Soto barely escaped defeat at Mabila, where the Indians’ local intelligence, numbers, tactical skill, and superb marksmanship with the bow and arrow nearly carried the day. Superior European weaponry created a rough parity between the betterequipped Europeans and the more numerous natives, but because of the


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wandering nature of de Soto’s expedition, there was no climactic showdown between the competitors. Still, the arrival of the Europeans was a cause for alarm for the Indians who had tasted the power of European weapons and taken measure of the severity of the new threat they posed. De Soto was followed by Europeans who sought to establish a fixed and enduring territorial presence, and to punctuate and defend their claims, the Europeans built forts. Both Fort Maurepas and Fort Rosalie showed the vulnerability of these bastions of European weaponry. Fort Maurepas benefited from peaceful, even helpful, relations from the neighboring Biloxi but still failed because of its isolation and hostile environment. It also inaugurated the practice of giving away the European weapons advantage. Fort Rosalie failed for a variety of reasons, mostly because of the incompetent French leadership and its abusive attitude toward the Indians; but for the purposes of this study of weapons, Fort Rosalie’s undoing lay in the French garrison’s loss of its monopoly on advanced weapons. By gifts and trading, the Europeans squandered their technological advantage. The massacre at Fort Rosalie showed what could happen if the Indians gained weapons superiority at the local level. Still, however, the Europeans maintained the overall weapons advantage, as demonstrated by their ability to rally and virtually destroy the Natchez. The experience at Fort Rosalie illustrates that whoever controls weapons, controls the situation. Indeed, as Mississippi entered its territorial period, the struggle for control of weapons would be a pivotal component of bringing order to a region still largely governed by local power.

3 M ILITIAS, OUTL AWS, A ND KE NTUCKY R IFL E S W EAPONS OF TERRITORIA L MISSISSIPPI

On April 7, 1798, President John Adams approved an act of Congress that established the Mississippi Territory. The northern border of the new territory ran from the junction of the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers eastward. The southern border was latitude 31° north, the U.S. border with Spanish West Florida, and the western border was the Mississippi River. In 1804 Congress added a northern tract of land still occupied by Indian tribes, and in 1810 President James Monroe added West Florida, having seized the area from Spain.1 These actions produced a fairly competitive and fluid environment, as the new territory faced hostile threats both internally and externally. To cope with the situation, the government formed a territorial militia, but the new organization faced numerous challenges with scant resources. A shortage of weapons was a major problem. In the absence of firm governmental control, even the capital city of Natchez was not a safe place. Natchez “On-the-Hill,” the city proper, was made up of stores, residences, and professional and government offices, but Natchez “Under-the-Hill,” at the river’s edge, hosted a rowdy

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M I L I T I A S, O U T L AW S, A N D K E N T U C KY R I F L E S

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crowd of hard-drinking, hard-fighting gamblers and rivermen. Conditions in Natchez Under-the-Hill were so unwholesome that it had the reputation of being “the nucleus of vice upon the Mississippi,”2 and in many ways, the rough-hewn lifestyle had much in common with the standard view of the Wild West.3 Crude but lethal weapons abounded in such an environment, but they were often in the hands of outlaws and robbers rather than those of the governmental authorities. Many of these criminals preyed on travelers who used the Natchez Trace to do business in Natchez. On the periphery, Mississippi was in a hostile neighborhood where Indians and European colonial interests also presented a threat. Growing tensions between white settlers and the native Creeks eventually erupted into the Creek War, which combined with the War of 1812 against Britain to bring additional weapons and violence to the region. In June 1813, Governor David Holmes ordered 550 of General Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne’s Mississippi Territorial Volunteers to march east from their base at Baton Rouge to assist U.S. Regulars in securing settlements around the Tombigbee and Tensaw Rivers. Claiborne’s force was raised largely from the Natchez district, and although the soldiers had been federalized to defend against a potential British invasion from the Gulf of Mexico, they suffered from the same supply difficulties that had long plagued the militia. The situation was so dire that Claiborne was forced to draw on his own credit to help equip and transport the troops.4 Brigadier General Thomas Flournoy, commander of the regular troops in the Seventh U.S. Military District, considered the British to be a greater threat than the Creeks, and Claiborne’s defense of the settlements was relegated to a secondary effort. Flournoy nevertheless supplied Claiborne with “a quantity of ammunition, swords, pistols &c.”5 Although these supplies were token at best, the enemy was even less well equipped, and technology gave the Americans a marked advantage over the Creeks in both the number and quality of weapons. Of critical importance was the Kentucky rifle, a weapon that was rapidly becoming a mainstay of the American frontier.

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TE R R I TO R IA L MI LITIA One of the first orders of business for Winthrop Sergeant, Mississippi’s first governor, and William Claiborne, his successor, was to organize a militia to protect the fledging territory. Sergeant and Claiborne were plagued by a host of challenges in establishing their militias, including distance from resources, inadequate finances, dispersed populations, political infighting, and marginal federal support.6 The result was that the militias suffered in both quantity and quality of weapons, leading Governor Claiborne to complain to Secretary of State James Madison in 1802, “I am making exertions to organize the Militia of this District;—but many obstacles present, the greatest of which are the want of arms and the means of obtaining a supply.”7 In response, the government sent 163 rifles and 100 muskets for the militia’s use, significantly increasing the number of firearms in Mississippi but still providing only enough to outfit less than 32 percent of the registered militia.8 Ten years later, David Holmes, the fourth territorial governor, continued to lament, “It has been, and still is, impracticable to procure arms suitable for active service in this part of the United States.” After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Claiborne became territorial governor of the Orleans Territory, where he found the same situation, reporting that his battalions were armed with “a mixture of rifles, fowling pieces, broken muskets, and sticks.”9 In 1808, Congress finally passed legislation to allocate funds annually to arm the militias, but it was not until the War of 1812 that any significant numbers of weapons were purchased or distributed. Until then, the story of weapons in the territorial militia of Mississippi was more one of absence than presence.

O UT L AW S O F TH E NATCHE Z TRACE One impetus for strengthening the territorial militia was the increasing number of robberies along the Natchez Trace. The Trace was a fairly continuous road from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, and although it was an improvement over the disjointed Indian trails that preceded it, the Trace


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was still a wilderness road through dense canebrakes, thickly wooded bayous, and stretches of utter desolation. Among the Trace’s frequent users were farmers, lumbermen, and trappers who floated their products down rivers to market but often dismantled and sold their boats and returned home on foot or horseback. These travelers, carrying the proceeds of their trip to market, presented tempting and vulnerable targets to the gangs of robbers who often congregated in Natchez Under-the-Hill.10 One historian of the era writes, “The Trace was a thoroughfare of the hunted and the hunting—of men going to get what they wanted and of others fleeing from what they only too well deserved. On an unpoliced road and in a society where every man fended for himself and expected others to do the same, the opportunities for plundering were overwhelmingly enticing.”11 The robberies that occurred along the Natchez Trace, as well as the justice meted out to the captured criminals, provide interesting looks at weapons in territorial Mississippi. One of the most notorious of the Natchez Trace outlaws was Samuel Mason, a Virginian who had served with George Rogers Clark during the American Revolution. In spite of this noble beginning, Mason turned to crime when, with the help of his sons, he stabbed to death a man named Kuykendall, who had married Mason’s daughter against Mason’s objections. After the crime, Mason fled to the notorious Cave-in-Rock, a hideout for outlaws on the northern bank of the lower Ohio River. Later, however, the vulnerable travelers of the Natchez Trace, as well as the potential to exploit the disunity created by presence of both Spanish and American jurisdictions in the region, drew Mason to the Mississippi Territory. Armed with a Spanish passport, Mason could slip back and forth from one jurisdiction to another, compounding the difficulties of his would-be pursuers. Mason soon established his headquarters just outside Natchez at an area known as the Devil’s Punchbowl, an enormous cup-shaped opening about five hundred feet wide in the Mississippi River bluffs. Thick foliage in the area gave Mason the concealment and limited access he desired, and together with several cohorts, he operated out of the Punchbowl for years.

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From his new headquarters, Mason benefited from the assistance of Anthony Glass (or Gass), who purported to be an honest merchant in Natchez. In reality, Glass acted as an informer for Mason, alerting him of lucrative travelers preparing for a journey. Operating both on land and water, Mason often used guns, but his most gruesome weapon was the hatchet. An especially devious tactic of Mason’s was to use female cries for help to lure good Samaritans into his trap. Mason would then hack his victims to death and hurl their bodies from the Punchbowl into the river below. Under such circumstances, Mason operated with great success until one day in Natchez he was recognized and hauled before the court. He and his son were found guilty of having robbed Colonel Joshua Baker, a merchant and planter from Kentucky, of horses, supplies, and money back in August 1801. Now it was Mason’s turn to be on the receiving end of one of the ferocious weapons of territorial Mississippi, the whip. The Masons received thirty-nine lashes, publicly administered, to their bare backs. The number of lashes was no coincidence. Deuteronomy 25:3 had long established forty lashes as the maximum punishment a judge could assign, but traditionally, to be on the safe side, the number had been reduced by one to thirty-nine. Throughout the ordeal, Mason protested his innocence, endeavoring, according to one author, by sheer insistence to make his own lies true.12 After the whipping, the Masons were locked neck and wrist in the town pillory for twelve hours. Nonetheless they emerged from their punishment unrepentant. They shaved their heads, stripped naked, and rode through town and away in a drunken show of defiance. Mason then disappeared from the public eye, but the robberies and murders continued. As a result of the threat from Mason and other outlaws, in 1802 soldiers were ordered to protect travelers along the Natchez Trace, a duty they “carried out to some degree” until 1812.13 In addition to the militia, many private individuals eager to garner the generous reward offered by Governor Claiborne joined the hunt for Mason. In the midst of such interest, Mason was captured by Spanish authorities in New Madrid, Missouri, in January 1803, but the Spanish determined they lacked jurisdiction to


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prosecute him for violations of American law. Mason escaped while being transported to Natchez for trial by Mississippi Territory courts. Mason eluded capture for a remarkably long time until two men who had previously committed robberies with Mason found him near Rodney in Jefferson County. The pair convinced Mason that they intended to join his gang again, but then turned on him. As the story goes, Mason was in the process of counting his loot when one of his would-be partners plunged a tomahawk into Mason’s skull. The betrayers then severed Mason’s head, preserved it in a ball of blue clay, and took it to Washington, seat of the territorial government, to claim their reward. Many people recognized Mason’s head, and the grisly spectacle attracted quite a crowd. The vigilantes were in the process of having a judge prepare a certificate to be mailed to the governor to claim the reward when a traveler from Kentucky named Captain Stump entered the courtroom and demanded the would-be heroes be arrested. He had recognized the men’s horses as belonging to a gang that had robbed him two months earlier along the Trace. Soon the pair were identified as Wiley Harpe and James May. Both men were thrown in jail but proceeded to escape, only to be recaptured in the village of Greenville, halfway between Natchez and Port Gibson. There, in January 1804, they were tried and found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged. The weapon involved in the execution was a gallows constructed of a heavy pole placed high between two trees. Two ropes were tied to the pole, one for Harpe and one for May, and on February 8, the men were led from the jail to the gallows. The usual procedure was to transport the condemned prisoners in a wagon, with their coffin serving as their seat. With the men still in the wagon, the nooses would be fitted around their necks, and the horses commanded to “gee-up.” With the wagon and coffin pulled out from under them, the prisoners would hang to death. In the case of Harpe and Mays, the prisoners walked to their gallows with their hands tied behind their backs. There they climbed a ladder to where the ropes hung. Their feet were bound, and their heads were placed in the nooses. The ladders were then knocked away, and Harpe and May

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were each “hung up by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead.”14 After the execution, the criminals’ heads were cut off and placed on poles, one pole placed to the north of Greenville and the other to the west on the Trace to warn away other outlaws.15 Guns, hatchets, tomahawks, whips, and the hangman’s noose were all weapons used by and against the outlaws of the Natchez Trace. It was a violent, chaotic era in which the unarmed were particularly vulnerable. While the weapons were unsophisticated, they were nonetheless deadly.

THE KENT UC K Y RIFLE Elsewhere in Mississippi, weapons of greater technological advancement were making their presence known. One of these was the Kentucky rifle, a firearm that evolved from the European Jaeger (hunter) rifle. The Jaeger was built by central European gunsmiths and was probably the first firearm that could deliver reliable long-range fire. It was a flintlock with a set trigger and a walnut stock with a distinctive “trap” or patch box in the side that was covered by a sliding plate. Its heavy, octagonal rifled barrel was short, just 24 to 30 inches, and of .60 or .75 caliber. Although its sights were just an open rear V and a front blade, it was highly accurate. Good marksmen could hit targets at 200 to 300 yards. In the sixteenth century, some of these gunsmiths from central Europe migrated to Pennsylvania and brought the Jaeger design with them. There, however, economics necessitated a change. In the New World, lead was more expensive than in Europe, and a frugal frontiersman could cast many more .40 or .45 caliber balls than he could .60 or .75 caliber ones. Since the smaller bullets required less powder to propel them, gunsmiths found they could increase the length of the barrels, and the traditional Jaeger design gave way to slimmer, round barrels of 42 to 46 inches. This modification gave the rifle a muzzle-heavy feel that allowed steady offhand, or unsupported, shooting. At the same time, the extended sight radius improved aiming. Because the barrel was made of soft iron, when it became worn, the owner could take it back to the gunsmith, who would “fresh it out” by


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Kentucky rifles were a highly prized item among both hunters and soldiers in the Mississippi Territory. Courtesy of Saratoga National Historical Park.

recutting the rifling. The owner would then use bullets large enough to fit the new diameter, and his rifle was as good as new. When the Jaeger came to America, its stock was also changed from walnut to slender maple, and the sliding wood cover was replaced by a hinged one. These covers were usually made of brass and were often highly ornate. Inside the patch box was another innovation: a greased patch of cloth or buckskin. This patch would be placed on the muzzle, greasy side down, and the bullet was pushed down on top of it and rammed home with a ramrod. The greased patch served several purposes. It filled the grooves, helped the bullet slide down, and partially cleaned the barrel when it was fired out of it. All told, the greased patch enabled rifles to be loaded in a quarter of the time previously required. Although it was a product of Pennsylvania, the new rifle was so popular in the rugged Kentucky frontier that it is most commonly called the Kentucky rifle. The rifle gained instant fame at the Battle of New Orleans, where Tennessee and Kentucky militiamen under the command of Andrew Jackson hid behind cotton bales and cypress logs and used the weapon to great effect. Their performance was immortalized in song “The Hunters of Kentucky, or the Battle of New Orleans,” which boasted: But Jackson was wide awake, And wasn’t scar’d of trifles, For well he knew what aim we take, With our Kentucky rifles.16

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A replica of the war clubs commonly used by the Red Sticks. Photograph from the author’s personal collection.

The musket had certain military advantages over the new rifle, especially when traditional Napoleonic tactics were being used. The rifle’s rate of fire was only about one-third of the musket’s, thus reducing the rifle’s ability to deliver massed volley fire, but on the frontier, where men fought from behind trees, bushes, and rocks rather than in a linear formation, the rifle was the superior weapon.17 The rifle afforded the Mississippi militia a significant advantage in the Creek Wars. The hostile Creeks were often called Red Sticks because their wooden war clubs, the atassa, were invariably painted red. The eighteenthcentury form of the club was long and straight with a single notched edge. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new variety that featured a gunstock shape had gained popularity. Still another version contained a ball head. George Stiggins, a half-blood Creek who fought with the Americans, described the signature weapon of the Red Sticks as “shaped like a small gun about two feet long and at the curve where the lock would be is a three square piece of iron or steele with a sharp edge drove in to leave a projection of about two inches.”18 Lewis Sewell, author of an epic poem of the Red Stick War published in 1833, described it as “a kind of war club, about two feet long, thick and heavy at one end, in which was fixed a piece of sharp iron or bone; with which they struck their captives with great violence on the head and speedily put an end to their existence.”19 The war club was usually carried into battle inserted into the warrior’s belt.20


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The Mississippi Territory, which included the modern state of Alabama, was the scene of much fighting, including the Battle of Holy Ground. Map by Harry Smith.

The Red Sticks numbered perhaps 2,500 warriors, but only one in three was armed with a rifle or a musket. The rest had only their characteristic clubs, tomahawks, hatchets, and bows and arrows.21 The white American advantage in weaponry was very apparent at the Battle of Holy Ground. This battle took place around the town of Ikanatchaka (alternately Econochaca) on the east bank of the Alabama River between Pintahala and Big Swamp Creeks in Lowndes County. The Creeks considered

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Ikanatchaka to be sacred ground, and by July 1813 it had become a rallying point for the Indians. Refugees from earlier battles flocked to the town, as did families seeking protection. Warriors assembled there, eager to fight for William Weatherford, the great Red Stick leader. Perhaps most significant was the presence of Weatherford’s brotherin-law, Prophet Francis, and other key prophets. The prophets had consecrated Ikanatchaka, protecting it from intrusion by the white man by drawing wizard circles around it. Francis promised that any white man who dared to enter this sacred ground would suffer instant death. The approach to the town was further protected by a long, low pile of finely split lightwood. Lighting this consecrated fuel also would bring death to the white man. The confident prophets called the town the “Grave of White Men.” In spite of such reassurances, Weatherford took care to prepare a stiff defense. To this end, he was greatly assisted by the natural terrain. Ikanatchaka was located on a high bluff overlooking the Alabama River. There the Alabama and the Holy Ground Creek formed a horseshoeshaped peninsula, and the town was almost entirely surrounded by thick swamps and tricky ravines, including two of some two hundred yards in length each, which protected the western approaches. In addition to these natural defenses, Weatherford had fortified the town with pickets that extended across the neck of the peninsula to a point on the river just above the two ravines. The result was an enclosed area of some fifty acres in which Weatherford had accumulated an impressive stockpile of supplies, including 1,200 to 1,500 bushels of corn. A nearby spring provided an abundance of fresh water. Weatherford and his men were ready. On December 22, 1813, Weatherford was awakened from a comfortable sleep with the alarming news that the enemy was approaching. General Ferdinand Claiborne had marched his army of just over one thousand soldiers from Fort Deposit and was now camped just ten miles outside the Holy Ground. Claiborne’s army consisted of Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Russell’s Third Regiment, a battalion of mounted cavalry commanded by Major Cassels, Major Benjamin Smoot’s militia battalion, Colonel Joseph


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Carson’s Mississippi Volunteers, and 150 Choctaws led by Pushmataha. All indications were that Claiborne planned to attack at daybreak. Prophet Francis remained confident. “This is our sacred ground,” he promised. “The prophets have cast their spells, encircling the town with magic circles. If the white man be bold enough to enter, the air shall turn to sheets of flame, and drive him back in fear.” Weatherford was more pragmatic. “The white army is strong,” he admitted. Acknowledging the weapons differential, he noted, “They have guns, where most of our warriors are armed with only bow and arrow. If we go out and attack them, many of our warriors will be cut down by their lead, even before they are close enough for their arrows to meet their mark.” Instead of attacking, Weatherford decided to take advantage of his strong position and defend his ground. “If the [soldiers] wish to do battle,” he promised, “they will have to come to us, and we will be ready.” Weatherford used the few rifles he had judiciously. He positioned a large group of warriors armed with rifles behind the bank of a stream that emptied into Holy Ground Creek. A smaller group took up positions behind a fallen tree that adjoined the bank, and other warriors concealed themselves as best they could. Then they waited for the inevitable attack. By eleven o’clock on the morning of December 23, Claiborne had advanced his army to within two miles of Ikanatchaka. There he halted and prepared to attack. Claiborne’s plan was to divide his force into three columns. The outside columns, commanded by Carson on the right and Smoot on the left, would surround the town. Assisted by Cassel’s mounted riflemen, who would take up positions on the riverbank west of the town, these forces would cut off all possible escape routes. Russell’s regiment would form the center column, attacking the enemy to cause it to scatter. This carefully designed plan soon encountered some problems. The formidable terrain disrupted Cassel’s advance and caused him to take an alternate route that left a gap in the American line. The difficult movement also generated enough noise to give the Red Sticks plenty of warning. Carson’s Mississippians also ran into trouble. Unaware of the welllaid ambush, they advanced as the enemy patiently waited for the volunteers to enter rifle range. Then the Red Sticks suddenly opened fire from

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behind their protected positions. Both sides fought bravely, but Carson’s men slowly made progress. Still, Weatherford was prepared. Behind his riflemen, he had positioned other warriors armed with bows and arrows. Now was the time for this second line of defense to unleash its fury. Unfortunately for the Red Sticks, when the order was given to fire, most of the arrows sailed high and fell harmlessly to the rear of Carson’s men. Even so, the warriors were spurred on by the periodic incantations of one of the prophets. With such encouragement, the Red Sticks held their ground for about thirty minutes. Then, unencumbered by the linear formations required by the musket, the militiamen were able to make an oblique maneuver around to the other side of the log concealing the Indians and deliver a deadly enfilading fire. The warriors were forced to retreat and did so in an organized manner, continuing to fight from behind the plentiful trees and fallen logs. Until this point, Carson’s Mississippians had been the only American unit involved in the fighting. Now, as other Americans entered the battle and forced the Red Sticks to continue to withdraw, one of Carson’s men, named Gatlin, struck one of the enemy’s chief prophets, most likely Sikaboo, with a well-placed shot that shattered the Indian’s arm and punctured his chest. Seeing their prophet fall to the ground destroyed the Red Sticks’ confidence. The very man who had promised protection from the white man’s weapons now lay lifeless. As the Red Sticks struggled to come to grips with this new development, Carson pressed the attack. Soon he was joined by Claiborne’s entire command, and against such pressure many Red Sticks threw down their bows, arrows, and war clubs and retreated. Eventually even Weatherford was forced to retreat. Mercifully for the Red Sticks, the gap left by Cassels’s interrupted advance provided an escape route for many warriors. Weatherford himself escaped on his mighty horse Arrow only after a legendary daring leap off a bluff into the Alabama River. The Battle of Holy Ground was a one-sided victory for the Americans. Claiborne lost just one man and had twenty wounded, while the Creeks suffered thirty-three dead. Because the Creeks evacuated their wounded, that number is unknown. These disproportionate casualty figures are a


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testament to the impact of the possession, or lack of, sophisticated weapons.22 H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball, noted historians of the battle, explain that “the slight [American] loss, considering the bravery with which the enemy fought, must doubtless be ascribed to the scarcity of ammunition among the Creeks, which compelled them to have recourse to bows and arrows, the primitive weapons of their race.”23 Shortly after the battle, Carson and his Mississippi volunteers were mustered out of service, but their actions at Ikanatchaka illustrate the advantage the Americans had over the Indians in terms of weaponry in the Mississippi Territory. Red Stick spirituality, clubs, and bows and arrows were no match for the white man’s firearms. While the Red Sticks judiciously used the few firearms they had, their numerical disadvantage was simply too great. Harvey Jackson describes the battle as “the age of steel and powder against the age of stone. Steel and powder won.”24 Perhaps nowhere in territorial Mississippi is the importance of technological weapons superiority more apparent than in the Creek Wars.

O BS E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F T E RR ITO RI AL MIS S IS S IPPI Territorial Mississippi was a place in which the institutions of government, order, commerce, and society were struggling to take hold. Distance exacerbated all problems, and local authority was clearly the operative authority. In such an environment, the rule of force usually triumphed, at least initially, over the rule of law. Because the rule of force is applied more easily with the assistance of weapons, not only quantity but quality became critical. At first territorial authorities struggled to affect this outcome, as evidenced by the difficulties of arming the militia. In the absence of a well-equipped central force, local entities that controlled weapons and violence were able to exert influence. This phenomenon is epitomized by the outlaws of the Natchez Trace, who, armed with crude weapons (but weapons nonetheless), were able to exert their will over unarmed and isolated travelers.

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The threat to order posed by these outlaws, as well as increasing tensions with both Indians and European colonial powers, provided a strong incentive to strengthen the territorial militia. This strengthening manifested itself in the application of weapons technology. The militia was able to arm itself with superior weapons—namely, the rifle—in superior quantities. The defeat of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Holy Ground shows the result of this early American technological competition. Thus the territorial period in Mississippi was marked by the increased introduction of lethal weapons to the region. Because the central authorities had better access to acquisition, organization, and production synergies, they were able to take advantage of weapons in a way that outstripped nonterritorial government groups such as outlaws and Indians. This capability to control and use weapons helped centralize territorial Mississippi.

4 D UE LING AND S L AVE R Y W EAPONS OF ANTEBELLUM MISSISSIPPI

In the Old South, honor was a complicated but all-pervasive phenomenon. Bertram Wyatt-Brown goes as far as to call honor “the most important aspect of antebellum ethics” and the “keystone of the slaveholding South’s morality.”1 He then proceeds to explain three elements of Southern society—dueling, the slavocracy, and policing slave society— in the context of honor. Wyatt-Brown groups these topics in a section of his book that addresses social control. Control, be it social or otherwise, as this present study has thus far been tracing, is often maintained by weapons. In personal combat such as a duel, weapons helped establish control over a rival. On the plantation, masters used weapons to maintain control over the slave labor force. In the slaveholding society, weapons maintained control over the threat to the social order posed by slave insurrection. In all these situations, Wyatt-Brown sees Southern honor at stake, and in all these cases, that honor was safeguarded by weapons. Throughout the South, dueling was a means of defending honor and identifying oneself. By dueling, a man could influence his community’s evaluation of him. Personal grudges were settled. Up-and-coming men were able to enter the leadership ranks, and followers were able to manipulate leaders. Frustration over unresolved personal problems could be channeled toward a scapegoat.2 Indeed, a number of prominent Mississippians, 43

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D U E L I N G A N D S L AV E RY

including governors Henry Foote, Hiram Runnels, and Alexander McNutt; congressmen William Gwin, Sergeant Prentiss, and William Lake, and supreme court judges Isaac Caldwell and Joshua Childs, all engaged in duels for various reasons.3 But as useful as dueling was to address these myriad purposes, Southerners also recognized its unseemly side.4 The Mississippi Constitution of 1832 empowered the legislature to pass laws to prevent dueling and to exclude from public office those who had engaged in duels after 1832.5 At a meeting in 1844 of the Anti-Dueling Society of Mississippi, Judge John F. Bodley denounced dueling as an “anti-moral, anti-legal and anti-ecclesiastical custom.” Other Mississippi leaders such as John Quitman and Jefferson Davis shared Bodley’s assessment.6 Quitman describes one impromptu duel in Clinton as “a dreadful encounter in the pavement before this house between Gen. Runnels and Jas. B. Marsh in which seven pistols were discharged, both are wounded,” but duels of this format were atypical.7 Mississippians had to rectify the utility of dueling as a means of defending the critical attribute of honor while at the same time curbing the activity’s threat to civilized society. The result was a strict code duello by which duels became carefully orchestrated events in which weapons were a means of defending honor rather than necessarily inflicting as much physical harm as possible. It was this code duello that distinguished the gentleman from the brawler.8 The original code duello was written in 1777 by a group of Irishmen, and it contained twenty-six specific rules covering all aspects of the duel. Specifications ranged from the time of day during which challenges could be received to the number of shots or wounds required to satisfy one’s honor. South Carolina governor John Lyde Wilson wrote an Americanized version of the code, which appeared in 1838, but before that, Americans followed the European rules.9 The Maddox-Wells duel of 1827, also known as the Sandbar Fight, was one of the most famous duels in Mississippi. It began in the classical code duello tradition but ended in an ungentlemanly melee. In the process, it showcased both the weapons of the choreographed ritual and the noholds-barred street fight.


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Weapons were also a key part of Mississippi slavocracy. Maintaining slave discipline was essential to the successful operation of the plantation, and the overseer was given primary responsibility for enforcing rules and regulations. This task was a challenging one, because in Mississippi and throughout the Lower South, the most efficient ratio of overseers to slaves was considered to be one to fifty.10 The most common weapon the overseer used to even these odds was the whip. A. De Puy Van Buren, a native of Michigan, traveled throughout Mississippi’s Yazoo Valley in 1854–55 and found the whip was “ever in [the overseer’s] hand.”11 Yet the overseer had to be judicious in his use of the weapon. To protect the plantation owner’s investment, most overseers were under strict instructions to exercise restraint in their use of force. Ideally, the whip was intended to discipline slaves, but not to administer such physical harm as to limit their productivity.12 Obviously, significant numbers of slaves resisted their status and sought freedom. Slaves could generally be controlled during the day when they were laboring under supervised conditions, but the night afforded them a better opportunity to run away. To prevent escape and other undesirable behavior, white society organized armed slave patrols, which provide another example of how superior organization, centralization, and weapons facilitate control. In some cases, the slaves sought to gain these advantages for themselves by obtaining weapons and revolting. As a result, the fear of slave insurrection permeated Mississippi, and the control of weapons, especially firearms, was the decisive factor in both the revolts and the countermeasures.

D UE L ING P ISTOL S, SWO RD C A NES, AND BOWIE KNIVES The Maddox-Wells duel was the result of a long-standing feud between two groups of men in Rapides Parish, Louisiana. On one side of the disagreement were Dr. Thomas Maddox, Colonel Robert Crane (sometimes reported as Crain or Grain), Major Norris Wright, and Alfred and Carey

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Blanchard. On the other were Samuel Wells, General Samuel Cuney (sometimes reported as Currey), and Colonel Jim Bowie. There was plenty of bad blood between the rival groups. Bowie and Crane had previously fought a fistfight, and Crane and Cuney had fought a duel in which Crane had been wounded in the arm. On September 19, 1827, Wells and Maddox met on the first large sandbar above Natchez on the Mississippi side of the river. There is no record of the exact pistols used by the combatants, but dueling pistols were typically of about .50 caliber and were engraved and housed in a velvet-lined mahogany box that contained the pistol and its accessories. Dueling pistols were prized possessions of the gentleman and were often passed down from father to son. Duels were usually fought at a distance of twelve paces, although in 1834 Alexander McClung, known as the “Black Knight of the South,” killed a man with his first shot by striking him in the mouth at a distance of over one hundred feet.13 McClung was a notorious duelist whose duels included one fought with the planter-merchant John Menefee at Vicksburg in 1838. The duel was fought with Mississippi rifles at thirty paces and left Menefee dead.14 The Maddox-Wells duel began in an organized fashion. Bowie and Crane were forbidden to come on the sandbar, and by all accounts the duel itself was conducted with the proper decorum. Maddox and Wells exchanged two shots each without damage, shook hands, and started off the field, the matter presumably settled. At this point, the exact events are subject to some debate. According to one account, both groups then joined for a festive picnic with plenty of champagne and brandy. The trouble started when Crane, perhaps thinking that since the feud was over he was no longer restricted from the sandbar, decided to join the party. When Bowie learned that Crane was on the sandbar, Bowie rowed over himself. Another version of the story has Bowie in a much more antagonistic role. According to this account, Bowie, Wells, and Cuney emerged from the woods as the dueling parties withdrew from the field, and Bowie and his partners met them with pistols and knives drawn. Seeing this


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development, Crane and other friends of Maddox rushed from the other side of the sandbar to meet them. Cuney saw the opportunity now to resolve his old score with Crane. According to one report, Cuney advanced on Crane and said, “Colonel Crane, this is a good time to settle our difficulty.” Cuney drew his pistol but was restrained by his brother before he could fire it. In the meantime, Crane and Bowie fired at each other nearly simultaneously. Bowie missed and was knocked to the ground by a bullet that struck his side. Cuney, having broken loose from his brother’s grasp, fired at Crane and grazed him in the arm. Crane, using his second pistol, killed Cuney. What had begun as a fairly proper duel was now a wide-open brawl, featuring a variety of weapons of frontier Mississippi. Bowie drew his knife and began working his way toward Crane, who threw his empty pistol at Bowie, striking him in the side of the head and opening a wide gash in Bowie’s scalp. In spite of the blood streaming into his eyes, Bowie was able to see Wright and Blanchard approaching with drawn pistols. Bowie reportedly pleaded with Wright not to shoot, but Wright fired anyway, wounding Bowie yet again. Wright and Blanchard then proceeded to attack Bowie with sword canes, long, slender blades drawn from walking canes. Somehow Bowie got hold of a pistol and fired at Wright. Although wounded, Wright continued to stab Bowie with his sword cane. The melee had now narrowed largely to the life-or-death struggle between Bowie with his knife and Wright with his sword cane. Wright stabbed Bowie in the chest, but the narrow blade struck bone and broke. The powerful Bowie was then able to grab the slender Wright by his cravat, yank him to the ground, and plunge his knife into Wright’s heart, killing him instantly. Bowie reportedly told Wright, “Now, Major, you die.” With that climactic blow, the fighting subsided, but not before, according to one account, fifteen men were wounded and at least six killed.15 As news of the Sandbar Fight spread across the nation, Bowie and his knife became legendary, so much so that it is difficult to separate the history of the knife from its lore. The knife Bowie wielded at the sandbar may have been merely a butcher knife, but according to an article in the New York Times in 1895, it was made by Bowie’s brother Rezin out of a blacksmith’s

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rasp or large file. Upon presenting the knife, Rezin supposedly told Jim that it was “strong, and of admirable temper. It is more trustworthy in the hands of a strong man than a pistol, for it will not snap.” Rezin then specifically cautioned his brother about Crane and Wright, and advised him, “Keep this knife always with you. It will be your friend, and may save your life.”16 Another account claims that John Sowell, a blacksmith, fashioned the first Bowie knife from a model cut in wood by Bowie. According to this version, Bowie had injured himself in an Indian fight when his hand slipped and he cut himself on his own knife. To protect against such an accident in the future, Bowie suggested that Sowell add a guard.17 Still another explanation credits Bowie with taking a fourteen-inch file to a cutler named Pedro in New Orleans and having him turn it into a knife.18 A comparison of the various descriptions of the original knife suggests it boasted a superbly tempered blade, ten to fifteen inches long and curved concavely along the back and convexly along the edge near the point. It was about two inches wide at its broadest part and had a wide guard and generous hilt.19 It was an ideal weapon for the rough-and-tumble combat of the Sandbar Fight. Whatever the exact origin or design of the knife Bowie wielded that day in 1827, it soon became widely copied throughout the Southwest. Bowie traveled east in 1828 and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had a cutler named Henry Schively fashion a high-quality knife, complete with a fancy silver sheath, patterned after the original. Bowie’s brother Rezin wore the knife, engraved with his initials, RPB, on the pommel cap, for several years, and in 1831 he gave the knife to his friend Jesse Perkins of Jackson. Rezin made it a practice of presenting Bowie knives to friends and important individuals. He gave one knife made by Daniel Seales of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to H. W. Fowler. This knife is now on display at the Alamo.20 In an era when pistols frequently misfired, the Bowie knife was a reliable backup weapon with a variety of uses. Hunters and pioneers used it for skinning game, cutting meat, digging holes, eating, and fighting. It was strong enough to cut firewood or hack a trail through dense undergrowth. Imaginative users found its handle suitable for everything from hammering nails to grinding up a bag of coffee beans.21


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This replica of a Bowie knife models many of the various designs of the weapon that were inspired by Bowie’s original. Knife courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

The popularity of the Bowie knife reached its peak in the 1850s, and the knife was popular with Confederate troops during the Civil War. By the 1870s, however, the efficiency, reliability, and wide distribution of Colt revolvers displaced the pivotal role of the Bowie knife.22 Until then, the Bowie knife played an important part in Mississippi life, so much so that Harold Peterson ranks it as one of the three key weapons in the history of American arms. The other two are the Kentucky rifle, which was discussed in the previous chapter, and the Colt revolver, discussed in chapter 7.

S L AVE RY AND TH E WE APONS OF THE OVERSEER While dueling was a matter of personal control, slavery was an issue of control in Mississippi’s broader society. Slave labor on Mississippi cotton plantations was organized under the time-work or gang system. Under this system, slaves of approximately equal ability were grouped together to form work parties that labored from sunrise to sundown under the supervision of a black driver. While this system lacked the incentive to work rapidly that was afforded by the task system common to South Carolina or Georgia rice fields, it was well suited for the labor requirements of Mississippi’s staple crops. During the course of the day, the overseer would ride throughout the plantation and inspect the work of each gang.23 Many

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overseers shared the opinion of one who told Frederick Law Olmsted that the slaves would “never do any work at all if they were not afraid of being whipped.”24 The omnipresent weapon that was used to enforce slave discipline was the whip, a device carried by drivers and overseers alike.25 The driver was the lone black operative on the plantation. Normally selected for his intelligence, common sense, and physical strength, the driver assisted the overseer by supervising routine tasks.26 Olmsted made several trips throughout the South in the 1850s. At one plantation in Mississippi, he observed the driver supervising a plow gang with the help of “a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning.”27 Olmsted also reported seeing a driver supervising a hoe gang of some two hundred slaves moving across the field in precise parallel lines. Order was maintained “by a tall and powerful Negro who walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip, and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, ‘Shove your hoe, there! Shove your hoe, here!’ But I never saw him strike anyone with the whip.”28 In fact, drivers were usually allowed to administer corporal punishment only in the presence of the overseer.29 These overseers were perhaps the most important figures in the plantation managerial hierarchy. In many ways, they determined the plantation’s success or failure.30 Although the overseer possessed little personal decision-making authority, he was empowered to execute the policies developed by the plantation owner. These responsibilities included disciplining the slaves, which William Scarborough considers to be “clearly the decisive factor in the success or failure of an overseer.”31 Overseers operated with much freer rein than the drivers in imposing discipline. Olmsted describes an instance when an overseer caught a slave girl around eighteen years of age apparently shirking work. The overseer administered “thirty or forty blows across the shoulder with his tough, flexible ‘raw-hide’ whip.” Olmsted describes the blows as “well laid on, at arm’s length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer.” After the slave refused to confess to avoiding work, the overseer delivered more blows across the girl’s “naked loins and thighs, with


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as much strength as before.” Olmsted reported never having seen a man, yet alone a young girl, flogged “with a hundredth part of the severity used in this case,” but perhaps what shocked him most was “the perfectly passionless but rather grim business-like face of the overseer” throughout the ordeal.32 Another overseer told Olmsted that punishment was “my business, and I think nothing of it.”33 Indeed, whippings were a regular part of plantation life, and overseers used the weapon routinely for even minor transgressions. Within a single week during the fall of 1855, T. L. Vandiver, the overseer of a plantation in Washington County, recorded meting out the following punishments: [November 12.] Whipt Betsey and black to day for changing their places at the wagons. [November 13.] Whipt new Dave and matilda for fighting. [November 16.] Whipt morgan For Telling Lies. [November 17.] Whipt Lancaster To day for picking Trashey Cotton.34 Nonetheless, a large amount of whipping was normally considered a sign of a poorly run plantation.35 One concern was that excessive whipping often motivated slaves to run away.36 There were also social ramifications for the owner who gained a reputation as being inordinately cruel.37 The principal motivation for restraint, however, was to avoid physically damaging the valuable labor investment. Thus most plantation owners placed limits on the type and severity of punishment that could be inflicted. For example, Andrew Flynn’s Green Valley plantation rules specified that the slaves “must be flogged as seldom as possible yet always when necessary. A good manager who is with the hands as much as he Should be can encourage them on with very little punishment. Violent threats must never be used & the Overseer is strictly enjoined never to kick a negro or strike one with his hand or a stick or the butt end of his whip. These things will not be tolerated. No unusual punishments must be resorted to without the Employers approbation.”38 Likewise, the Bolivar County planter Charles Clark specifically forbade his overseers from using “the but

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[sic] of the whip or any instrument that will bruise the flesh. This will not be allowed except in case of absolute necessity.”39 In fact, most planters limited the number of lashes that could be applied at any one whipping to fifty, the traditional limitation of forty imposed by Deuteronomy 25:3 notwithstanding. Obviously, these self-imposed restraints were not legally binding on the plantation owner. Many overseers also found ways around the limitations. Kenneth Stampp argues that the overseers’ “inclination in most cases was to punish severely; if their employers prohibited severity, they ignored such instructions as often as not.”40 There is at least one recorded case in which a slave received three hundred lashes for murdering a fellow slave.41 Olmsted describes the whip itself as “a terrible instrument.”42 Whipping caused unspeakable pain, often resulted in loss of blood, and could lead to shock and infection.43 One example of the permanent results of whipping was a Mississippi slave who had “large raised scars or whelks in the small of his back and on his abdomen nearly as large as a person’s finger.”44 The amount of pain inflicted was in part a function of the type of whip used. The most common whip was the rawhide, or cowskin, whip. This particular whip was extremely brutal and required only a few strokes to make its point.45 Frederick Douglass provides a vivid account of the rawhide whip: It is made entirely of untanned, but dried, ox hide, and is about as hard as a piece of well-seasoned live oak. It is made of various sizes, but the usual length is about three feet. The part held in the hand is nearly an inch in thickness; and, from the extreme end of the butt or handle, the cowskin tapers its whole length to a point. This makes it quite elastic and springy. A blow with it, on the hardest back, will gash the flesh, and make the blood start. Cowskins are painted red, blue and green, and are the favorite slave whip. I think this whip worse than the “cat-o’nine-tails.” It condenses the whole strength of the arm to a single point, and comes with a spring that makes the air


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This illustration from an 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly shows the scars of repeated whippings on a runaway slave named Gordon, who escaped from his owner in Mississippi and joined the Federal army in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

whistle. It is a terrible instrument, and is so handy, that the overseer can always have it on his person, and ready for use. The temptation to use it is ever strong; and an overseer can, if disposed, always have cause for using it. With him, it is literally a word and a blow, and, in most cases, the blow comes first.46 Because of the tremendous potential of the rawhide whip to lacerate the skin and do other damage, many plantation owners used other types of whips.47 Charles Clark advised his managers to use “a whip with a suitable lash,” rather than the more damaging rawhide, to preserve his investment.48 In fact, one visitor to Mississippi reported that the lash whip was in general use in the state. He described it as consisting of a “stout flexible

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stalk” covered with a tapering leather plait some three and a half feet long, which formed the lash. On the end of the lash was a soft, dry buckskin cracker about three-eighths of an inch wide and ten or twelve inches long. This was the only part of the whip allowed to strike when whippings were administered to the bare skin. According to the observer, the lash whip “makes a very loud report, and stings, or ‘burns’ the skin smartly, but does not bruise it.” He claimed that one hundred well-laid blows with a lash whip would not injure the skin as much as ten moderate strokes with the rawhide whip.49 Other types of whips include those resembling carriage whips or even a bundle of small, thin switches.50 The whip seemingly accomplished its intended purpose of infusing the slaves with fear. Considering the total number of slaves who worked under overseer supervision, instances of slave resistance to overseer authority were minimal.51 Nonetheless there were other weapons on the plantation more deadly than the whip. One Mississippi overseer who had twice been assaulted while administering punishment “always carried a bowie-knife, but not a pistol, unless he anticipated some unusual act of insubordination. He always kept a pair of pistols ready loaded over the mantel-piece however in case they should be needed.”52 Whether it was whips, Bowie knives, or firearms, it was critical that the white population maintain control of the weapons. The subject of slaves carrying weapons had been addressed by Louisiana’s Code Noir, which was promulgated in 1724 and remained in force until the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803. Article XII prohibited slaves “to carry offensive weapons or heavy sticks, under the penalty of being whipped, and of having said weapons confiscated for the benefit of the person seizing the same. An exception is made in favor of those slaves who are sent a hunting or a shooting by their masters, and who carry with them a written permission to that effect, or are designated by some known mark or badge.” However, as fear of rebellion became an increasing concern, exceptions allowing slaves to possess weapons even for hunting were eliminated.53 As elsewhere in Mississippi history, the issue was control. Control of the plantation meant control of weapons, and rules were created to ensure the advantage lay with the white population.


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S L AVE I NSUR RE C TION AND S L AVE PAT ROL S Slavery thrived in Mississippi’s rich agricultural areas, and the influx of slaves created a potential threat to the security of the white population. In 1830, blacks accounted for 48.4 percent of Mississippi’s population,54 and by 1860, blacks outnumbered whites, comprising 55.3 percent of the population.55 The discrepancy was much more pronounced in certain parts of the state. For example, in the last two decades of the antebellum period, slaves made up approximately 75 percent of the population in the five leading cotton-producing counties. In the Delta counties of Issaquena and Washington, blacks outnumbered whites nine to one.56 Absentee plantation owners who resided in other parts of the state often left the overseer as the only white man on the plantation. Under these circumstances, reports of slave insurrection naturally instilled stark fear in the white minority.57 Perhaps the greatest slave insurrection scare in Mississippi occurred in 1835, when rumors spread that John Murrell, the “Great Western Land Pirate” who had plagued the Natchez Trace stealing slaves, had planned an insurrection. In 1834, Murrell was confined to the state penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee, but his captor, Virgil Stewart, reported that Murrell had advised him of a plot to instigate a general slave uprising on Christmas Day of 1835. Murrell’s gang reportedly consisted of about a thousand operatives, and Stewart revealed the names of forty-seven of them located in Mississippi.58 In the ensuing panic, whites in Livingston in Madison County rounded up several blacks on June 30, 1835. Subjected to torturous whippings, the suspects admitted that a revolt was planned to coincide with the July 4 holiday, a day it was felt that slaves could assemble without drawing suspicion. On July 2, an angry mob summarily hung the blacks suspected of being involved and then seized two white men, Joshua Cotton and William Saunders, who had been implicated in the plot. On July 4, after an irregular judicial proceeding designed to circumvent the “glorious uncertainty of the law,” Cotton and Saunders were found guilty and sentenced to hanging.59 The pair was marched to the Livingston jail, where the executioners, “fastening a rope to the grating of a window, in the upper story of the jail,

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and leaning a couple rails against the wall, assisted the culprits upon the rails; then adjusting the other end of the rope around their necks, removed the rails.”60 Saunders maintained his innocence to the end, but Cotton warned his executioners to “beware to-night, to-morrow, and the next night.” Based on Cotton’s information, additional whites were captured. Some were hung using a more substantial gallows than the improvised one shared by Saunders and Cotton. One was tortured and later committed suicide. Those whose involvement was considered of lesser severity were punished by “slicking.” Under these proceedings, the victim was stripped naked and laid face down with his hands and feet fastened to pegs. He was then whipped by different individuals.61 The panic lasted in Madison County for a week and spread to other localities as well. On July 8, Governor Hiram Runnels even offered to provide Madison County with weapons to guard against insurrection. He also called on every able-bodied white man to arm himself and be ready for service. By mid-July, approximately twelve whites and a much larger number of blacks had been executed at the hands of vigilantes. It was not until July 13, after most of the initial hysteria had died down, that the governor issued a proclamation urging people to turn suspects over to the “proper authorities.”62 By then news of the turmoil in Mississippi had traveled throughout the South. As far away as North Carolina, a woman wrote, “I should be almost afraid to live in Mississippi now there is so much fuss with the negroes.”63 The slave patrol system, which initially grew out of an adaptation of the militia system, was an important means of controlling the threats that many whites saw in Mississippi’s large black population. Slave patrols were drawn from a manpower pool consisting of all slave owners and everyone subject to militia duty who was junior to rank of captain. Captains were tasked to manage patrols within their assigned districts and to make a detachment roster at each company muster. Each detachment consisted of a leader and three patrol members, with the patrols performing their duties once every two weeks or sometimes more often.64


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Apparently this system was unsatisfactory because in the 1830s, the patrol system was brought under the jurisdiction of local units of the civil government. The militia’s duties were relegated to rural areas in 1831 when incorporated towns assumed responsibilities for slave patrols within the town’s geographic limits. In 1833, these remaining militia responsibilities were transferred to the boards of county police. These changes focused the patrol system at the local level, where the greatest threat existed, and made the system subject to the control of local governments.65 The slave patrol’s principal task was to apprehend any slave found outside his authorized location. According to Mississippi law, a slave could not leave the property of his master without a written pass. The patrols apprehended blacks who were out after curfew, dispersed assemblies of blacks, and inflicted “rough-and-ready punishments.”66 As on the plantation, the principal weapon involved was the whip. If the slave was in an unauthorized location, but did not appear to be a runaway, the patrol meted out a punishment of fifteen lashes. Runaways were to be turned over to the justice of the peace, and the patrol would collect a six-dollar reward.67 Conclusions about the effectiveness of the slave patrols vary. William Scarborough believes that “the county patrol was one of the most effective instruments in maintaining white control over the large population of the state.”68 Conversely, Charles Sydnor writes that “the patrol seems to have been no more efficient than the medieval town watch.”69 Regardless, slave patrols were an attempt to use centralization, order, and weapons to maintain control over a group with superior numbers.

O BS E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F A N TE BEL LUM MIS S IS S IPPI Antebellum Mississippi was a violent era in the state’s history. Individual social scores were often settled by duels, which were supposed to be conducted according to strict rules that limited the damage. However, as the Sandbar Fight shows, just below the surface of this decorum was a wild

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side of Mississippi society that was unencumbered by such restrictions. The Sandbar Fight catapulted the Bowie knife to fame, and it became a fixture in Mississippi and throughout the South. Dueling and brawling were ways that Mississippians used weapons to control their social environment on an individual scale. The broader social environment rested on the institution of slavery. Again, control was critical because the very nature of slavery requires force and compulsion. As in other cases examined thus far, a numerical disadvantage was offset by possession of weapons and centralization. The overseer’s whip allowed him to control large numbers of slaves on the plantation, and the organized system of slave patrols allowed outnumbered whites to control great swaths of territory. While slaves posed a constant threat of rebellion, this threat seldom materialized because of the superior control of weapons and organization among the white society. Bertram Wyatt-Brown groups dueling, slavery, and slave patrols under the heading of social control in a study that focuses on honor rather than weapons. This present study demonstrates the criticality of weapons in maintaining social control and, by extension, Wyatt-Brown’s all-important Southern honor. George Orwell is credited with having said, “People sleep comfortably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” In antebellum Mississippi, behind the stately pillars of the plantation and the refined decorum of the parties and balls were a group of rough men wielding weapons to control what was dear to them.

5 M IS S IS S IPPI R IFLES W EAPONS OF MISSISSIPPIANS IN MEXICO

America of the 1840s was the America of Manifest Destiny. In 1845, Congress annexed Texas, which until 1836 had been a republic of Mexico. Since then, however, Texas had considered itself an independent republic, while Mexico still saw it as a wayward province in revolt. When Texas joined the United States, relations between Mexico and the United States rapidly deteriorated. On May 13, 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico, and President James Polk faced the problem of building an army capable of battling the formidable Mexican army of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Mississippians had long supported Texas independence and welcomed it into the Union as a Southern state critical to maintaining the delicate balance of power between slave and free states. In spite of a flood of volunteers, Secretary of War William Marcy limited the Mississippi state quota to a single regiment of infantry or riflemen for twelve months’ service. Competition was stiff, and many disappointed volunteers were refused, but finally the 936-man First Mississippi Volunteer Regiment was mustered into federal service. On the second ballot, Jefferson Davis, then serving in the U.S. Congress, was elected as the regiment’s colonel.1

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Davis’s selection profoundly impacted the weapons Mississippians would use in Mexico. The most common shoulder arm in the Mexican War was the flintlock musket, although technical developments had made it possible to replace the flintlock with the percussion cap and therefore make muskets more reliable and serviceable in rain and snow. Indeed, in 1842 the army ceased producing flintlocks, and the Model 1841 Springfield caplock actually became the standard shoulder arm. The way the system worked was that when the weapon’s hammer fell, it struck a small brass cap that fit snugly over a nipple at the breach of the weapon. The inside of the cap was painted with a small daub of mercury fulminate, which would ignite when hit by the hammer. This action sent a spark to the chamber and ignited the powder charge. The used cap could then be discarded and a new one put in place for the next firing. The percussion cap system eliminated the need to prime the weapon. The system not only made the rifle faster to load but also achieved a much lower rate of misfires than the flintlock, which was particularly vulnerable under damp conditions. However, Army General-in-Chief Winfield Scott distrusted the percussion cap as being too complicated, and because of his influence, the flintlock remained the predominant firearm when the Mexican War began. Volunteer units, however, were less traditional in embracing the new technology, and many, such as Davis’s “Mississippi Rifles,” were outfitted with rifles.2 The weapon and the Mississippi soldiers who bore it would win fame and victory at the Battle of Buena Vista.

M IS SI SS IP PI’S MILITIA TRADITION By 1846, Mississippi had reversed completely the poor militia that territorial governors Sergeant and Claiborne had struggled just to supply with weapons. Mississippi now had a well-organized, well-equipped, and welldrilled militia that personified the society’s fascination with all things martial. This martial spirit was a large part of the culture of not just Mississippi but the entire South. Southern men relished in hunting, riding horses,

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fighting, and dueling, and these preferences naturally led to an enthusiasm for participation in the militia. The result, according to one visitor to the state, was a man “almost naturally trained for war.”3 An example of this martial spirit and its impact on the Mississippi militia is John Quitman. Originally from New York, Quitman arrived in Natchez in 1821 at the age of twenty-three. By then the militia system, not just in Mississippi but in the entire nation, had reached a serious crisis. The failure to achieve federal regulation of the militia and an absence of imminent enemy attack had caused a dangerous lapse in militia standards. This was exactly the situation Quitman found in Natchez. By 1823, Quitman was the brigade inspector for the second brigade of the first division in the Mississippi militia. The position gave Quitman both experience and visibility, and by the spring of 1824 he was able to lead a group of like-minded individuals to form a volunteer company that became known as the Natchez Fencibles. With Quitman as their captain, the Fencibles were incorporated into the fourth regiment of the state militia. The Fencibles were an integral part of the Natchez community, participating in parades and public ceremonies, maintaining law and order, and guarding against the ever-present threat of slave revolt. By 1829, Quitman had gained a statewide reputation as an expert on militia reform, and state legislators called on him to provide advice on new legislation to revitalize the militia. By the end of the year, Quitman sent Governor Gerard Brandon recommendations to improve supervision, discipline, and promotion policies, to reduce the number of brigades, and to provide state funding for certain positions. The substance of Quitman’s recommendations was then enacted in a thirty-four-page piece of legislation. In 1836 Quitman was presented an opportunity to test his reformed militia. On March 6 the Alamo fell, and when Quitman learned the news, he, like many Mississippians, was filled with passion for the cause of Texas independence. In April he led approximately forty men, including many of the Fencibles, into Texas. Quitman secured Nacogdoches against a threatened Mexican-Indian attack and then rushed to join Sam Houston’s force, which was reportedly falling back against Mexican pressure. Quitman

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arrived two days late to participate in the Battle of San Jacinto, and then, seeing that Houston had things well in hand, Quitman returned to Natchez. His men, however, stayed in Texas and joined the Army of Texas as volunteers under Thomas Rusk’s command. Having missed his opportunity for battle, Quitman remained active in the militia and anxiously waited. In 1837 he was elected major general in the second division of the Mississippi militia, and when the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846, he lobbied for command. Six civilian brigadier general positions were created to lead the volunteers, and President Polk designated Quitman for one of the posts. While in Mexico, Quitman saw combat at Monterrey, Vera Cruz, and Chapultepec.4 Ironically, the Natchez Fencibles, the militia unit that Quitman had initially been associated with, were not among those selected to go to Mexico as part of the First Mississippi Regiment. The competition was steep, and twenty-two militia companies and perhaps seventeen thousand volunteers had gathered in Vicksburg to vie for the coveted ten positions that would form the regiment. When a few of the Fencibles left formation to “partake in some refreshment,” the unit was unable to muster the required ninety-three-man strength when the roll call was held. The Fencibles were rejected, and the Vicksburg Volunteers took their place. The result was that when the First Mississippi Regiment reported for federal service on June 16, 1846, many disappointed volunteers were left behind. There is some evidence, however, that the Fencibles may have been able to see limited service in Mexico as part of a Louisiana regiment.5 In spite of such fierce competition for service and the militia’s advanced state of readiness, Colonel Davis was still displeased with its firearm, the standard-issue Model 1822 flintlock. This weapon was a smoothbore musket of .69 caliber. Its overall length was 57 inches, with the barrel accounting for 42 inches. Paper cartridges, containing a single round lead ball, several lead buckshot, and a charge of powder, were loaded from the musket with a rammer. The powder was then discharged by a flintlock. Like all smoothbores, the weaknesses of the Model 1822 were in range and accuracy. To easily load the weapon, the diameter of the ball had to be slightly smaller than that of the barrel. Thus when fired, the ball would


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bounce along the smoothbore, with its final direction being largely a function of the last bounce it took. Under such conditions, the weapon was hardly reliable beyond fifty yards, but this lack of individual accuracy was offset by the tactic of firing mass volleys by troops in close formation. The standard infantry tactic of the day was to deliver a volley at close range, followed by a charge with the bayonet. Instead of the Model 1822, Davis favored the Model 1841 rifle. He had long been an advocate of establishing rifle regiments in the army, arguing that the United States was falling behind France and Britain, which had fully adopted the rifle by the early 1840s.6 Davis praised the rifle, arguing, “In accuracy of fire they are equal to the finest sporting rifles, their range I think exceeds that of the (old pattern) Musket, and they less often miss fire, or want repair than any small arms I have seen used in service.”7 Davis’s feelings on the subject were so strong that, before leaving Washington, he met with Cadmus Wilcox, a future Confederate general, but now just a plebe, or first-year cadet, at West Point, and told Wilcox that he would accept command of the regiment only if it were allowed to be equipped with the rifle. In addition to preferring the rifle’s characteristics, Davis explained to Wilcox that being equipped with the rifle would add distinction and conspicuity to the regiment.8 Events would prove Davis to be correct. The Model 1841 was a rifle of .54 caliber. Its overall length was 48 inches with a 33-inch barrel. These dimensions made the Model 1841 almost nine inches shorter than the musket, giving the rifle a considerable advantage when maneuvering in close formation, reloading, and fighting in close quarters. Its paper cartridge contained only powder, and the ball was inserted in a greased patch, which, as in the Kentucky rifle, was used to seat the ball tightly against the rifled grooves of the barrel. The ball and greased patch were inserted in the muzzle by a rammer, and the black powder charge was ignited by a percussion cap. The expanding gases forced the ball out through the riflings, spinning as it progressed. Just as a football thrown with a spiral is superior to a wobbly pass, so the ensuing aerodynamic stability increased the range and accuracy of the rifle. A good rifleman could hit a man at 300 to 400 yards with the Model 1841.

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The First Mississippi Regiment is more commonly known as the “Mississippi Rifles” after the 1841 Whitney rifles they carried in the Mexican War. Rifle courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection.

Because of this accuracy, the Mississippians relied more on aimed rather than volley fire and were able to deviate from the close-ordered formations of the day and adopt more open tactics that presented less of a target for the enemy. The standard infantry regiment of the era consisted of eight companies with muskets and two with rifles. The rifle companies were designed to serve primarily as skirmishers and sharpshooters. Davis’s desire to arm his entire regiment with the Model 1841 met with much resistance, most significantly from General-in-Chief Scott, who objected that the rifle took longer to load than the standard musket and could not be fitted with a bayonet Davis held his ground and ultimately prevailed. He recalled in 1889, “Gen. Scott . . . objected particularly to percussion arms as not having been sufficiently tested for the use of troops in the field. Knowing that the Mississippians would have no confidence in the old flint-lock muskets, I insisted on their being armed with the kind of rifle then recently made at New Haven, Conn., the Whitney rifle.”9 Eli Whitney, a man most commonly associated with Mississippi for his later invention of the cotton gin, thus became the provider of a thousand rifles issued to the First Mississippi. These weapons were the first mass-produced rifles with interchangeable parts to be adopted by the U.S. government. Before Whitney, a skilled worker had made the entire firearm, individually forming and fitting each unique piece. Whitney replaced this method with a team of unskilled workers who made only a particular part that fit every weapon of the same model. This method of standardized,


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interchangeable parts became the model of manufacture for all manner of products in the nineteenth century. To calm Scott’s anxiety about the lack of bayonets, Davis allowed his men to carry short cavalry swords, Bowie knives, pistols, and the new Colt five-shooter revolvers as auxiliary weapons for close-quarters combat.10

BUE NA VIS TA Davis was no stranger to military service. After graduating from West Point, he served seven years on the northwest frontier, resigning in 1835 as a first lieutenant to settle down to a life as a Mississippi planter. When he took charge of the Mississippi Rifles, he fell under the command of Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, the father of Davis’s first wife, Sarah Knox, who had died just three months after their wedding. In February 1847, Taylor possessed excellent defensive ground guarding the approaches to Buena Vista, but he faced a numerically superior army. Unsure of Santa Anna’s intentions, Taylor was located six miles north of Buena Vista at the more vulnerable Saltillo. He left the arrangement of the defense of Buena Vista to Brigadier General John Wool, who had identified three avenues of approach available to Santa Anna. Wool defended two but accepted risk and left the third, a relatively narrow ridge that led around his east flank straight to Buena Vista in the Americans’ rear, unprotected.11 On the morning of February 22, Taylor concluded that nothing significant would happen at Saltillo, and he departed for Buena Vista. He arrived at Wool’s position around 11:00 a.m. Taylor had been wise to relocate. By 3:00 p.m., the battle there began. Santa Anna had both attacked in the center and discovered the unprotected avenue on the American’s east flank. Taylor ordered forward two regiments of Arkansas and Kentucky cavalry and a battalion of Indiana infantry and, after some small fighting and adjustments to the line, was confident the position was strong. Still concerned about his vulnerable rear, Taylor returned that night to Saltillo to supervise operations there.

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Early the next morning, Santa Anna attacked in force. When Taylor returned on the scene at about 9:00 a.m., success appeared to be within Santa Anna’s grasp. Wool reported, “General, we are whipped,” to which Taylor replied, “That is for me to determine.”12 Davis’s Mississippi Rifles had ridden forward from Saltillo with Taylor, and now Taylor ordered them to rally the fleeing Second Indiana and hold the faltering east flank. The Mississippians and other reinforcements were able to halt the Mexican advance, but the battle was far from over. At this point, Santa Anna decided to send his uncommitted division along the third avenue of approach on the extreme American east flank. Taylor detected Santa Anna’s move and immediately sent Davis’s Mississippi Rifles and the Third Indiana to intercept. According to the accepted tactics of the day, the classic infantry defense against a cavalry attack was to form a hollow square. Instead Davis positioned the two regiments in an unorthodox but highly effective inverted V formation on top of a ridge overlooking the Mexican approach. The V was formed by the Indiana troops lining the south edge of the ravine and the Mississippi regiment on the side that extended from the edge of the ravine into the north plateau. The two sides met at an angle of about 120 degrees with the open end facing the Mexicans. Davis personally took a position at the left end of the Mississippi line, where he placed an artillery piece delivered by Captain Thomas Sherman. There Davis waited. Davis’s men were ready. A meticulous trainer, Davis had spent hours drilling his men on the use of the rifle.13 In fact, the Model 1841 was so new that the army had no prescribed manual of arms for it. Davis had had to develop his own procedures for the percussion cap system.14 Davis’s men clearly appreciated what they had. In contrast to the Mexicans, who were notorious for their poor maintenance of their weapons, the Mississippians took great pride in, and care of, their rifles.15 One soldier wrote home, “We have named our rifles after our damsels—and you know they will not kick.”16 Even General Taylor seemed impressed by the First Mississippi’s weapons. According to one soldier, Taylor was “delighted with our rifles,” which he considered to be “beautiful arms.”17 Davis’s men were well armed and well trained. Now all they needed was the opportunity provided by Davis’s ingenuous tactic. The V formation


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In this print for the National Guard Heritage Series, Ken Riley depicts the First Mississippi Regiment using their Mississippi rifles and Bowie knives to rout the Mexicans at Buena Vista. Courtesy National Guard Bureau, Historical Services Division.

would act as a funnel, channeling the Mexicans into a deadly crossfire from the two sides. Still, firepower was critical. Davis could muster only 368 soldiers, so he had issued rifles to junior officers and flag bearers to compensate for his shortage of manpower.18 Against this meager defense, Davis faced an enemy force of two thousand, but he and his men did not waver. Davis reported that he was “confident of success, and anxious to obtain the full advantage of a cross fire at a short distance, I repeatedly called to the men not to shoot.” Finally, when the enemy was perhaps eighty yards away, both sides of the V “instantly poured in a volley so destructive, that the mass yielded to the blow, and the survivors fled.”19 The Mexican advance dissolved, and the Mississippians descended on the remnants with their Bowie knives, which by now had become a “southern institution,” according to one soldier in the war.20 The same observer recorded that the Mississippians “threw down their rifles, and with frightful cries dashed on the astonished horsemen, who seemed helpless now

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their charge had failed. Catching the horses by the bits they backed them onto their haunches and knifed the stupefied riders, who as soon as they could turned and fled with shouts of Diabolos—Camisas colorados!” meaning “Devils—Red Shirts,” a reference to the uniform tops of the Mississippians.21 Only a sudden thunderstorm saved the Mexicans from even greater destruction.22 Several factors influenced the First Mississippi’s success, including the unit’s excellent training and Davis’s superior leadership. Russell Weigley goes so far as to consider the First Mississippi perhaps “the best of all volunteer regiments” that served in Mexico.23 However, the Mississippians’ weapons advantage was no doubt critical to the outcome. The Mexican infantry was equipped primarily with the “Indian Pattern” Brown Bess musket, a weapon known for its unreliability and inaccuracy. Mexican cavalry carried either lances or the escopeta, a cut-down version of the Brown Bess. To further degrade these weapons, Mexican powder was of notoriously poor quality. The Mexicans tried to compensate for this deficiency by increasing the powder charges, but this measure so increased the weapon’s recoil that accuracy suffered in the process.24 Buena Vista proved to be a close call for Taylor, but when the sun came up on February 24, the Americans found Santa Anna had withdrawn during the night. It was an impressive victory, and Davis deserved his share of the credit for his aggressive and innovative tactics. Indeed, even the Duke of Wellington, who had been closely following the progress of the war, took notice of Davis’s exploits.25 Perhaps, however, the most telling decision Davis made to affect the outcome of the battle occurred not on the field of Buena Vista but back in Washington when he insisted on arming his regiment with the Model 1841 rifle.

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F M IS SI SS IP PI ANS IN ME X ICO Buena Vista was Santa Anna’s sole offensive of the war. That it was in large part thwarted by Davis’s use of the rifle in the defense was an important


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The invention of the minié ball added range and accuracy to the rifled musket. Courtesy Scottsville Museum, Scottsville, Virginia.

harbinger for the tactics of the Civil War. By then, rifles would be the battlefield rule rather than the exception, and their presence would change the relationship between the offense and the defense. When Davis became secretary of war in 1853, he spurred the army to adopt the rifled infantry musket. By this time, a French army captain named Claude Étienne Minié had developed a way to load a rifled musket as easily as a smoothbore. This invention was the “minié ball,” a cylindro-conoidal bullet that was slightly smaller in diameter than the barrel and could thus easily be dropped down it. One end, however, was hollow, and when the rifle was fired, expanding gas widened the sides of this hollow end so that the bullet would grip the rifling and create the spinning effect needed for accuracy. The United States adapted the Model 1855 Springfield rifle to take .58 caliber minié ammunition, and the national armories began manufacturing only rifles and started converting smoothbores into rifles. The difference was significant. The smoothbore musket had a range of 100 to 200 yards. The new Springfield .58 was effective from 400 to 600 yards. Still, the work progressed slowly. By the end of 1858, the Springfield and Harper’s Ferry armories had produced just four thousand of the new rifles. The looming Civil War would create a demand for many thousands more.26 Before then, the United States had the opportunity to observe the impact of the rifle during the Crimean War. Convinced that America still had much to learn from Europe, Davis sent a military commission led by Major Robert Delafield to observe the Crimean War in particular and European armies in general. The commission’s report was well received and widely circulated. Common themes were the need for professional

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officers and the virtues of methodical warfare that emphasized engineering and artillery. The report, however, was not without its shortcomings. Perhaps the most serious was its failure to fully appreciate the impact of the rifled musket. Commission member and future Civil War general George McClellan observed the “terrible losses” incurred during the Russian attacks, but instead of attributing them to the new rifle, he blamed the Russians’ employment of “too heavy and unwieldy masses.” The true impact of the rifle and the subsequent need for tactical change would be realized only after costly experiences in the Civil War.27 The Delafield commission’s report illustrated the dangers of tactics not keeping up with weapons technology. As secretary of war, Davis had directed light-infantry tactics for all units that would reduce the line of infantry from three ranks to two and place an increased emphasis on skirmishers. Formations remained rigidly shoulder to shoulder, however, and intervals between units were small. These relatively dense concentrations of men would present vulnerable targets in the early days of the Civil War until generals realized the need for a change.28 Perhaps one of the biggest results of the Mississippi Rifles’ performance at Buena Vista was that it propelled Jefferson Davis to national prominence. He was seriously considered as the Democratic candidate for president in 1860, and in the South he assumed the mantle of leadership once held by John Calhoun. Davis’s elevated stature ultimately resulted in his becoming president of the Confederate States of America, but his presidency is often criticized as lacking strategic vision. Had it not been for Buena Vista, Davis would not likely even have been considered for such a position. Indeed, as the Civil War drew to a close, the Richmond Examiner, a long-standing critic of Davis, commented on the series of events that had resulted from his success at Buena Vista by lamenting, “If we perish, the verdict of posterity will be, ‘Died of a V.’ ”

6 IRONCL AD S AND TOR P E DOE S W EAPONS ON THE WATER I N CIVIL WAR MISSISSIPPI

At the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River was the single most important economic feature of the continent, but the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg had closed the river to navigation, posing a serious threat to Northern commercial interests. Lamenting the situation, President Abraham Lincoln said, “See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket. . . . We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg. . . . I am acquainted with that region and know what I am talking about, and as valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be more so.”1 Vicksburg also represented the link between the eastern and western halves of the Confederacy. In the western half, Texas led the nation in cattle, with an estimated three and a half million head. As a point of comparison, Virginia and Georgia, the next-largest Confederate cattle-producing states, counted slightly more than one million each. Texas ranked behind only Tennessee in the number of horses and mules, fourth in the number of sheep, and seventh in the production of swine. Texas was a significant source of livestock for armies in the east, but that could remain the case 71

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only so long as those animals could cross the river safely. Federal success at Vicksburg would deny the eastern Confederacy access to these and other supplies. Furthermore, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas (as well as the Indian Territory) accounted for almost half of the Confederacy’s total land mass. Federal control of the Mississippi River would separate the western and eastern halves of the Confederacy. Given these considerations, Major General Ulysses Grant’s mission was to seize Vicksburg to control the Mississippi River and divide the Confederacy in two. His Army of the Tennessee consisted of a maneuver force of ten divisions with a total of 44,000 effectives. Of equal importance was Grant’s naval counterpart, the Mississippi River Squadron commanded by Flag Officer David Porter. Porter had at his disposal about sixty armed vessels, of which twenty to twenty-five would support the Vicksburg operation at any one time. Critical to this force were thirteen ironclads. This Federal naval advantage was decisive, and the ironclads represent one of the most significant weapons of the war for control of Mississippi’s waterways. On the Confederate side, Lieutenant General John Pemberton commanded five divisions totaling 43,000 effectives. While the Confederates had a tremendous advantage in the defendable terrain, unlike Grant, Pemberton had almost no naval force. By 1863, the Federal navy had virtually destroyed the Confederate “River Defense Fleet” in fighting below New Orleans and above Memphis. Only five of twenty-five gunboats survived into 1863, mostly by hiding upstream in tributaries such as the Red, Arkansas, White, and Yazoo rivers. The last ironclad, the Arkansas, was scuttled by its own crew in August 1862 after her steam engines failed. Thus, at the time of the Vicksburg campaign, there were no Confederate ironclads and only a handful of gunboats on the western rivers. In the absence of a navy of their own, the Confederates made skillful use of naval mines, “torpedoes” in the lexicon of the day, and shore-based snipers to harass the Federal navy. Some forty Federal vessels struck mines, the most famous being the USS Cairo, which sailed up the Yazoo River on December 12, 1862, to destroy Confederate batteries and clear the channel of torpedoes. Instead, seven miles north of Vicksburg, the Cairo itself fell


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victim to the torpedoes it intended to clear, as two explosions tore gaping holes in the ship’s hull. Within twelve minutes the ironclad sank. It is often cited as being the first ship in history to be sunk by an electrically detonated torpedo, but a growing amount of scholarship, largely based on contemporary testimony, argues that the torpedo may in fact have been detonated by a trip-wire device using a friction primer.2 The wreck was located in 1956 and raised in 1964 and now is on display at the Vicksburg National Military Park. There it stands as a silent testimony to the creativity and effectiveness of the Confederates in developing a weapon to counter the Federal naval advantage. The Vicksburg campaign served as a proving ground for both sides as they developed new weapons in their efforts to control the Mississippi. Superior technology gave the Federals a tremendous advantage in ironclads. Unable to match this threat symmetrically, the Confederates developed the asymmetric response of torpedoes. It is a classic example of action and counteraction in the deadly game of the weapons in war.

FE D E RA L NAVAL S UPE RIORIT Y The Federal fleet on the Mississippi River was a fine mix of vessels that each served a special purpose. Ably commanded by Admiral David Porter, the Federal fleet showed the Federal capability of projecting naval power upriver into the heart of the Confederacy. Using a combination of ironclads, rams, mortar boats, and tinclads, the Federal navy was a decisive factor in Grant’s success at Vicksburg. As early as 1822, naval theorists had begun proposing that wooden ships be replaced with iron ones. The French had employed ironclads during the Crimean War, but they attracted little attention in America. On the eve of the Civil War, the United States still relied on wooden ships. That all changed when two ironclads clashed in the Battle of Hampton Roads off the coast of Virginia in 1862. On the Confederate side was the Virginia, once a 350-ton, 40-gun U.S. steam frigate named the Merrimack, which the Federals burned and scuttled when they abandoned

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Gosport Navy Yard on April 20, 1861. Confederate engineers raised the hulk and began its conversion to an ironclad in hopes of breaking the evertightening Federal naval blockade. The result was a new weapon of the sea that “made obsolete the navies of the world.”3 Having learned of the Confederates’ efforts to build an ironclad, the Federals, led by the Swedish American inventor John Ericsson, began a similar project. Overcoming a three-month Confederate head start, Ericsson built the Monitor in less than one hundred days and rushed it south just in time to prevent the Virginia from single-handedly destroying the Federal fleet. On March 9, 1862, the two strange-looking monsters battled to a tactical draw and ushered in a new era in naval warfare. The chief role of the ironclads in the Vicksburg campaign was to defeat the Confederate fortified batteries. Usually the ironclads attacked the fort head-on to take advantage of the protection provided by the vessels’ thickest armor. Ideally they attacked from the downstream side to improve maneuverability and to allow the ironclad to drift safely away if disabled. Many engagements were within one hundred yards of the fortification, with the ironclad blasting the position with grapeshot and exploding shells in an attempt to break down the earthen parapet of the fort and disable its guns.4 Grapeshot was made by putting together a number of iron balls, usually nine. The balls were attached in one of two ways. Sometimes they were held in place by two iron plates, two rings, and an iron pin that passed through the top and bottom plates. In other cases, the balls were placed in tiers around an iron pin. This pin was attached to an iron plug or tampion at the bottom, and the whole load was placed in a canvas bag. A strong cord held the balls in place. Grapeshot was effective at ranges of about one thousand yards, making it a good medium between canister and shell. Although largely superseded by canister in 1861, grape continued to be used in 8-inch howitzers and Columbiads.5 Exploding shell, the other projectile commonly fired by the gunners aboard ironclads, contained a bursting charge of powder. Poor fuses, especially in the Confederate army, and failure of the black powder bursting charge to properly fragment the cast-iron “shell,” limited the munition’s effectiveness.6 Shell ammunition could be spherical or oblong and is not to be confused with another type of projectile called “shot.” Unlike shell, shot


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contained no explosive and was spherical for smoothbores and oblong for rifles. It was most commonly used to batter down fortifications.7 In addition to the ironclads, a variety of rams saw action on the Mississippi River during the Vicksburg campaign. These vessels were old riverboats that had been converted by reinforcing their hulls and filling their bows with timber so that they could survive deliberate collisions with enemy boats. They existed strictly for combat against other boats. Since they carried little or no armament other than their rams, they were of limited utility to the Federals once the Confederate fleet had ceased to be an immediate threat.8 Mortar boats, however, maintained an active role in the campaign right up to the surrender. These vessels were unpowered scows or rafts, each carrying one squat, kettle-shaped 13-inch siege mortar, which weighed 17,120 pounds. With a full 20-pound charge, the weapon could lob a 200-pound shell a distance of over two miles. The mortar boats saw valuable service during the siege of Vicksburg.9 If mortar boats were the most specialized vessels in the Federal fleet, tinclads were the most versatile. They were modified riverboats that had been covered with 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch iron plating that protected the power plant and pilot house from small-arms fire. These vessels could double as troop transports in joint operations, with each one carrying up to two hundred infantrymen. Tinclads provided the naval presence that kept Mississippi waterways under Federal control, even when the riverbanks belonged to the Confederates. To meet this threat from the banks, the typical tinclad had six 24-pounder howitzers mounted facing the sides to drive off “bushwhackers.” The vessel’s shallow draft enabled it to prowl waterways inaccessible to heavier war vessels. In fact, some tinclads could float in as little as eighteen inches of water when lightly loaded.10 They were a handy addition to the Federal fleet.

CONFEDERATE ASYMMETRIC RESPONSE Because of the scant Confederate naval assets, the greatest potential threat to the Federal navy during the Vicksburg campaign was from its own

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vessels falling into Confederate hands. This eventuality came to pass in February 1863 when the ram Queen of the West and the ironclad Indianola ran downstream past the Vicksburg batteries. The Confederates captured the Queen of the West when she ran aground, and then used her to disable the Indianola. The Queen of the West was later destroyed in action on the Atchafalaya River, and the Confederates squandered their good fortune in capturing the Indianola when they scuttled it for fear of a Federal “monitor” that ran the Vicksburg batteries, as if on its way to recapture the Indianola. This “monitor” was in fact an unmanned, unpowered barge rigged out to resemble an ironclad. With no ships to contest the Federal navy, the Confederates turned to an asymmetric response. Lieutenant Isaac Brown had ably commanded the Arkansas and used it to successfully challenge the initial Federal naval blockade of Vicksburg. However, during the Battle of Baton Rouge, the ship suffered engine damage, and on August 6, 1862, it was destroyed to prevent capture. Without the Arkansas, Brown faced a quandary as to how to guard the Yazoo until he was approached by acting masters Zere McDaniel and Francis Ewing, who told him of their experiments with naval mines. Brigadier General Gabriel Rains had earlier pioneered the use of land mines by burying artillery shells along the roads and beach when the Confederates evacuated Yorktown, Virginia, in May 1862. Both Federal and Confederate commanders criticized this “barbaric” method of warfare, and Rains was assigned to the river defenses, where the use of his torpedoes was “clearly admissible.”11 In fact, Rains went on to be instrumental in planning the torpedo-laden defense of Mobile Bay. Brown did not fully understand the technology behind this new weapon, but he was willing to give it a try. He gave McDaniel and Ewing permission to develop their plan. The pair obtained five-gallon glass demijohns, filled them with black powder, and placed an artillery friction primer into the necks of the containers. The friction primer took the form of a short tube with an explosive compound in tube’s top. Inserted into the compound was a roughened wire that protruded out of the top. On the bottom of the tube was a small gunpowder charge. Tugging hard on the wire pulled it through the explosive compound and caused it to ignite. This action caused the gunpowder


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Typical rigging of a torpedo. The wooden float is what drew the attention of the crew of the Marmora on the day the Cairo was sunk. Illustration by Harry Smith.

charge to burn. The sequence was completed when the tube directed the flame into the main demijohn filled with black powder. When artillerists used this device, the gunner pulled a lanyard to provide the tug on the wire. To adapt this procedure to their purposes, McDaniel and Ewing connected the roughened wires in the friction primers to an external trigger line that joined pairs of demijohns. The idea was that when an enemy boat hit the trigger line, it would pull it tight and in the process provide the hard tug needed to start the explosive process. Operators used a creative system of floats, weighted pulleys, and adjustment lines to keep the torpedoes hidden just below the surface of the water.12

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McDaniel and Ewing’s innovation saw action on December 12 when a five-vessel Federal flotilla consisting of the Marmora, Signal, Queen of the West, Pittsburgh, and Cairo was patrolling the Yazoo. The Marmora and the Signal had patrolled the Yazoo the day before and seen numerous scows and floats that indicated torpedoes. One had exploded near the Signal, and the Marmora had successfully exploded another at a safe distance by rifle fire. The situation on the Yazoo was no doubt dangerous, and the Pittsburgh and Cairo, both ironclads, had been added to the force to provide extra support for the December 12 operation.13 The mission began with the tinclad Marmora in the lead until the fleet heard what Commander Thomas Selfridge, on board the Cairo, thought was small arms fire being directed from the shore against the Marmora. In reality, the noise was sailors aboard the Marmora firing at floating blocks of wood they thought were torpedoes but actually were buoys that held demijohns in place. Unaware of the true situation, the aggressive Selfridge ordered his ironclad Cairo ahead to provide support. Things quickly spiraled out of control for Selfridge. Under orders not to run his vessels among torpedoes, Selfridge instead directed small boats be lowered to search for the devices. As Selfridge watched, an ensign on board the Marmora’s cutter found a line, most likely a trigger line, and cut it with his sword. A glass demijohn popped to the surface and revealed an adjustment line connecting it to the shore. Selfridge ordered this line cut. In the midst of this excitement, no one noticed that the Cairo had drifted dangerously close to shore. When Selfridge saw what had happened, he ordered the engines reversed and called for the Marmora to get under way. The Marmora’s lieutenant was wary because of the torpedoes he had just seen, and he hesitated, which frustrated Selfridge. Selfridge repeated his order to the Marmora and then impetuously ordered the Cairo to push ahead. Almost immediately the Cairo was rocked by two explosions in quick succession. According to what is probably the most accurate account, the torpedo was detonated by a friction primer, and Selfridge had run into a trigger line that exploded one torpedo under the port bow and the linked torpedo just off the port quarter.14 Although the crew escaped with their


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Typical emplacement of torpedoes joined two demijohns filled with explosives. The design was such that when an enemy ship ran into the connecting trigger line, the two torpedoes would explode against both sides of the vessel. Illustration by Harry Smith.

lives, in just twelve minutes, the Cairo sank with only her smokestacks and flagstaff visible above the water. A fourteen-year-old crewmen remembered that water “rushed in like Niagara.”15 It was the first naval vessel in history to be sunk by a mine.16 The sinking of the Cairo is an excellent example of asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare occurs when the weaker of two unevenly matched opponents adopts new techniques to exploit the dissimilarity.17 The Federal navy on the Mississippi reflected the latest technology, whereas, by the time of the Vicksburg campaign, the Confederate conventional naval threat there had all but ceased to exist. Symmetrically, the Confederates did not have a chance. The Cairo serves as a good example of the mismatch. This vessel was a state-of-the-art gunboat designed specifically for combat in the waters

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The USS Cairo was a formidable enemy that the Confederates countered with asymmetric warfare. Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

of the western theater. She was designed to have a shallow draft of just six feet, and at 175 feet long and 51 feet wide, she was broader for her length than an oceangoing vessel. She had two steam engines that drove a centermounted paddle wheel, and her engines had a voracious appetite for coal, burning nearly one ton an hour, but with them the Cairo could reach a top speed of approximately six knots. The Cairo and other steam-powered ships were a part of a revolution in naval warfare that marked the Civil War. It had long been held as a military dictum that coastal forts were superior to ships, so much so that one gun on land was considered to be equal to four on water. Steam power, by freeing ships from the restrictions of wind and current, altered the balance between ships and forts. This was bad news for the Confederacy, which had hoped to offset its lack of ships with the superiority of its forts.18 Steam power allowed ships to fire on the move, and the Cairo had a varied assortment of weapons to fire, including three 7-inch rifles, three


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8-inch smoothbores, six 32-pounder smoothbores, and one 30-pounder Parrott rifle. The guns were located in a slope-sided casemate with three ports facing forward, four to each side, and two to the stern. The casemate was protected by two and one-half inches of armor fixed over timbers two feet thick. It had rounded corners with railroad rails providing additional protection. The octagonal pilothouse was protected by one and one-half inches of iron over timbers. The Cairo’s weak areas were in its rear and under the surface, which were both essentially unarmored.19 Obviously the Confederates had no ability to go toe-to-toe against such a formidable weapon. Instead the Confederates adopted a form of guerrilla warfare in which bushwhackers harassed Federal boats working the rivers. McDaniel and Ewing’s use of torpedoes to sink the Cairo is perhaps the best example of riverine asymmetric warfare during the Vicksburg campaign. The recovery of the Cairo is a story in and of itself and is of particular interest to the study of the preservation of the weapons of Mississippi. By examining contemporary documents and maps, Vicksburg National Military Park historian Edwin Bearss determined the approximate site of the wreck. Then Bearss, Don Jacks, and Warren Grabau used a pocket compass and iron bar probes to pinpoint the location with reasonable certainty in 1956. Difficult river conditions thwarted divers’ efforts to explore the site, but in 1960 the pilothouse, an 8-inch smoothbore cannon, its white oak carriage, and other artifacts, all well preserved by the Yazoo mud, were recovered. After an attempt in October 1964 to raise the Cairo intact failed, the painful decision was made to cut the ship into three sections and save as much of it as possible. By the end of December, the remains of the Cairo had been raised, placed on barges, and towed to Vicksburg. In the summer of 1965, the barges were towed to Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, where efforts were made to preserve the armor, engines, and sections of the hull. In 1972 congressional legislation authorized the National Park Service to accept title of the Cairo and restore it for display at the Vicksburg National Military Park. After numerous funding delays, the vessel

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was finally transported to the park in June 1977 and partially reconstructed on a concrete foundation near the Vicksburg National Cemetery, where it is on display today.20

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O N T HE WAT E R I N CIVIL WAR MIS S IS SIPPI Like the Mississippi Indians facing the Europeans, Confederate Mississippians, albeit to a lesser degree, struggled against a more centralized and industrialized enemy. In 1860, Northern states had 110,000 manufacturing establishments, while the Southern states had only 18,000. To make matters worse, the South had become dependent on Northern technical skill and know-how.21 Shipbuilding was a principal Confederate weakness, and the early loss of ports like Norfolk and New Orleans set the effort back even further. The industrial discrepancy between North and South became pronounced in the fight for control of the Mississippi River. At the beginning of the Civil War, the U.S. Navy numbered some 90 ships of all types, but by 1864 that number had grown to 670. The Confederate navy started out with no ships and grew to about 130.22 Starting from scratch, the Confederacy simply lacked the industrial shipbuilding capacity to keep up with the North. The Federal navy’s superior strength allowed it not only to control the coastline but to use steam power to penetrate into the heart of the Confederacy via large rivers like the Mississippi. Using a variety of warships and support vessels, the Federal navy could move with the army, providing logistical support and joining attacks at Vicksburg and elsewhere. Without an adequate naval force to challenge the Federals, the Confederates in Mississippi resorted to guerrilla tactics. Local intelligence, terrain, and surprise favored the Confederates, but even these assets could only make a dent in the Northern advantage. The sinking of the Cairo was a moral victory and an innovation in technology and asymmetric warfare, but the fact remained that the Cairo was just one ironclad in Porter’s fleet


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of thirteen. The Confederates simply could not overcome such odds with guerrilla tactics and torpedoes. In the final analysis, both the Federals and Confederates in Mississippi struggled for control of the Mississippi River. The contest was decided by weapons, and thanks to superior centralization and technology, the Federals had a marked advantage. Like the Indians before them, Confederate Mississippians succumbed to the more advanced weapons and organization of an outside power.

7 S IE GE GUNS AND SAB E R S WEAPONS ON THE LAND I N CIVIL WAR MISSISSIPPI

Even the diverse array of ironclads, rams, mortar boats, tinclads, and other vessels that worked Mississippi’s Civil War waterways could not match the hodgepodge of weapons used to fight the state’s land battles. In terms of small arms and artillery, the vast assembly of weapons lacked uniformity, not just between the Federals and Confederates but within the two armies as well. The types and quality of the weapons illustrate the Federal advantage in industrial production and technology as the two sides struggled for control of their nations’ destinies. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee had a variety of firearms that can be categorized as first, second, or third class. Most of the Federals, approximately 75 percent, possessed first-class weapons. There were several varieties, but the most common was the British 1853 Enfield rifled musket. Of the remaining 25 percent of Grant’s regiments, most had second-class weapons of domestic and European origin. Only one Federal regiment, the 101st Illinois Infantry, had third-class weapons, which consisted of a variety of smoothbore muskets. Like the Federals, most Confederates were armed with British Enfields. Also like the Federals, other Confederates carried a variety of calibers, 84

S IE GE G UNS AND SABE R S

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models, and types of firearms. This lack of standardization on both sides undoubtedly created a logistical nightmare for unit quartermasters tasked with supplying a variety of ammunition types. While both sides were relatively equally matched in terms of shoulderfired weapons, the Federals enjoyed a huge advantage in artillery. When Grant began his siege operation at Vicksburg, he had about 180 cannons. The superior Federal logistics system raised that total to 247, of which 13 were heavy guns and 234 were fieldpieces, before the Confederates surrendered. At Vicksburg, smoothbores outnumbered rifles by a margin of two to one. The revolution in military affairs that so impacted rifled muskets and infantry tactics did not extend significantly to rifled artillery in the Civil War. But Grant’s artillery advantage included naval as well as land forces. Porter’s vessels carried guns ranging from 12-pounder howitzers to 11-inch Dahlgren shellguns. During the siege, thirteen mortar boats anchored on the western side of De Soto Point and maintained a steady barrage. Naval guns also served ashore as siege artillery. On the Confederate side, Pemberton’s besieged force counted 172 cannons distributed among 103 fieldpieces and 69 siege weapons. Among the most interesting Confederate pieces were the large river-defense weapons, which included twenty smoothbores, ranging in size from 32-pounder siege guns to 10-inch Columbiads, including an 18-inch gun called “Whistling Dick,” and seventeen rifled pieces, ranging from a 2.75-inch Whitworth to a 7.44-inch cannon known as the “Widow Blakely.” Throughout the Vicksburg siege, the Federal artillery usually demonstrated its superiority over its Confederate counterpart. While the Federals created massed batteries to concentrate fire, the Confederates scattered their artillery to repel Federal assaults that could come from most anywhere. As much as any other factor, Grant’s artillery firepower sealed the Federal victory at Vicksburg.1 Elsewhere in Mississippi, however, the Confederates enjoyed an advantage in cavalry thanks to the superior generalship of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest’s daring raids threatened Grant’s communications during the Vicksburg campaign as well as William Sherman’s during the

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SIEG E GU N S AN D S AB E RS

Atlanta campaign. Forrest so plagued Sherman that he called Forrest “the very devil.” Forrest realized that in the age of modern warfare, cavalry charges with sabers could no longer be effective against infantry defending with rifles. Still, Forrest’s tactics relied on the shock and speed facilitated by the cavalry, and he used a variety of weapons to advance on the enemy. Lieutenant William Witherspoon described Forrest’s tactics as follows: When you were near enough for our rifles to do good work we commenced pumping lead. Some of you were firing occasionally, but the greater part of you were intent on holding that rein and sabre. As you got within seventy-five yards we dropped our carbines (which were strung by a strap across the shoulder), drew the navy sixes, one in each hand—we had discharged the sabres as a fighting weapon— then we fed you on lead so fast and furious you whirled with your backs to us. Then it was again with the carbine until you got back into the woods and we saw you were forming again.2 Forrest’s greatest victory, and a stellar example of his techniques for cavalry charges and his use of a variety of weapons, occurred at the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads. The historian Edwin Bearss credits Forrest’s victory there to his “use of cavalry as mounted infantry.”3 By this Bearss means Forrest used horses and mules for mobility to get his men quickly to the decisive point where they would dismount and fight. This tactic showed that Forrest truly understood the capabilities of the weapons at his disposal. The dominant weapon of the cavalry was no longer the saber. It was the rifle. However, this is not to say that Forrest also did not fight in a closequarters fashion. Forrest was a fearsome warrior who could always be found at the part of the battlefield where the fighting was thickest. He was wounded four times, had twenty-nine horses shot from underneath him, and killed at least thirty enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, more than any other general in American history.4 For close-in fighting, Forrest carried two six-shooters and a Model 1840 saber that he had sharpened


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on both sides to increase its effectiveness. He showed his ability to use these close-combat weapons at Okolona, where he personally killed three Federals. From siege guns to sabers, the Civil War brought a great variety of weapons to Mississippi soil. The themes are the same as those on the water. There is a clear demonstration of the ability of weapons to control, whether the situation was Grant controlling the besieged town of Vicksburg or Forrest controlling a hand-to-hand fight at Okolona. The Federals again show the advantages of technology, resulting in weapons of greater lethality, range, and efficiency. Finally, the greater Federal industrial might once again shows the advantage that more-centralized societies have in the manufacturing and production of weapons. The end result was that the quality and quantity of weapons available to each side played a significant role in the way both Confederate and Federal armies fought in Mississippi.

R IFL E S AND C RE ATIVE WE APONS D UR I NG TH E S I E GE OF VICK S BURG The Enfield rifle was the most common weapon in both armies at Vicksburg. The British army had adopted the Enfield in 1855 as its general infantry weapon, and because of the Southern states’ weak industrial base, the Confederacy relied on Britain to supply a significant portion of its weapons. In fact, Confederate blockade runners delivered some 600,000 stands of arms to the South, most of which were Enfields. Caleb Huse was dispatched to Britain to secure rifles and ended up purchasing more than 100,000 Enfields for the Confederacy. Still Huse’s efforts were hamstrung by a limited amount of specie and the Federal blockade. In addition to the overseas efforts of Huse, Josiah Gorgas, the industrious chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau, energetically tackled the difficult task of expanding the South’s domestic manufacturing base. A Holly Springs firm, McElwaine and Company, known before the war as Marshall County Manufacturing Company, was part of Gorgas’s effort.

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The 1861 Springfield was the principal infantry weapon of the Civil War and was used by Federals and Confederates alike. Rifle courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

The company’s activity began in July 1861 when the Mississippi legislature encouraged McElwaine to begin manufacturing Model 1841 Mississippi rifles. The next month, the Confederate government contacted the company to produce 30,000 of the rifles. McElwaine and Company may have been the first firm to receive an arms-making contract from Richmond.5 The North also took steps to acquire weapons quickly and imported nearly half a million Enfields before domestic production could meet the requirements. Because the aggressive Huse had contracted for most of the London Armory machine-made British Enfields with interchangeable parts, most of the federally purchased Enfields were assembled from parts forwarded to a consortium from a number of small contractors. The result was a lack of interchangeability of parts and a varying degree of quality in many of the Enfields used by Northern soldiers.6 The Enfield was a muzzleloader that had a bore diameter of .577 inch and was designed to fire a bullet similar to the minié ball called the Pritchett. The rifle’s tolerances were such that it could accommodate the .58 caliber bullet designed for Springfield rifles, but this practice inevitably led to a certain amount of clogging.7 The Enfield had an effective range of 400 to 600 yards and a theoretical rate of fire of three rounds per minute.8 According to Bell Wiley, the Enfield was “perhaps the most popular gun in Confederate service and one of the most effective.”9 The Enfield weighed nine pounds and three ounces, including its bayonet.10 Most infantry bayonets were triangular and were attached to the barrel by means of a socket that slipped over the muzzle. Though the bayonet was a fearsome weapon, it inflicted few casualties in the war. Bayonet attacks were rare, although one did occur in Mississippi at Corinth on


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October 3, 1862. There Brigadier General John McArthur ordered the Seventeenth Wisconsin Regiment “to charge with the bayonet en echelon of battalion from the right” and drove a Confederate brigade from the field.11 In addition to the Enfield, another of the first-class weapons used by both sides at Vicksburg was the Springfield rifle, built for the Federals at the Springfield Arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts. A variety of private contractors produced Springfields for the South, and Confederate soldiers also obtained the rifle by capture. The Model 1855 was the first U.S. Army regulation rifle to use the hollow-base .58 caliber minié bullet. The slightly modified Model 1861, which reached the field in large numbers in the latter part of 1862 and early 1863, was the principal infantry weapon of the Civil War. It was 56 inches long, had a 40-inch barrel secured to the stock by three iron bands, and weighed 8.75 pounds. It was a muzzleloader and could be fitted with a bayonet with an 18-inch blade and a 3-inch socket. The Model 1861 packed a punch and was able to penetrate eleven inches of white pine board at 200 yards. Its maximum effective range was about 500 yards, the distance to which the rear sight was graduated, but at 1,000 yards, the Model 1861 could still penetrate three and three-fourths inches of white pine. As a point of reference, the capability to penetrate one inch of white pine was considered sufficient to disable a man.12 The Enfields, Springfields, and other rifles at Vicksburg and elsewhere made the defense tactically stronger than the offense. The increased range and accuracy of the rifle afforded defenders, especially when protected by breastworks, a great advantage. Frontal attacks against entrenched defenders were generally ripped to pieces as Fredericksburg, Pickett’s Charge, Kennesaw Mountain, and Cold Harbor showed. Vicksburg would also show the impact the rifle had on strengthening the defense. After a brilliant campaign of maneuver that saw Grant march his army down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River, cross unopposed at Bruinsburg, and isolate Vicksburg with a victory at Jackson, Pemberton retreated to his Vicksburg defenses after a decisive defeat at Champion Hill. Grant hurried his men to pursue the fleeing Confederates, hoping to catch them while they were still disorganized and before they could improve their already formidable defenses. On May 19 and then again on

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May 22, 1863, Grant launched assaults against Vicksburg, but both were repulsed, and Grant was forced to resort to siege tactics. Rifles played a big role in the defeat of both of Grant’s attacks. In addition to their greater range and accuracy, rifles had the effect of increasing the relative number of defenders because flank positions could deliver enfilading fire against assaulting troops. Many attacks occurred in successive waves, and defenders usually broke the first line of the attack before the second could come up and provide support. The result was an intermingling of the successive lines of attack that destroyed the cohesiveness of the formations and hindered command and control.13 Such was the case during Sherman’s attack against Stockade Redan on May 19. A redan is a V-shaped fortification open in the rear, and a lunette is a small outwork, often crescent-shaped, usually positioned on the flank of a larger fortification. The Confederate defense at Vicksburg took advantage of these two types of positions to create a defense that took on the shape of the number 7. Stockade Redan, manned by the Thirty-sixth Mississippi Regiment with reinforcements, constituted the apex of the 7. The redan was protected by a parapet seventeen feet high and twenty feet thick. In front of the parapet was a ditch six feet deep and eight feet wide. It was a formidable position, made even stronger by the presence of Green’s Lunette, about 75 yards to the south of the redan, and the Twenty-seventh Louisiana Lunette, approximately 150 yards to the west. The result was that the lunettes provided excellent enfilading fire in front of the redan.14 Major General Francis Blair’s division of Sherman’s corps comprised the main effort of the Federal attack on Stockade Redan. The attack was preceded by an artillery preparation that lasted from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Blair’s men then attacked in three brigade formations, but they quickly became entangled in abatis, wire, and other obstacles and were subjected to a murderous fire from front and flank. One Confederate described the scene to his wife: They come now in startling proximity to our works—Not a musket yet has been fired by our men—They have received orders to wait until they can see the whites of their eyes—Not a single head is seen


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above the works, except now and then a solitary sentinel who stands ready to give the fatal signal—They come now within seventy yards of our lines—Now a thousand heads are above the earthworks—A thousand deadly guns are aimed and the whole lines are lighted up with a continuous flash of firearms and even the hill seems to be a burning smoking volcano. The enemy’s solid columns reel and totter before this galling fire—like grass before the mowing scythe they fall.15 Against such a hailstorm of fire, only one Federal regiment reached the objective, but even it could not breach the parapet and had to withdraw under cover of darkness. Sherman had 134 killed, 571 wounded, and eight missing in the futile attack. Undeterred, Grant tried again on May 22 with a more deliberate attack. This time he used his entire army with all three corps attacking along the Confederate line. As on May 19, Sherman was to attack Stockade Redan, and in the predawn hours of May 22, his sharpshooters worked their way into the ravine in front of the defenses. From these forward positions, they would attempt to suppress the deadly Confederate rifles when the attack began. At dawn the Federals began an artillery barrage that lasted until 10:00 a.m., when the infantry attacked. In spite of these preparations, the results were no different from the May 19 attack. For the most part, the defenders held their fire until the Federals emerged into an open area some four hundred feet to the front. Then the Confederates “rose from their reclining position behind the works, and gave them such a terrible volley of musketry” that the attack was halted in its tracks. Even Sherman recognized the futility, ending the carnage by reportedly ordering, “This is murder. Stop those men.” Sherman had 150 killed, 666 wounded, and 42 missing. All told, 502 of Grant’s command were killed, 2,550 were wounded, and 147 were missing.16 In addition to a murderous enfilading small arms fire, the Confederate defenders used hand grenades and artillery shells to repel both Federal attacks. During the May 22 attack in particular, the Confederates took 12-pounder shells, lit the fuse, and rolled them down into a ditch

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where one of the Federal storming parties had taken refuge. The Federals succeeded in pitching some of the improvised weapons back toward the Confederates, but the defenders responded by cutting the fuses shorter. As a countermeasure, the quick-thinking Federals found some fence rails and pushed them forward, extended and balanced on the points of their bayoneted weapons. The Federals then slowly crawled forward, with many grenades exploding harmlessly against the rail. The system was effective, but not perfect. One grenade bypassed the rail intended to intercept it, and Sergeant Richard Haney threw himself on it, saving many of his comrades but sacrificing his own life in the process.17 The ingenious Confederate use of modified weapons and the Federal response were not the only examples of creative tactics during the siege. After the failure of the May 19 and 22 attacks, the Federals continued to pressure the Confederates. In several instances, the Federals dug mines underneath the Confederate positions and packed them with explosives in an effort to blast a hole in the defense. It was a tactic that would later be used in the Battle of the Crater during the siege of Petersburg on July 30, 1864. One objective for these Federal mining operations was the Third Louisiana Redan. There, on May 26, Major General John Logan’s division began digging a zigzag approach trench, eight feet wide and seven feet deep, toward the Confederate position. By June 22 the Federals reached the base of the redan. Then they began digging under the redan, excavating a forty-five-foot-long tunnel, which at its end branched into three galleries, each fifteen feet in length. Into these galleries, the Federals packed 2,200 pounds of black powder that had been provided by the navy. Each charge was wired with two strands of fuse in the event one failed to burn. The work was done by thirty-six handpicked soldiers who had experience as coal miners. Throughout the digging of the approach, the Federals were subjected to harassing fire by the Confederates. The engineers tried to protect themselves by means of a movable railroad car loaded with bales of cotton to provide cover, but Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Russell of the Third Louisiana developed a creative solution to counter this measure. He had his men wrap their musket balls with flax or hemp fibers that had been soaked in


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turpentine. When fired into the cotton bales, these modified munitions caused a fire to ignite, and Confederate sharpshooters then prevented the Federals from extinguishing the flames. Russell reported destroying a railcar loaded with twenty bales of cotton by using this technique.18 To make matters worse for the Federals, it was difficult for their sharpshooters to engage the well-protected Confederates with direct fire, and artillery fire had too flat a trajectory to reach targets just inside the Confederate parapet. This time it was the Federals’ turn to develop a creative weapon, the “Coehorn mortar,” to meet the needs of the situation. These devices were made from short sections of gum tree logs bored out and banded with iron hoops. A genuine Coehorn mortar was the bronze Model 1841 named for the seventeenth-century Dutch artillerist Menno, baron van Coehoorn. Weighing just 296 pounds and equipped with handles to allow two men to carry it short distances, the Model 1841 was well suited to throw projectiles at a high arc into enemy trenches. It could fire a 24-pounder shell a maximum range of 1,200 yards. The knockoff Coehorns employed at Vicksburg lobbed 6- or 12-pound shells 300 to 450 feet to land just over the parapet with great effect.19 Lieutenant Henry “Coonskin” Foster, so nicknamed for his distinctive nonregulation headgear, developed another makeshift way of protecting the Federal sappers. Foster was known to take his rifle, ammunition, and several days’ rations and creep forward at night into the no-man’s-land between the two lines. There he would build an underground position with a loophole through which he could fire at unsuspecting Confederates. Seeking something a little more permanent, Foster used railroad ties salvaged from the dismantled Jackson and Vicksburg line to build a tower with the construction technique common to a log cabin. The Federals could use the height of “Coonskin’s Tower” to fire down on the Confederate position from the spaces in between the railroad ties.20 Coonskin’s Tower and the Coehorn mortars helped work on the mine proceed without serious interruption. Foster’s effort was just one example of the sharpshooters employed by both sides at Vicksburg. Their accurate fire was highly effective. Toward the end of the siege, Confederate Brigadier General Martin Green was

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felled by a sharpshooter moments after he bragged “a bullet has not yet been molded that will kill me.” Grant praised his sharpshooters, who he felt “were always on the alert and ready to fire at a head whenever it showed itself above the rebel works.”21 One of Grant’s sharpshooters, Edward Downs of the Twentieth Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, reports buying a Henry rifle with his own money and using it to great effect as a sharpshooter at Vicksburg. Downs was introduced to the rifle when he examined one belonging to a steamboat captain at Berry’s Landing, five miles above Lake Providence, Louisiana, in April 1863. For Downs such a rifle was the answer to a long-held desire. He claims to have reenlisted upon the promise of getting a better weapon, and in the process he was able to exchange his musket for an Enfield. Still, he desired “a first-class rifle of the most modern improvement.”22 After obtaining permission from both Grant and Major General James McPherson, Downs returned to the steamboat captain and persuaded him to sell the Henry for $65. Thus Downs obtained the “most beautiful piece,” just in time for the start of Grant’s grand move against Vicksburg.23 On one occasion during the siege, Downs’s regiment was receiving “very annoying fire” from Confederate artillery, so he asked his commander, Colonel Force, if he “might go and try my hand at silencing the guns with my rifle.” Receiving Force’s permission and words of caution, Downs advanced along the cover of a ridge until he was within range of the enemy. There he found an oak log large enough to provide him protection. He dug a hole under the log that provided him a firing aperture and then “commenced to pick off the gunners.” Downs reports successively killing each gunner who advanced to fill a fallen comrade’s place until the Confederates decided to abandon their position.24 Downs returned to Colonel Force and brought him forward to witness the value of the position. When Downs picked off another Confederate, Force declared, “That’s a valuable piece,” referring to Downs’s rifle, and proceeded to bring forward additional sharpshooters and have them prepare rifle pits at the location. From there the sharpshooters continued to harass Confederate artillerymen as well as protect Federal work parties who were digging siege lines.25


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Downs’s prize rifle was a Henry repeating rifle, the first magazine rifle used in great numbers by the Federal army. It was invented by B. Tyler Henry, plant superintendent of Oliver Winchester’s New Haven Arms Company in 1860, and it was its magazine that made the Henry special. Tubular in shape, the magazine fit under the barrel and held fifteen rimfire copper cartridges of .44 caliber. Pulling the trigger guard down and returning it to its position ejected the spent shell and loaded a new one. Confederates complained that the Henry “can be loaded on Sunday and fired all week.”26 Not all the sharpshooters at Vicksburg were as informal as Downs. Specific units such as the Twelfth Arkansas (or Rapley’s) Sharpshooters and the First Mississippi Battalion Sharpshooters served on the Confederate side. Sharpshooters often acted as skirmishers, and the Vicksburg National Military Park displays monuments marking the sharpshooters’ lines of Federal units like the Forty-first and Ninety-fifth Illinois. In addition to the Henry used by Downs, Civil War sharpshooters used a variety of rifles including the Enfield, Springfield, Sharps, Spencer, Whitworth, and Kerr. The Sharps especially is associated with sharpshooters because of the misconception that it was this rifle that gave birth to the term used to describe these types of soldiers. Instead the word “sharpshooter” goes back to eighteenth-century Europe as a means of describing a precision marksman. The Sharps rifle did, however, make the shooting process much more efficient, because, although rifling and the minié ball had greatly improved weapons’ accuracy and range, muzzle-loading still presented a problem. One of the first successful breech-loading systems designed to improve this process was patented by Christian Sharps in 1848. The system worked by pushing forward a lever that doubled as the trigger guard to lower the breech block. This action gave access to the chamber, where a paper or linen cartridge could be loaded. When the breech block was closed, it cut open the end of the cartridge with a sharp edge to facilitate ignition. At first, the Federal government resisted breechloaders in general and the Sharps in particular. When Colonel Hiram Berdan developed the idea of forming two specially selected regiments of expert marksman,

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he requested they be equipped with Sharps rifles. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott and Chief of Ordnance Brigadier General James Ripley insisted instead on Springfield muzzleloaders. The traditionalist Scott, it will be remembered, had also resisted Colonel Jefferson Davis’s efforts to arm his regiment with Mississippi rifles in the Mexican War. After personally witnessing an impressive marksmanship exhibition by Berdan, President Abraham Lincoln intervened, and the sharpshooter regiments were issued Sharps. The Federals ultimately purchased 9,141 Sharps rifles and 80,512 Sharps carbines during the war. The Confederates also bought 1,600 Sharps rifles and manufactured their own version as well. The rifles went to sharpshooter units, and the carbine went to the cavalry. Both were generally .52 caliber, although .427 and .373 were also common bore sizes. The weapon was accurate to six hundred yards. More importantly, it could be loaded at a rate of up to ten rounds per minute, three times faster than a muzzleloader.27 The Whitworth and the Kerr were especially popular among the Confederates and saw service in the western theater, although not at Vicksburg. At one point late in the war Major General Patrick Cleburne’s division included a sharpshooter unit armed with thirty Whitworths and sixteen Kerrs. The British-made Whitworth had a short, heavy barrel and an overall length of forty-nine inches. It was relatively light and thus easily portable, but it packed a heavy kick. The rifle was a .451 caliber and was deadly at ranges of one thousand yards and beyond. The Kerr rifle was also of British origin. At fifty-three inches it was longer than the Whitworth and featured an elevated rear sight and a folding front sight. It had a thirtyseven-inch, .446 caliber barrel but lacked the Whitworth’s carrying power at long range.28 At Vicksburg, overcoming the efforts of Confederate sharpshooters, the Federals detonated their mine on June 25. It blasted a crater forty feet wide and twelve feet deep where the redan once stood. A Federal regiment attacked into the void, only to find that the Confederates had earlier detected the Federal work and evacuated to a new position to the rear of the redan. This alternate position was soon reinforced, and the Federal attack


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This print shows the enormous crater created by the Federal detonation of a mine under the Confederate defenses at Vicksburg. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

repulsed. Logan then began work on another mine, which was detonated on July 1. This second blast completed the destruction of the redan but was not followed by an assault. Other mining operations continued until Vicksburg’s surrender.29 Like the Confederate use of torpedoes against the superior Federal naval assets, the underground explosions represent a Federal asymmetric response to the seemingly impenetrable Confederate defensive line. Rifles made the defense stronger than the offense in the Civil War, especially at places like Vicksburg, where the terrain favored the defender and fortifications improved the naturally strong defenses. Thus, in spite of two attempts, Vicksburg would not fall to an assault. During those assaults and throughout the siege, both Federals and Confederates showed great ingenuity in developing and modifying weapons to try to gain an advantage or counter an enemy innovation. It was a game of cat and mouse that led to stalemate. But if the rifle gave the Confederates at Vicksburg

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a defensive advantage, superior Federal artillery drastically contributed to the Confederate demise.

ARTILLERY DURING THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG During siege operations, an army surrounds and blockades a city with the intent of compelling the enemy occupants to surrender by exhausting their supplies. During the Civil War, sieges were conducted in the formal European style, which had remained relatively unchanged for two centuries.30 Grant’s men dug trenches around Vicksburg to prevent both escape and reinforcement and then pounded the city with fire from both land and water. Pemberton’s men also entrenched and used their own sizable artillery capability to try to lift the siege. To meet the specific firepower needs of siege warfare, the United States had by 1861 developed eleven different types of siege ordnance. The principal siege weapons were the 4.5-inch rifle, 18- and 24-pounder guns, a 24-pounder howitzer and two types of 8-inch howitzers, and several types of 8- and 10-inch mortars.31 However, as Grant began his siege of Vicksburg, he complained of having no siege guns save six 32-pounders, and having none available in the western theater to draw from. Instead Grant was forced to rely on his naval counterpart, Admiral David Porter, who supplied him with large-caliber navy guns. Grant used these and his own field artillery to begin the siege.32 To meet Grant’s need for fire support, Porter reports, “Five 8-inch, four 9-inch, two 42-pounder rifled guns and four 32-pounder shell guns were landed at different points during the siege at the request of the officers commanding divisions, or of General Grant, and whenever officers and men could be spared from the fleet they were sent ashore to work the guns.”33 One of the most active of these locations was Battery Selfridge, a position directed first by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Selfridge, who had commanded the Cairo when it was struck by a mine in December 1862, and then Lieutenant Commander John Walker. Among the pieces at Battery Selfridge were 4.2-inch army Parrott rifles and two 8-inch Columbiads.


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Battery Selfridge contained the only land-based artillery pieces served by naval gunners during the siege.34 The 4.2-inch Parrott was the product of Robert Parrott, an 1824 graduate of the United States Military Academy who served as an artillery and ordnance officer before resigning from the army in 1836. From that time until 1867, he served as superintendent of the West Point Foundry, which became a leading producer of ordnance for both the army and the navy. As a private contractor, Parrott was unrestrained by government bureaucracy and budget, and he began experimenting early with rifled cannons. Parrotts of all calibers are basically the same. They have a long castiron tube with a wrought-iron reinforcing band over the breech. Bands were nothing new, but Parrott’s contribution to the process was the method of attaching the band. In most cases, the band of metal was heated, slipped on the tube, and then allowed to cool. During the procedure, the tube remained stationary. Parrott’s innovation was to rotate the tube horizontally on rollers and keep its inside cool with a stream of water. As the hot band was slipped on, the tube rotation caused the band to clamp uniformly to the breech instead of hanging from one spot and cooling there first, as happened with a stationary tube. Parrott believed this process gave his rifles superior strength.35 Both the army and the navy had versions of the Parrott. The army version was 132.5 inches long and weighed 4,200 pounds. The navy version was slightly smaller at 112 inches and 3,550 pounds. The army 4.2-inch fired a 30-pound shell, and the navy model fired shells ranging from 25 to 30 pounds.36 In many cases, however, the navy simply adopted rifles that were essentially identical to army models, which explains the presence of the army version at Battery Selfridge.37 Also at Battery Selfridge were two 8-inch Columbiads. Columbiads saw their first wartime service during the War of 1812 and are considered the first piece of purely American-designed ordnance. They were long, large-caliber pieces, but their distinguishing features were elevating ratchets that ran all the way up the face of the breech. This design allowed Columbiads to elevate to thirty-nine inches as opposed to the fifteen inches permitted by guns with elevating mechanisms placed under the breech. Because Columbiads could

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fire heavy charges at high angles of elevation, they were ideal for seacoast defense.38 The 8-inch Columbiad was 124 inches long and weighed 9,240 pounds. It was an iron smoothbore that fired a 64-pound shell. Columbiads were improved by the work of Thomas Rodman, who developed a method of making cannons by casting in iron around a wateror air-chilled core. This technique caused the inside of the barrel to cool first and compress because of the contraction of the outside metal. The result was a gun that could stand more internal pressure without breaking.39 In addition to these large pieces provided by the navy, the Federal lines contained numerous artillery emplacements that hosted smaller guns. Of these, Battery De Golyer was the largest with twenty-two cannons. It was established on May 25 and named for its commander, Captain Samuel De Golyer, who was considered by many to be the finest artillerist in the army. Unfortunately, De Golyer was killed during the siege, cut down by a Confederate sharpshooter during an artillery duel on May 26.40 Battery De Golyer consisted of guns from the Eighth Battery Michigan Light Artillery; Yost’s Independent Ohio Battery; Battery L, Second Illinois Light Artillery; and the Third Battery Ohio Light Artillery. De Golyer’s own Eighth Battery Michigan Light Artillery comprised two 12-pounder howitzers and four James rifles. These weapons represent the light artillery pieces that made up much of Grant’s force. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between a gun and a howitzer. Guns have a relatively flat trajectory, while howitzers have a greater arc. Additionally, howitzers have a chamber in the bore to limit the amount of powder that can be used to charge the piece. Guns do not have chambers.41 The howitzers used in the Civil War were typically smoothbore cannons that were generally lighter than guns of the same caliber and, at short ranges, considerably more effective. Their higher trajectory made them more useful in sieges such as Vicksburg.42 The 12-pounders in De Golyer’s battery had a tube length of 58.6 inches and a range of 1,072 yards.43 In addition to the 12-pounder howitzers, De Golyer had four 3.8-inch James rifles, named for Major General Charles James and produced at the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts. James was mortally wounded in October 1862 when a new shell he was testing

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exploded prematurely. Indeed, James appears to have been more involved with projectiles than the rifles that shot them.44 James rifles were a result of efforts to reclaim worn-out smoothbores by improving them with rifling. In 1860, Secretary of War John Floyd reported: Experimental firing with rifle cannon leaves no doubt that the accuracy and effectiveness of our artillery may be vastly increased at comparatively small expense without discarding from use the good and serviceable cannon of our present models; requiring only that they be rifle-grooved to adapt them to use as rifled cannon with James’ elongated expanding projectiles. This easy and cheap mode will convert the smooth-bored into rifled cannon, throwing nearly double the weight of metal without increasing strain.45 The James’s caliber of 3.8 was the result of the fact that damaged 6-pounder bronze smoothbores could be reamed out to that uniform size and rifled.46 The James rifle fired a 14-pound elongated shell and was accurate up to 1,700 yards. However, the James was not one of the Civil War’s more common pieces, perhaps because the bronze rifling eroded too quickly.47 In fact, rifled pieces in general were relatively rare in the Federal army at Vicksburg, with smoothbores outnumbering rifles two to one.48 Of particular utility during the siege of Vicksburg were the mortars. Whereas guns fire on a fairly flat trajectory and howitzers have a slightly greater elevation, mortar rounds travel in a pronounced arc. This path makes the mortar especially useful in reaching defilade positions. Mortars at Vicksburg included the 10-inch that could lob a 87.5-pound shell 2,028 yards at an elevation of 45 degrees, and the 13-inch naval mortar that fired a 200-pound shell 4,200 yards at the same elevation.49 The naval mortars showcase the contribution made by Porter’s fleet during the bombardment. Porter had long championed using naval mortars to shell forts. At New Orleans in 1862, he had mounted 13-inch mortars on modified schooners in hopes of shelling Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip into submission. On April 18, he began a ten-hour bombardment during which each of his


twenty-one schooners fired a round every ten minutes for a total of nearly three thousand shells. Porter continued his efforts until April 20, when his commander, Admiral David Farragut, determined that New Orleans would not fall by bombardment alone, and developed a plan to attack. Porter was disappointed, but Vicksburg gave him a chance to use his mortars again. Porter emplaced three mortar scows opposite Vicksburg at De Soto Point. From there he lobbed projectiles from his 13-inch mortars into the city. He also placed three heavy guns, one 9-inch, one 10-inch, and a 100-pounder, on scows a mile from Vicksburg. These kept up what Porter deems “an incessant and accurate fire for fourteen days.”50 Most Confederate soldiers found the mortar fire only a mild nuisance. In spite of Porter’s claims, the mortars were wildly inaccurate, and the shells lacked effective fragmentation. They did, however, create holes almost fifteen feet deep,51 leaving hardened soldiers to mock the mortars as only being “good for digging cisterns.”52 For Vicksburg’s citizens, however, the mortars represented an indiscriminate weapon of terror. One round, for example, landed in the city’s hospital, killing eight and wounding fifteen.53 Many of Vicksburg’s civilians took to living in caves to escape the hazards of the bombardment. Mary Loughborough described the terror of enduring a shelling from her cave refuge: My heart stood still as we would hear the reports from the guns, and the rushing and fearful sound of the shell as it came toward us. As it neared, the noise became deafening; the air was full of the rushing sound; pains darted through my temples; my ears were full of the confusing noise; and, as it exploded, the report flashed through my head like an electric shock, leaving me in a quiet state of terror the most painful I can imagine—cowering in a corner, holding my child to my heart—the only feeling of my life being the choking throbs of my heart, that rendered me almost breathless.54 Loughborough reported that the mortar shells, which she called “our old and relentless enemies,” in particular caused “extreme terror”55 because of their ability to cut into the earth and breach the safety of the cave.56


Porter’s thirteen shore-based naval guns fired 4,500 rounds during the siege. His mortars added another 7,000 from their river location.57 Nonetheless the caves served their purpose well. Loughborough considered it “strange so few casualties occur during these projectile storms.”58 Indeed, fewer than twenty Vicksburg civilians were killed during the siege. But the Confederates expected to do more than just absorb the Federal pounding. Pemberton was himself an artillery officer, and the defenders of Vicksburg were well equipped with their own artillery to resist the Federals. In fact, the strength of the Vicksburg position rested on its ability to command the river with artillery well placed on the high bluffs. Vicksburg was among a handful of places where the Mississippi River met the line of bluffs that runs from Kentucky to Louisiana. Such locations were excellent places to position artillery, which could command the channel and close it to Federal navigation. The hairpin turn the channel made at Vicksburg further complicated navigation and increased the vulnerability of ships.59 The Confederates had thirty-seven large-caliber cannons, of which twenty were smoothbore and seventeen rifled, strategically placed along the Vicksburg shore and bluff.60 The defenders’ great faith in these batteries’ ability to dominate the river was shattered on the night of April 16, 1863, when Porter ran the gauntlet and led seven gunboats and three transports downriver. The Confederate batteries lit up the river with flares and opened fire, but only one of Porter’s vessels was lost. On April 26, the Federals pushed six more transports past the batteries. These passages demonstrated the unrealistic confidence the Confederates had in their artillery. There were simply too few guns to cover the large stretch of river, and the artillery had of necessity been widely dispersed. Moreover, the guns could not depress sufficiently to hit the vessels that hugged the eastern shoreline, a problem exacerbated by the thick parapets that protected the gunners.61 With Grant’s force now south of Vicksburg, the Federals were able to maneuver to great advantage. If Confederate artillery was unable to block Grant’s passage down the river, it still figured heavily in Pemberton’s efforts to withstand the siege. Like the Federals, the Confederates possessed an eclectic assortment of


pieces. Two of the most famous were the “Whistling Dick” and the “Widow Blakely.” Whistling Dick was an 18-pounder smoothbore that had been rifled and reinforced with a jacket at the breech. Warren Ripley surmises it was a Model 1839, a weapon that was rather outmoded by the time of the Civil War.62 It got its name from “the peculiar whizzing noise the projectiles made when fired.”63 Named guns are common in wars, but Whistling Dick was one of the few called the same name by both sides. There is, however, some uncertainty whether the Federals and Confederates were always referring to the same gun when they used that name. In fact, there has been much mystery surrounding the exact identity of Whistling Dick, although the Vicksburg historian Edwin Bearss has unraveled most of it.64 Bearss suggests that “probably no artillery piece of the Civil War has been the object of more comment and conjecture than ‘Whistling Dick’— beloved weapon of the Vicksburg defenders.”65 Whistling Dick was part of a battery in the First Louisiana Artillery commanded by Lieutenant Colonel D. Beltzhoover. During Grant’s May 22 assault on the Vicksburg defenses, Beltzhoover’s batteries delivered a steady stream of accurate fire against Porter’s gunboats that were supporting the attack. However, from the battery’s position at the Marine Hospital on practically riverbank level, the Confederates could not deliver plunging fire. This inability was a great equalizing factor for Porter’s gunboats, and they received little damage in spite of the fire being “the hottest the gunboats had yet endured.”66 After this exchange, Whistling Dick was moved to a new location in the rear of Brigadier General Stephen D. Lee’s brigade on May 29.67 The Widow Blakely was a 7.44-inch rifled cannon so named because of its uniqueness among the Confederate artillery.68 Blakely rifles were cast at the Low-Moor Iron works in England according to specifications established by Captain Alexander T. Blakely. Some four hundred Blakely rifles were exported during the Civil War era, and many were purchased by the Confederacy.69 On May 22, the Widow Blakely joined other guns in the heated contest with five of Porter’s gunboats. Two of the Federal ironclads received extensive damage, but the Widow Blakely also did not escape unharmed.


A shell prematurely exploded inside the gun’s tube, ripping part of the barrel off. Not wanting to lose the valuable piece, the Confederates repaired it by trimming the barrel at the break, and the Widow Blakely continued to serve the Confederate defenders of Vicksburg as a mortar.70 The Widow Blakely was captured along with other Confederate ordnance when Vicksburg surrendered. It was transported to New Orleans and then to West Point, New York, where it arrived on May 11, 1865. The piece remained on display there, incorrectly identified as “Whistling Dick,” until 1959, when it was returned to the Vicksburg National Military Park. It is now located in the park at Louisiana Circle, about a mile south of its original position.71 As for the real Whistling Dick, its whereabouts remain unknown. According to an unlikely legend, it was buried in the Mississippi River before Vicksburg’s surrender.72 More probably, it was melted down and sold as scrap.73

W E A PO NS O F FO RRE S T ’S C AVALRY With Vicksburg in Federal hands, Major General William Sherman did not want to idly wait for the spring campaigning season. On February 3, 1864, he departed Vicksburg and began an operation “to break up the enemy’s railroads at and about Meridian, and to do the enemy as much damage as possible in the month of February.” As part of this raid, Sherman ordered Brigadier General William Sooy Smith to bring his large force from Memphis southeast to arrive at Meridian by February 10. Sherman instructed Smith not to be encumbered by “minor objects” but instead to concentrate on destroying bridges, railroads, and “corn not wanted.”74 Instead, Smith failed to reach Meridian, which was a source of great frustration for Sherman. Sherman wrote that “Smith did not fulfill his orders, which were clear and specific,”75 but the problem from Smith’s point of view was that he ran into Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry. The result was that Smith turned back toward Memphis and left Sherman to deal with Meridian by himself.


Vengeance at Okolona, a print by John Paul Strain, shows Forrest leading the charge at Okolona with his Model 1840 saber drawn while several of his escort brandish their sixshooters. Courtesy John Paul Strain.

After delays that clearly violated Sherman’s orders, Smith finally got moving, and by February 20 he was near West Point. There he clashed with advance elements of Forrest’s cavalry, who succeeded in drawing Smith into a swamp west of the Tombigbee River. As additional Confederates arrived, Smith realized he was being led into a trap. He ordered a withdrawal and was having some success extricating his force when Forrest arrived and ordered a pursuit. Skirmishing occurred throughout February 21, and at sunrise on February 22, Forrest attacked Smith just south of Okolona. Forrest ordered his bugler, Jacob Gaus, to sound the charge, and Forrest and his small escort drove hard into the Federal line. The Federals broke and then reformed farther to the rear. Forrest continued to press the attack, now accompanied by an even smaller band of men who could keep up with their hard-charging leader. The fight now was hand-to-hand with saber and pistol. Forrest’s passionate biographer John Allan Wyeth notes that these conditions favored Forrest, “whose skillful horsemanship,


dexterity with the saber, and great muscular strength stood him well in hand in these frequent combats at close quarters.”76 The saber carried by Forrest was a Model 1840 United States Dragoon pattern “wrist-breaker” that he had captured during a raid on a Federal depot at Trenton, Tennessee, on December 20, 1862. Forrest had it sharpened to a razor edge on both sides. Although naturally left-handed, Forrest trained himself to be ambidextrous but still preferred to wield his saber with his left hand.77 He was so skilled with the weapon that it has been called “magic.” He bequeathed it to his son, reportedly with the proviso that it be drawn only on behalf of a reunited country.78 Forrest’s brother Jeffrey had been killed in the early action at Okolona, and Nathan Bedford was filled with rage and emotion. Forrest had two horses shot from underneath him, but he was unstoppable, reportedly killing three men himself.79 Forrest’s attack was finally halted some ten miles outside Pontotoc when the Federals reformed in three lines and launched a counterattack, which Forrest described as being “the grandest cavalry charge I have ever witnessed.”80 Captain Charles Bowman of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry led the attack with the command “Draw saber!” and “Charge!” However, the attack showed the limitations of such a tactic on the modern battlefield. The main body of the Confederates was protected by a high rail fence that forced the attacking cavalrymen to sheath their sabers and draw their pistols. With rifles and pistols, Forrest’s men repulsed the Federal charge. As darkness was approaching and with his men nearly out of ammunition, Forrest broke off the fight.81 The Battle of Okolona showed Forrest as a fierce close-quarters fighter and master of the weapons associated with hand-to-hand combat. Another example of Forrest’s use of weapons is his spectacular Battle of Brice’s Crossroads in Lee County. As Sherman set out on his Atlanta campaign, Forrest recognized the opportunity to raid into middle Tennessee and Kentucky to cut Sherman’s line of communications. However, Sherman, well aware of this threat, dispatched Brigadier General Samuel Sturgis to occupy Forrest. The two met at Brice’s Crossroads on June 10, 1864. Because of the South’s limited industrial capacity, Confederate cavalrymen had difficulty arming themselves with the latest weapons available


The Sharps and Spencer were two examples of the various models of carbines used during the Civil War. Rifles courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

to their Northern counterparts. In late 1862, Forrest’s men were still armed with an assortment of shotguns, squirrel rifles, and smoothbore flintlock muskets, but they gradually acquired better weapons, and by the time of Brice’s Crossroads, most were carrying .58 caliber Enfield style rifles made in Ashville, North Carolina, .54 caliber Mississippi rifles, or captured Sharps carbines.82 Some of Forrest’s men even captured the highly prized Spencer repeaters, but they were generally unable to use them because the Confederacy could not manufacture the special self-contained cartridges the Spencer required.83 The Spencer repeating carbine was patented by Christopher Spencer in 1860. It was the first successful breech-loading repeating rifled carbine. It used a trigger guard lever system similar to the Sharps and had a tubular magazine like the Henry. The Spencer’s magazine was passed through the butt of the stock and held seven copper rimfire .52 caliber cartridges. Ten extra magazines could be carried in a special box, giving the soldier quick access to seventy rounds of ammunition. Weighing just eight and onequarter pounds and being just thirty-nine inches in length, the carbine was well suited for cavalry operations. However, since its cartridge contained only forty-five grains of black powder, it lacked the range and muzzle


power of some other weapons. By 1864, the Spencer became the standard arm of the Federal cavalry, and by the fall of that year it began appearing in infantry brigades. Throughout the war, the Federals purchased 77,181 Spencers.84 Among this assortment of weapons, Forrest personally preferred the Enfield rifle because he felt that its short length made it easy to carry on horseback, yet it was more accurate than the still shorter Enfield carbine, which was adopted as the regulation Confederate cavalry weapon in October 1863. Federal General Sooy Smith seemed to support Forrest’s preference, arguing before he took off in support of Sherman’s Meridian campaign that “the ground was so obstructed as to make it absolutely necessary that we should fight dismounted, and for this kind of fighting, the enemy, armed with Enfield and Austrian rifles, was better prepared than our force, armed mainly with carbines.”85 The carbines to which Smith referred were similar to rifles but usually shorter in length and lower in muzzle velocity. Their main advantage for the cavalryman was that the shorter length made them easier to handle while riding and in close combat. A factory was established at Tallassee, Alabama, to produce the Enfield carbines for the Confederacy, but it did not ship its first batch until April 1865—too late to have any impact.86 For the most part, the Enfields Forrest’s men carried had been captured from the Federals. To help facilitate loading, the cavalrymen attached the weapon’s ramrod on a swivel hinge. Still, like all muzzleloaders, the Enfield was hard to load on horseback.87 To overcome this difficulty, in addition to rifles, Forrest’s men routinely carried more easily manipulated six-shooter revolvers, the most popular in the Confederacy being the Colt Navy Model 1851. While some Mississippians had original models, many had copies that became known as “Confederate Colts.” These variations closely resembled the original except for a “dragoon type” barrel that was part round rather than fully octagonal. This modification made the revolvers easier to manufacture and therefore cut production times. Perhaps the premier Confederate Colts were manufactured by Thomas Leech and Charles H. Rigdon, identified by the “Leech & Rigdon CSA” stamp on the flat top of the barrel frame.


The Colt Navy Model 1851 was the most popular six-shooter among Confederate troops. Pistols courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, Burnelle B. McMahan Collection. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

Leech and Rigdon revolvers were all six-shot, .36 caliber with steel frames, brass backstraps, and trigger guards.88 Rigdon was originally a scales maker in St. Louis, Missouri, but his Confederate sympathies brought him to Memphis, Tennessee. There he met Leech, who worked as a cotton broker. In 1862 the pair secured a contract to produce Colt revolvers for the Confederate government, but with the fall of Fort Donelson in February, Memphis became a vulnerable position. In March, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard began making arrangements to move all ordnance property further south, and it is unlikely that Leech and Rigdon produced any revolvers while in Memphis. Instead the operation moved to Mississippi, where Grenada was selected as an ammunition depot, and Columbus housed an arsenal.89 The Columbus operation was a large one and employed thirty-two gunsmiths, sixteen stockers, and eight machinists by June.90 In November another fifty gunsmiths were sent there,91 but Lieutenant General Pemberton soon feared for the position and suggested the machinery and ordnance stores be relocated deeper in the interior of Mississippi.92 By January 1, 1863, the arsenal and machinery had been moved,93 and Leech and Rigdon eventually resumed operations in Greensboro, Georgia.94 Nonetheless


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it was at Columbus that the pair began producing Confederate Colts.95 In fact, they ran an advertisement in the Jackson Daily Mississippian on November 7, 1862, announcing, “We have on hand and ready for delivery, 100 Navy Repeaters, (Colt’s patent) and are manufacturing them at the rate of thirty per week. Price for a single Pistol, $75, or when for companies of not less than forty $65.” The advertisement also offered “a few very fine Staff Swords, and some extra fine Spurs.”96 Thus armed with this array of sabers, rifles, and revolvers, Forrest developed a plan to defeat the Federal cavalry first and then deal with the slower-moving infantry later. The battle began when Sturgis’s cavalry routed a Confederate patrol about a mile and a half from Brice’s Crossroads. Forrest then rallied his men behind a heavy rail fence that enclosed a field surrounded by dense undergrowth. Still Forrest did not assume an exclusively defensive posture. He ordered Brigadier General Hylan Lyon to charge dismounted as a feint, and the ruse worked, causing the Federals to dismount and remain in position. Lyon then used the hiatus to prepare his own position with rails, logs, and whatever else he could find. As more Confederates arrived, Lyon launched another attack. The battle was growing, but Forrest’s plan was working. In a desperate fight, Forrest’s determined men succeeded in defeating the Federal cavalry before the infantry could arrive. But by early afternoon Sturgis’s infantry did reach the field and began the process of drawing itself in a close semicircle around the crossroads. Now Forrest proceeded to the second part of his plan—defeating the Federal infantry. To do so, he ordered Brigadier General Tyree Bell to charge on the left, and the entanglements of blackjack and brushwood there soon reduced the fight to hand-to-hand combat. According to Lieutenant Witherspoon, “guns once fired were used as clubs, and pistols were brought into play.”97 Forrest was in the thick of it, dismounted with pistol in hand. Colonel Edmund Rucker and his men were also in a close fight. Against Federal soldiers with fixed bayonets, Rucker calmly ordered, “Kneel on the ground men, draw your six-shooters, and don’t run.” Edwin Bearss laconically summarizes the bloody hand-to-hand combat, saying, “The bayonet was no match for the six-shooter.”98


At Brice’s Crossroads, all weapons seem to be used in an extremely personal way. Captain John Morton even brought forward four brass 6-pounder artillery pieces that he double-shotted with canister and fired at musket range.99 These guns were the same Model 1841 6-pounders that had served the artillery corps well in Mexico. In fact, 6-pounders had played a critical role in supporting Colonel Jefferson Davis’s Mississippi Rifles at Buena Vista.100 The guns were in wide distribution at the outbreak of the Civil War, but in 1857 a new and more versatile piece, the 12-pounder gun-howitzer Model 1857, had been introduced. Limited production of the Model 1857, however, made the 6-pounder a fixture in the inventories of both armies, especially in the western theater.101 Mobility of these and other artillery pieces on the Civil War battlefield was achieved by manpower. Without recoil mechanisms, the only way to absorb recoil was to allow the entire piece to run back between two and thirty yards on the gun carriage wheels and trail. Then crews would manhandle the gun back into battery. Crews also pushed the guns over short distances into different positions. Strategic mobility was accomplished by horses or mules.102 The 6-pounder was well suited for Forrest, because at a weight of just nine hundred pounds, the gun’s relative ease of transportation and mobility facilitated Forrest’s fast-paced operations. The 6-pounder had a maximum effective range of 1,523 yards. The tubes were mounted on carriages made of wood and iron, and each carriage hooked up to a limber. The limber was usually attached to four horses, and each limber carried an ammunition chest that doubled as a seat for two or three of the gun crew during transit. The ammunition chest weighed about five hundred pounds and opened to the rear. For a 6-pounder, the chest held about sixty complete cartridges, each ready for loading down the muzzle in one piece.103 A 6-pounder could fire solid shot, shell, spherical case, grapeshot, and canister rounds.104 The battery commander usually chose the type of ammunition based on the situation at hand, and in this particular case, Morton fired canister. Canister consisted of iron top and bottom plates over which were bent the ends of a cylinder made from sheet tin. Inside were four tiers of iron balls, each tier containing seven balls. One centered


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ball was surrounded by the other six, and solidly packed sawdust kept the balls from moving. To accommodate the rivets for the handle, the center ball on the top tier was left out. The result was a count of twenty-seven balls per round in a 6-pounder.105 “Double-shot,” as used in this case, meant two rounds were loaded and fired simultaneously using a single charge. Canister turned smoothbores into formidable weapons at short ranges such as on the Brice’s Crossroads battlefield. The balls scattered in the form of a cone immediately upon leaving the muzzle, resulting in a shotgun effect that was especially deadly at ranges between 100 and 200 yards. Beyond that, the dispersal diminished the impact, although canister was still effective out to 400 yards.106 Forrest had an excellent appreciation for artillery. After the battle, he gave great credit to Morton, saying, “Well, John, I think your guns won the battle for us.” Morton conceded that he had been worried that his guns were so far forward without infantry. Indeed, it was unusual in the Civil War for artillery to be used in such a way, but such had not always been the case. In fact, the Mexican War had been full of examples of artillery being used in short-range offensive role. The Napoleonic tactics of that earlier era used artillery to create a breach in the enemy’s defenses through which infantry could attack. This was possible because of artillery’s advantage in “standoff.” Standoff is achieved when one weapon has a longer range than the one opposing it. In this particular case, the infantry musket of the Mexican War was inaccurate even against massed targets beyond one hundred yards, while artillery was extremely deadly firing canister at about four hundred yards. With such a differential in their favor, artillerists in the war with Mexico were able to leisurely work their guns without much fear of infantry muskets endangering them.107 But the increased range of rifles in the Civil War, especially when being fired by protected defenders, prevented artillery from getting close enough to have the desired effect with canister without exposing the gunners to defensive fire. Furthermore, even the increased range of Civil War cannons provided no real advantage in the broken and wooded terrain common on so many Civil War battlefields. Thus in the Civil War, both technology and


terrain cost artillery the assumed standoff advantage over the infantry it had enjoyed in Mexico. Consequently most successful Civil War artillery actions were defensive rather than offensive.108 Forrest, however, was not a defensive fighter, believing one man in motion was worth two standing to receive an attack.109 At Brice’s Crossroads, he was able to use his artillery in the close-in offensive role that was uncommon in the Civil War. Forrest’s bold charge on the heels of Morton’s artillery fire succeeded in breaking the Federal line, and Sturgis’s men took flight. Forrest’s plan now entered its pursuit phase. Again the longer-ranged weapons such as artillery and rifles returned to the fore. The rout was complete, with Sturgis musing wistfully, “If Mr. Forrest will let me alone, I will let him alone.” Not sharing Sturgis’s attitude, Forrest maintained his pressure into the next day, and by the time Sturgis limped back to Memphis, he had lost 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing. In addition to the personnel losses, the Federals lost numerous weapons to the Confederates. Forrest reported capturing sixteen cannons and 1,500 stands of small arms.110 These prizes were an effective means of supplementing the meager Confederate manufacturing output. But in spite of the tactical defeat, Sturgis could take some consolation in having accomplished his chief object of distracting Forrest from Sherman’s communications.111

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O N T HE L AND I N CIVIL WAR MIS S IS SIPPI Artillery and mortars were key to the struggle for Vicksburg and, with it, control of the Mississippi River. The Confederates placed great faith— unwarranted, as it turned out—on artillery’s ability to block Federal passage of the river. However, the strength of the defense, afforded largely by the rifle, allowed Pemberton’s men to withstand direct Federal assault. During two attacks and throughout the siege, Federals and Confederates used a variety of inventive weapons such as artillery shells modified to serve as hand grenades, Coehorn mortars made out of wood, and underground explosions to battle each other. These novel weapons follow in the creative


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tradition of the torpedoes the Confederates used to sink the Cairo. Both sides pummeled each other with artillery fire, but in the end, the Federals’ concentrated fire was of greater effect. In the process, the duel highlighted a variety of interesting weapons ranging from siege pieces to mortars to naval guns. It was an impressive array of the wide range of artillery pieces that served in Mississippi during the Civil War. Elsewhere in Mississippi, Nathan Bedford Forrest demonstrated the type of weapons used by the cavalry under circumstances much less formal than the siege. Although he had no classical military education, Forrest had a remarkable grasp of weapons. He understood that the rifle had changed the role of cavalry, transforming the horse-mounted soldier’s most effective contribution to that of a dragoon who used the horse for mobility and then fought dismounted. Thus Forrest used the horse to deliver his men to battle, where they then used an assortment of rifles, carbines, and shotguns to fight at a relatively long range. When the time was right, Forrest would remount his men to charge the enemy. He realized that in the close-in fight, six-shooters were more effective weapons than sabers, although Forrest’s strength and skill allowed him to personally be deadly with most any weapon in a hand-to-hand fight. Warfare was personal for Forrest, and he even used his artillery in a direct and close-range manner. Once his charge had broken the enemy, Forrest mounted a vigorous pursuit on horseback, again using his longer-range weapons and mounted mobility to damage the fleeing enemy. Perhaps as much as anyone else on land in Mississippi during the Civil War, Forrest showed a mastery of using each weapon available to him in a specific way that maximized its effectiveness.

8 R IFLE S, B OWS, AN D GU N S W EAPONS OF MISSISSIPPI H UNTERS AND PRIVATE CITIZENS

Hunting has long been a part of life in Mississippi, as demonstrated by the skills and weapons of the native Mississippians. Today the state boasts more than two million acres of wild game habitat for species such as white-tailed deer, eastern wild turkey, migratory waterfowl, mourning dove, quail, squirrel, and rabbit. Mississippi hunters use primitive weapons, conventional guns and rifles, and bows to hunt during specified seasons on a managed system of thirty-eight state wildlife management areas, fourteen national wildlife refuges, and six national forests, as well as many private hunting lands. During Mississippi’s history many factors have divided its residents, but a love of hunting seems to cross age, racial, and economic lines in an unusual and positive way that unites Mississippians.1 The National Rifle Association is well represented in Mississippi, and Dick Kingsafer, senior NRA field representative for Louisiana and south Mississippi, reports that some thirty thousand Mississippians belong to the organization.2 Perhaps the easiest way to gain a quick appreciation for Mississippians’ love of weapons is to attend one of the numerous gun shows where weapons enthusiasts of all types meet to buy, sell, trade, and 116

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admire a variety of weapons. Many of the shows are two-day affairs that attract vendors from across the region. They depict the wide variety of weapons used by individual Mississippians for hunting, sport shooting, protection, and collecting. Private gun ownership in Mississippi says much about the state and its residents. It is a testimony to Mississippians’ self-reliance, whether that means putting food on the family table or protecting oneself from criminals. It is an extension of the state’s martial spirit that associates skill with firearms and outdoorsmanship with masculinity and honor. Hunting is all made possible by the state’s largely rural character, which has preserved the wildlife habitat. Owning guns is a Mississippi tradition for many of its citizens, and Mississippians are typically a traditional people.

DEER Many Mississippians either hunt or know someone who does, and deer are unquestionably the most popular big-game species in the state. Deer can be found all over Mississippi, but perhaps the part of the state with the longest tradition is the Delta. To get an idea of the importance of deer hunting there, one need do no more than make a casual survey of place names: Deer Slough, Deer Creek, Deer Creek Road, Deer Island, Deer Lake, and Deer Ridge all attest to the role deer have played in the Delta, and deer hunters there have long had a oneness with the land. The wealthy antebellum landowner in the Delta often held large tracts of undeveloped land, and because geography and the institution of slavery left him relatively isolated, he spent much of his leisure time in the woods. The result was an intimate knowledge of the terrain and a faithfulness to a specific hunting spot that had proved lucrative to several generations. This connection was particularly strong in the nineteenth century, when deer hunting in the South in general and the Mississippi Delta in particular “maintained a dignity not found in other parts of the country.” Robert Wegner, a specialist in the cultural history of deer hunting, explains that deer hunting in the Delta “entailed a long-lasting legacy of land, family and

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tradition; and of honor, pride and independence.”3 Deer hunting was not something men in the Delta simply did in the 1800s. It was much of what they were. This era and phenomenon are perhaps best captured by William Faulkner in “The Old People,” a story in the collection Go Down, Moses. The story opens with Sam Fathers, a seventy-year-old man born into slavery as the son of a black slave and a Chickasaw chief, coaching twelveyear-old Isaac McCaslin as a hunter. “Now, shoot quick, and slow,” Fathers counsels.4 The young McCaslin lives to be eighty and grows to be a great hunter, but this is his first buck. In the time-honored tradition, Fathers initiates McCaslin into the brotherhood by wiping the boy’s face with the steaming blood of the fresh-killed deer.5 The relationship between Fathers and McCaslin symbolizes the way hunting connects people. The two characters are of different age, social class, and race, but the young white boy patiently submits to the wisdom and authority of the old ex-slave of mixed Indian and black heritage. Fathers teaches the boy “the woods, to hunt, when to shoot and when not to shoot, when to kill and when not to kill, and better, what to do with it afterward.”6 Fathers tells McCaslin so much about the old times that they “would cease to be old times and would become part of the boy’s present, not only as if they had happened yesterday but as if they were still happening.”7 Hunting, or at least the stories and lore of the hunt, connects past, present, and future generations. For tradition-minded Mississippians, this is much of the sport’s attraction. Like Isaac McCaslin, many young Mississippians are exposed to hunting at an early age by a more seasoned hunter. When Forrest Burris, now a sixteen-year-old living in Hattiesburg, was just five, he was already sitting in the deer stand with his father. He remembers this initial experience as “kinda cold and boring,” and his main concern was when they were going to eat breakfast. Still, hunting got into young Burris’s blood. He started really liking the camouflaged hunting clothes and began wearing them to school. He accumulated all the hunting paraphernalia, including a grunt call and a pair of binoculars he would wear around his neck in and out of the woods. In his words, he was “getting hooked,” a phrase many hunters use to describe their passion for the sport.

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What attracted Burris to hunting at such a young age was “just sitting out there and watching all the wildlife—watching the sun hit the trees. I liked that so much I didn’t even care if I got a deer.” By the time he was ten, he was carrying a rifle on hunts with his father, and by eleven Burris was hunting by himself. He loved to “go sit in the tree stand all day and watch the wildlife run around and feel the wind blow and think about stuff.” Before he was even a teenager, Burris was filled with the wonder of the outdoors and the special connection between the hunter and nature. Burris was twelve when he got his first deer while hunting in Runnelstown in Perry County. It had been a long day, and Burris fell asleep, only to wake up just before dark with three deer in his sights. He admits to aiming for the one in the middle but hitting the one on the left. Regardless, he had his first deer, an experience he describes as “exhilarating.” “That,” he says, “is when I really got hooked.” Burris was hunting that day with his older brother Bennett, whom he credits with teaching him most of what he knows about hunting. They hung the deer over the old swing set in their backyard, and some of Bennett’s friends came over to help them clean it. In a slight modification to the sacred tradition of smearing the hunter’s face with the blood of his first deer, Bennett and his friends dumped a bucket of deer guts over the unsuspecting Burris. The result was the same. A new hunter was initiated into the brotherhood. The rifle Burris used to get his first kill was a Savage Arms .243 Winchester Youth Model. Because it is important for beginning hunters to be comfortable with their first rifle, youth rifles generally have a length of pull (the distance from the trigger to the end of the stock) an inch or so shorter than regular models. Burris’s .243 is a bolt-action rifle. Bolt-action rifles have a small handle, usually on the right-hand side of the weapon, that when pulled unlocks the bolt and opens the breech. The spent casing is ejected, and a new round is loaded in the breech. The bolt is then closed, and the rifle is ready to fire. Bolt-action rifles are extremely popular, in part for their superior accuracy. “Action” is the way a rifle mechanically loads and ejects ammunition. Common types in addition to bolt action are slide or pump, lever, and semiautomatic. Any flexing or bending of a rifle’s action lessens accuracy, and


the symmetrical locking arrangement of most bolt-action rifles gives them an inherent stiffness, as does the one-piece stock. Bolt action works slower than other types, but most deer hunters like Burris are willing to trade a reduced rate of fire for the punch and accuracy bolt-action rifles deliver.8 Burris has since picked up an arsenal of hunting weapons he inherited from his grandfather, including a .30-06 Browning Safari and a Weatherby Mark V, but the affinity he has for his first rifle is obvious. He calls the Savage “a dead-on gun” and claims to have never missed a deer with it. It is a rifle he will likely give to his own son someday, because Burris is already planning to continue the family hunting tradition. “Hunting was passed on to me,” he says, “and I plan to keep it alive in my family.”

M IS SI SS IP PI H UNTING AS A S OCIAL PHENO M ENO N Hunting connects not just generations but many other segments of society, and there is perhaps nothing more special in the social life of a hunter than the deer camp. To the uninitiated, the phrase “deer camp” seems to describe a place. Hunters know that in reality, deer camp is more an experience. It is a sacred ritual spoken of with a rare mix of excitement and reverence, pride and confidentiality, anticipation and nostalgia. It is at once the manliest of settings and a time when men become boys. It is “a holy place where hunters experience self-renewal, spiritual communion and a sense of brotherhood.”9 Physically, the deer camp can be anything from a tar-paper shack to a trailer to a well-constructed cabin. Whatever the structure is, it is surrounded by a parking lot of pickup trucks, jeeps, and four-wheelers. In their purest form, a form that perhaps exists today best in the recesses of nostalgia, deer camps are heated by a potbelly stove and illuminated by lanterns. Even in the rudimentary camps of Faulkner’s day, however, there was usually one luxury—electricity enough to keep both the meat and the beer cool. Deer camp is a monumental social event. It is endless talk of rifles, stands, camouflage, trophies, recipes, phantom bucks, game wardens, and


food plots where fact, legend, and myth coexist in a seamless blend. It is a living link between hunting’s past, present, and future. It is one of the key vehicles by which hunting transcends a sport and becomes a culture. Deer camp is also a great social equalizer. While some modern deer camps have become embarrassingly comfortable, the experience is still a retreat from broader civilization into a close band of brothers communally sharing the rigors of outdoor life. It is among the most democratic of all social endeavors. Class, occupation, age, income, and even gender carry no weight at the deer camp. The duties of cooking, cleaning, and tending the fire are all divided up with a sense of equality that would have delighted the Utopians.10 One of the most legendary deer camps of the Mississippi Delta was the Ten Point Deer Camp located in the Steele Bayou backwoods of Issaquena County. Ten Point traces its roots to 1927, when Paul King and Florence Huffman first came to the area on a squirrel-hunting trip. The couple began spending more and more time there, including in the off-season. In 1939 they founded the Ten Point Deer Club, and in 1952 they moved to the club’s rustic camp house to live year-round.11 Ten Point remained a wooded stronghold in the Mississippi Delta until the early 1960s. The beginning of the end came in 1962 when a bridge opened across Steele Bayou, and a new, paved highway sprang up in view of the clubhouse. Then came power lines, telephones, and the inevitable surge of development. By the end of 1963, the Army Corps of Engineers had forcibly bought the land on which the clubhouse stood to build a floodgate and a system of levees that would ultimately consume what was left of the old woods. In the words of Alan Huffman, grandson of Ten Point’s founders, “Suddenly, the world that had given Ten Point its highest value was closing in for the kill.”12 Faulkner describes a similar phenomenon of paradise lost in the story “Delta Woods.” What was once an impenetrable jungle gave way first to cotton patches, then to fields, then to plantations. Paths made by deer and bear became roads and highways, and towns sprang up along them. After making some six-odd November trips into the Delta, old “Uncle Ike” McCaslin successively had “farther and farther to drive, the territory in which game still existed drawing yearly inward.”13 By the time of this last


trip, a man had to drive “two hundred miles from Jefferson before he found wilderness to hunt in.”14 Until the unwelcome arrival of civilization, however, Ten Point served as a rendezvous for a diverse group of lawyers, doctors, businessmen, their employees and their wives, as well as cooks, mechanics, fishermen, housewives, handymen, and others. The members of this broad cross section of humanity had one thing in common—a love of hunting deer in the Mississippi Delta. Were it not for Ten Point, most of these people’s paths would never have crossed.15 Florence “Mama” Huffman was a tireless chronicler of Ten Point’s history. She took more than four thousand black-and-white photographs of all aspects of camp life. Many of these photos are now housed in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.16 They are an important legacy to a fast-disappearing, if not already extinct, slice of Mississippiana. But Florence was more than a recorder of Ten Point’s history. She was also a part of it. While she and other women were not official members of the club and could not vote on its affairs, they did hunt. They also took part in Ten Point’s traditions, such as the one in which a hunter who missed a shot was penalized by having his shirttail cut off, with the amount removed varying based on the egregiousness of the offense. In the egalitarian tradition of a deer camp, even Mama Florence paid this price.17 One Mississippian that continues Florence Huffman’s tradition of female hunters is Deanna Latham, a nineteen-year-old sports management major at the University of Southern Mississippi. Latham is a selfproclaimed “daddy’s girl” who began hunting when she was nine with her father, Billy Ray Parker, a man she describes as her “hunting buddy.” Latham says that growing up she always did everything with her father, so naturally that included hunting. She describes hunting as a special time with her father, one that created a “close bond that took us away from the world and allowed us to just spend time together.” Like Forrest Burris and many other first-time hunters, Latham got off to a rough start. She was hunting with her father at their old deer camp in their hometown of Pelahatchie in Rankin County, and Latham made the mistake of taking off her boots. It had rained the day before and soaked the


Deanna Latham poses with her first buck while her father Billy Ray Parker proudly looks on. Courtesy of Deanna Latham.

carpet in their deer stand. Pretty soon Latham’s feet were soaked too. She was “cold and miserable and knew right then I was not going to come back again.” Even though hunters were bagging deer all around them, Latham and her dad had to head home early to get her dried out. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, Latham was soon back in the woods, and by the time she was twelve, she got her first deer. This time she was hunting during youth weekend at their deer camp in Hazelhurst. One local homeowner did not particularly like hunters and used to make a habit of cutting his grass during prime hunting time, a nuisance that was particularly frustrating to young Latham. Shortly after 5:00 p.m., she was about ready to give up when a doe came into view. Latham “dropped it in its tracks” for her first kill. Her friends spared her the blood bath Burris enjoyed, but they did “make me spread some of it on my face.” Three years later, Latham was hunting for the first time by herself. She was in a ground blind her Dad had set out for her, and she was busily texting her friends to tell them that she was hunting. She had just told a friend that she had not seen anything and was ready to go home when suddenly, “twenty-five feet in front of me, a huge buck was looking me straight


in the eyes and walking toward me.” Latham admits to being scared, but she put down her cell phone, grabbed her rifle, and shot. Immediately she called her dad on her walkie-talkie. He was about three hundred yards away and asked her what she shot. Excitedly she told him that “she just knew it had horns.” It was a ten pointer, not bad for her first buck. Later, Latham’s family bought the land where they had hunted that day, and together Latham and her dad built a cabin that sits on the exact spot where she killed her first buck. She describes it as “a special place to me because I have such wonderful memories there of me and my dad.” Latham says her “family is all from the country, so a female hunter is nothing new for us,” but she does get the occasional snide remark from others, “mostly from guys who are jealous I’ve killed more and bigger deer than them.” With a smile she adds, “They hate to admit that a girl can do something better than they can.” Latham’s boyfriend does not seem to mind. She introduced him to hunting, and they were hunting together when he killed his first deer. Latham killed her first deer with her cousin’s .270 Remington. Many consider the .270 to be America’s classic deer rifle, although proponents of the .30-06 will put up a passionate counterargument. Latham likes the .270 because it “is not real loud to me or kicks bad.”18 The legendary hunter and writer Jack O’Connor would agree with this assessment.19 In Outdoor Life magazine and several books, O’Connor sang the praises of the .270. The result, according to one of O’Connor’s biographers, is that if you “mention the name Jack O’Connor to many hunters and shooters of today, . . . they’ll likely say, ‘Oh, yeah, the .270 guy!’ ”20 Many shooters like to reload ammunition, and this money-saving procedure is possible with a centerfire cartridge like the .270. In a centerfire cartridge, the firing pin strikes the primer cap located in the center of the cartridge. The primer, however, is a separate and replaceable component, while the brass case of the cartridge, the most expensive part, is undamaged and can therefore be reused. On the other hand, in a rimfire cartridge, the firing pin strikes the rim at the base of the cartridge. In the process, the cartridge is deformed by the impact of the firing pin, making reloading impossible.


Latham’s father does the reloading in her family. Some people reload for relaxation or to save money or because the type of ammunition, such as for some primitive weapons, is hard to obtain. Parker reloads to create a bullet that meets his own exacting specifications. After much study and experimentation, Parker adds a little extra powder to his reloads to achieve the flatter trajectory he prefers. Bullets of 200 to 250 grains are best for deer hunting, and reloading lets Parker design a weight that is perfect for him.

A D E E R C A MP TO DAY While Latham usually hunts with her father or boyfriend, other Mississippians extend their hunting circle to a broader group by joining a deer club. In the tradition of Ten Point, Greg Hargett, a forty-three-year-old full-time National Guard officer from Brookhaven, is a member of the 168 Hunting Club. The 168 is located on some nine hundred acres of leased hardwood timberland in Port Gibson. Club rules cap membership at twenty-five, but each member can bring two guests. New members must be referred by a member in good standing and go on a waiting list until a spot opens up. Members range in age from twenty to eighty, and most, like Hargett, come from military backgrounds. In fact, all the charter members of the club were members of the Mississippi Army National Guard 168th Engineer Brigade, from which the club gets its name. Compared to Ten Point, the 168 is fairly decentralized and posh. There is no camp house, and members are responsible for bringing their own food and preparing their own meals. In the absence of a camp house, some members have erected their own cabins or brought in their own trailers and placed them on semipermanent sites. These accommodations have all the comforts of electricity, heating, and plumbing. The 168 even enjoys cell phone coverage and access by paved and gravel roads. In spite of these modern conveniences, the 168 preserves the camaraderie of the old-time deer camp by submission to the authority of the camp boss. In keeping with the military culture of the 168, Hargett describes the


By imposing restrictions on the minimum spread and main beam, Club 168 helps practice good wildlife management. Illustration by Harry Smith.


camp boss there as “the First Sergeant.” The camp boss devises the schedule and tasks for the work weekends the club conducts two or three times a year. During these sessions, all members pitch in to repair cabins, maintain trails, plant food plots, and keep everything in good working order. The camp boss also assesses fines for any violation of club rules. To encourage superior hunting and practice good wildlife management, the 168 levies fines against hunters who shoot deer of insufficient weight or antler size. For example, bucks must have a sixteen-inch main beam length and at least a thirteen-inch inside spread. Otherwise, in the tradition of Ten Point’s cutting shirttails, the camp boss levies a fine he sees fit. For Mississippians like Hargett, clubs like the 168 allow hunters to pool resources, share good times, and have access to hunting grounds in a way that would not be available to them as individuals. These clubs are a strong way that hunting in Mississippi maintains its traditions from one generation to the next, and the waiting list for membership in the 168 shows that the tradition is here to stay.21

BE A R While deer is what most big-game hunters seek in Mississippi today, there was a time when bear also roamed the state in sizable numbers. In “The Bear,” Faulkner writes about hunting not just any bear but an elusive, legendary bear named Old Ben. Faulkner describes Old Ben as not even a mortal beast, but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant;—the old bear solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of mortality—old Priam reft of his old wife and outlived all his sons.22 Old Ben is pursued by another icon, the dog Lion. The battle between bear and dog is spoken of “as people would talk about Sullivan and Kilrain


and, later still, about Dempsey and Tunney.”23 Faulkner’s emphasis on oral tradition as he tells the tale captures one of the most important cultural components of hunting, and Faulkner skillfully uses the technique to draw the reader into the wilderness with the characters. “The Bear” also is a saga of the loss of the wilderness as developers clear away both the woods and the values cherished by men like Fathers and McCaslin.24 It is a scenario the Huffmans and the other members of Ten Point would understand all too well. Faulkner’s telling of “The Bear” represents a kind of hunting “that verged on the mythic, that required metaphors from history and legend for the mighty bear and the huge dog.”25 On the other hand, one of the most celebrated hunting stories in Mississippi is the very real 1902 visit of President Theodore Roosevelt to the Mississippi Delta to hunt bear. Roosevelt was the guest of William Mangrum, owner of Smedes Plantation in southern Sharkey County, and the legendary bear hunter Holt Collier served as the president’s guide. Collier shot his first bear when he was ten years old and is credited with shooting over three thousand in his lifetime. Born into slavery in Jefferson County, Collier followed his masters, Howell and Thomas Hinds, into the Confederate army. At fourteen, Collier joined Company I of the Ninth Texas Cavalry and served as a sharpshooter and spy. Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 2018 in West Point is named after Collier, and in 2004 his grave was honored with a Confederate headstone. That same year, the Holt Collier National Wildlife Refuge was established on Collier’s historic hunting grounds near Darlove, about twenty-nine miles southeast of Greenville. Collier was fifty-six when he served as Roosevelt’s guide, and even at that age Collier was strong and wily enough to single-handedly capture a large male black bear, which he tied to a tree for Roosevelt to shoot. Roosevelt was too much of a sportsman to kill the defenseless bear, and the incident attracted national attention in editorials and cartoons. Morris Michtom, an enterprising New York store owner, saw one such cartoon and created a stuffed toy he called “Teddy’s bear” after the president. Michtom’s toy was a huge success and led to the formation of the Ideal


Clifford Berryman, Drawing the Line in Mississippi, 1902. This cartoon depicting President Roosevelt’s hunting trip to Mississippi brought nationwide attention to the event. Courtesy of the Berryman family papers, 1829–1984, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Toy Company. In 2002 the Teddy Bear became Mississippi’s state toy via House Bill 951. While this commemoration did not take place until the centennial of the hunt, back in 1902 Roosevelt sent Collier a Winchester .30-30 Model 1894 rifle as a memento of the experience.26 The .30-30 is one of the most famous and most popular hunting rifles in American history, and the Model 1894 was the first Winchester designed for the new smokeless powder, a major advance over the old black powder made of charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. This combination


had several problems, not the least of which was the fact that it emitted a black smoke that disclosed the firer’s position to game in the woods and enemy soldiers on the battlefield. It was also subject to incomplete burning, which caused fouling in the bore and had such a high rate of combustion that the bullet lost velocity as it traveled through the barrel. In 1885, Alfred Nobel and others started combining nitroglycerin and guncotton (nitrated cellulose) to create a smokeless powder that produced higher velocity, flatter trajectory, and greater range and accuracy while at the same time leaving the bore cleaner.27 Roosevelt’s gift of the Winchester to Collier, a gift from the president of the United States to a former slave, was no small compliment from one avid hunter to another and a powerful testimony to how hunting cuts across barriers to unite varied segments of society.

D UC K In addition to deer and bear, the Mississippi Delta has long been home to excellent duck hunting. Justin Saffle, a twenty-eight-year-old attorney from Madison, loves to hunt duck on some public land outside of Yazoo City. He finds hunting to be “a chance to get away from the day-in-andday-out process of life and to get out and enjoy what God has created for us.” One of the things Saffle likes about duck hunting in particular is that it does not require absolute quiet, so he can enjoy conversation with fellow hunters. Mike Boyd, who does much of his duck hunting at Beaver Dam near Tunica, would agree. “I was an avid deer hunter,” Boyd says, “and I’d taken quite a few bucks. But deer hunting was a lonely sport. You basically sat there and waited for a deer to come by your stand. But duck hunting has several interesting aspects. The decoys, the dogs, the sounds and the sights of the ducks, and the fellowship with the people you hunt with add layers of enjoyment to any duck hunt. On a deer stand, you’re supposed to be quiet and sit still. In a duck blind, we can move around, be comfortable, eat, tell stories and enjoy one another as well as hunt ducks.”28

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Still, duck hunting is not for the faint of heart. Saffle’s spot in Yazoo City is mostly flooded timberland, and duck hunting by definition means being cold and wet. Once he gets out of his car, Saffle still has to travel about an hour by four-wheeler, foot, and boat to get to his blind, but he does not mind. He was hooked from the age of twelve when he shot his first mallard while hunting with his father, and he considers the memories of the boat trips he has made with his brothers and friends to be priceless. Another aspect of duck hunting that is very special to Saffle is his dog Echo. Named after Saffle’s favorite brand of duck calls, Echo is a sixmonth-old black Labrador retriever. The two train fifteen minutes each day, and Echo will be ready to hunt next season, assuming the duties now held by Saffle’s brother’s chocolate lab, who will be retired. Saffle hunts with either a Remington 870 or a Benelli Nova 12-gauge shotgun, weapons that are at opposite ends of the evolution of duck guns. According to one chronicler, the 870 “has been around in one form or another since ducks were invented.”29 In reality, Remington introduced it in 1950, and since then, over eight million of the model have been sold, making it the most popular pump-action shotgun ever.30 With its classic walnut stock, the venerable 870 is the gun Saffle grew up with. His Benelli is a much more modern design that draws on synthetic materials such as a polymer stock that connects seamlessly to the receiver to give the gun exceptional strength. Deep grooves are cut into key handhold locations to give Saffle a solid grip even under the wet conditions common to duck hunting.31 With his two very different guns, Saffle is connected both to where duck-hunting guns have been and to where they are headed.32

BO W S AND MUZZLE LOADE RS Tony Miller, a fifty-year-old millwright from Leakesville, is even more grounded in the hunting traditions of Mississippi’s earlier days. Miller has an abiding love and respect for nature. He is a true sportsman who appreciates the excellent hunting environment he has inherited and wants to ensure it is preserved for future generations. Miller does all kinds of


A selection of the many different types of bows for sale at Randy’s Sporting Goods in Hattiesburg. Photo from the author’s personal collection.

hunting with all kinds of weapons, but his attitude toward the sport is perhaps best reflected in his use of bows and muzzleloaders. Miller is one of those salt-of-the-earth, levelheaded guys who makes you proud to live in Mississippi. Without a hint of fanfare, he says he “grew up in hard times, when a lot of the food we ate came from what we hunted.” In those circumstances, “A wasted shot meant wasted food.” Miller learned early the valuable lesson of “when to shoot and when not to shoot, when to kill and when not to kill,” that Faulkner’s Sam Fathers taught young Isaac McCaslin. Like Fathers, Miller is extremely selective with what he shoots. He will not shoot smaller deer, and he does not shoot does early in the season, even when it is legal, because he assumes they are still taking care of a fawn. It is not uncommon for Miller to see two-dozen legal deer and not take a shot because of his rigorous wildlife management philosophy. Almost without exception, Miller uses the word “harvest” rather than “kill,” and that is exactly his approach to hunting. He is not looking for any animal. He is looking for the right animal, and he is willing to invest the time, effort, and forgone opportunity to apply his principles. Miller has loved the outdoors all his life. The result, he says, is that it would be “hard for anybody to get me lost in Greene County.” During those formative years as a youngster, Miller played with toy bows and arrows, and he remembers “being pretty good at it.”


Perhaps building on this early foundation, he picked things up relatively quickly after a friend introduced him to bow hunting when Miller was in his early twenties. Bow hunting certainly suits Miller’s temperament. He likes to keep things simple and describes himself as “a poor man’s hunter who doesn’t need top-of-the-line stuff.” In fact, he seems to relish the way a bow helps make hunting more of an equal contest of his cunning, knowledge, and skill against that of the animal. Miller uses a compound bow with a seventy-five-pound pull. Compound bows use a system of cables and pulleys to bend the limbs of the bow. This arrangement allows the limbs to be much stiffer than those of a traditional longbow, storing more energy but still permitting the archer to draw the bow thanks to the mechanical advantage. The result is that compound bows can reduce the force needed to hold a fully drawn bow back by between 50 and 80 percent. The first time Miller was bow hunting by himself he saw three bucks. He was “so excited I had to force myself to stay calm.” The bow Miller was using then “was so slow you could literally see the arrow in flight. It seemed like it took forever.” Miller’s shot found its mark, and from that point on, he says, “I was hooked.” Miller has since obtained a faster bow, but he still bow hunts with his characteristic discipline. He modestly describes himself as a “novice” bow hunter, so he limits himself to shots of thirty-five yards or less to ensure a kill. Miller also recently began hunting with muzzleloaders that use the old black powder common before the Winchester .30-30 Model 1894 helped make smokeless powder the norm. When using this type of weapon, Miller faces the same issue of fouling that plagued his predecessors. In fact, Miller’s first muzzleloader had to be thoroughly disassembled and cleaned after every three shots or so to keep it in good working order. Miller has since upgraded to a Thompson/Center Omega with a sealed pivoting breech that makes the rifle much easier to maintain. The breech, hammer, and trigger assembly are all mounted as one unit to the rear barrel lug and are protected by the stock. When the operator pushes forward on a lever below the trigger guard, the entire breech block swings


down and away from the stock, exposing the breech plug. Then all Miller has to do is unscrew the breech plug and clean. Pivoting the trigger guard back up into the stock closes the action. The trigger guard locks in place, providing a snug fit between breech block and barrel. Unlike on an old flintlock, this closed-breech design protects the Omega’s 209 primer from wet weather. To fire, all Miller has to do is cock the hammer and pull the trigger. Miller’s muzzleloader is a .50 caliber that can handle charges of up to 150 grains of black powder. It has less kick than his previous muzzleloader but “still has a fair amount of recoil,” which he partially offsets by not using the maximum load. Miller considers his muzzleloader “real accurate out to two hundred yards.” Miller likes both the challenge and intimacy of hunting with bows and muzzleloaders. He says that “with a modern rifle, if a person knows his gun and has it properly sighted, he can hit most anything.” With the more traditional weapons, however, the hunter “has to get closer to the animals and control his movements.” Miller says it requires him to be “patient and calm—almost in slow motion.” He does not mind the hours he spends in the process, because “it gives me time to enjoy nature.” For Miller, hunting is an experience to be savored. It is not something to rush through, and a successful hunt is certainly not measured by the number of kills. Miller hunts “to get away from the hustle and bustle,” and the slower pace of bows and muzzleloaders suits him just fine.33

TUR KE Y While Miller’s choice of weapons is based on his desire to increase the challenge and his proximity to the animals, other Mississippians have other factors influencing their decisions. Randy Martin is a fifty-year-old high school football coach in McComb. He loves to hunt turkeys but confesses his Browning Model B-80 12-gauge is “not necessarily the gun of choice.” Nonetheless, while an avid hunter like Martin knows that camouflage, scouting, marksmanship, and luck are all important parts of the


sport, he also knows that perhaps nothing is as critical to an enjoyable season as spousal support or, at a minimum, spousal acquiescence. Hunting involves time, money, and hopefully bringing home a carcass or two—all things that if they were not negotiated in a prenuptial agreement can strain a marriage. Knowing that “discretion is the better part of valor,” Martin says his wife “prefers we use what we have, and since we already have one gun, we don’t need another.” The compromise works. Martin says he is “not really an expert hunter, just someone who enjoys hunting.” His father, Roy, however, says Randy is “one of the best.” Roy Martin is a retired army major, a Vietnam veteran, and a winner of the Distinguished Service Cross who has seen his share of combat. He likens the patience required of a turkey hunter to that of a military sniper.34 Randy agrees, noting that “turkeys have great eyes, so camouflage is important.” In fact, most of the recently manufactured high-end turkey guns come fully camouflaged. Martin likes to hunt turkeys on his land in Wayne County or on his father’s property outside Ellisville in Jones County. He hunts deer as well but particularly enjoys turkey hunting because it requires exact performance. “Each hunt,” he says, “is different and something new happens each time. It never gets old.”35 Martin is not alone in his love of turkey hunting. According to Kenny Odom, secretary of the Mississippi chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), there are some ten thousand members of the NWTF and its affiliated groups in Mississippi. If Martin ever gets a chance to upgrade his turkey gun, he might want to consider a Remington Model 11-87 like Odom uses. However, Odom adds, “The key to any good shotgun for turkey hunting is matching a quality choke tube with a shell and load.”36 The choke is a device at the end of the gun’s barrel that “chokes” or reduces the bore to tailor the shot pattern. Shooters usually experiment with the choke by firing at a target forty yards away and then drawing a thirty-inch-diameter circle around the center of the shot pattern and determining the density of the pellets that impacted inside the circle. The shooter then tailors the choke to fit the range and size of the target to get


the optimal shot pattern. A lot of choke results in a small pattern that ensures good killing power but makes the target tough to hit. Less choke results in a bigger pattern, but the pellets may be too dispersed to reliably kill. The hunter must experiment to get the proper choke for his needs. As part of this process, shooters must also consider the load, or size of the shell being fired. For example, Odom’s Remington 11-87 can take loads from 2¾ to 3½ inches, but he personally fires 3-inch shells to keep the recoil manageable. Shooters need to find the right combination of choke and load for the distance they want to shoot. The most lethal spot to hit a turkey is in its brain or spinal cord, so hunters who want long-range shots at the relatively small targets presented by a turkey’s head or neck will want a lot of choke. To determine their maximum range, shooters often draw a life-size turkey and shoot at it from known distances. They experiment with different loads and chokes, and so long as they can put three or four pellets in the turkey’s head or neck, they are in range. Finding the right combination is as much an art as it is a science, and that is probably true for much of turkey hunting. The evermodest Martin claims he learned most of what he knows about turkey hunting “by trial and error—mostly error,” but, like thousands of other Mississippi turkey hunters, he says the thrill of being outdoors “keeps me going back.”37

DOVE Rick Clawson, a fifty-year-old pharmaceutical engineer, did all kinds of hunting growing up in Gulfport, but he recalls the challenge of dove hunting made it “infinitely more enjoyable to me than any other type.” Indeed, many hunters consider the swift, erratic flight of the dove to make it the hardest bird to hit with a shotgun.38 Clawson and his friends “would hunt anywhere and everywhere we thought we could get away with it,” but mainly close to home in Harrison and Jackson counties. Like the hunters in Faulkner’s novels or at the Ten Point camp, Clawson fondly recalls the old days. His favorite spot back in the 1970s and early 1980s was at the east end of the Industrial Seaway


in Gulfport, before the area became developed. The spot was convenient enough that Clawson and his friends could “run out after school, shoot off a box or two of shells and be back home right after dark in time for supper.” Clawson’s hunting time was a product of his school schedule, but fortunately for him, the best time to hunt dove also happens to be late in the afternoon.39 Also, like Faulkner’s characters, Clawson acknowledges the blending of fact and fiction when it comes to hunting lore. While he did his dove hunting close to home, he had to tolerate the tales of his friends who had relatives in the northern parts of Mississippi, “where they would go for spectacular weekends of hunting so many birds that the skies grew dark (or so they led me to believe).” Clawson does his dove hunting with a Remington 870 Wingmaster 12-gauge, a Christmas gift he received when he was thirteen or fourteen. The Wingmaster is a pump, or slide-action, shotgun. Before the invention of pump shotguns, hunters had to content themselves with double-barreled guns, a product of Europe, where they remain “the rule and tradition for hunting.”40 As far as Americans were concerned, however, these double guns had two problems. They did not lend themselves to mass production, and even more egregiously for the dove hunter, they held only two shots. The pump shotgun solved both these problems, the latter by means of a tubular magazine beneath the barrel. The new design was an immediate hit with bird hunters, who could now fire at least five shots without reloading. Some hunters even built long magazine extensions that held as many as eleven shots, but this practice was later prohibited.41 The pump shotgun gets its name from a sliding firearm handle or pump that extracts a spent shell and loads a new one. The shooter must manually perform this motion after firing each round. In a semiautomatic shotgun, the action is automatically performed each time the gun is fired. Clawson honed his skill with his pump shotgun at the local skeet range his neighbor ran. He would help out on the weekends by doing odd jobs like reloading shells, loading clay pigeons, and picking up trash, and then get to do a bit of shooting before he went home in the evening. The practice paid off, and Clawson thought he “could shoot as fast as my buddies with their automatics.”42


Clawson has plenty of company in his love of dove hunting. Over sixty-five thousand hunters took part in Mississippi’s 2007 dove season, and the mourning dove is the single most popular game bird in the country. Part of the reason for its popularity is that, according to Cliff Covington, “a Mississippi dove shoot is actually much more than just a hunt—it’s a social event we enjoy with our family, friends, and neighbors.”43 Clawson agrees, saying for him the lure of dove hunting is in “the time spent with friends and exposing yourself to the rhythms of nature.”

S M A LL G AME As popular as dove hunting is in Mississippi, the squirrel outranks it as the most hunted small game species. Halbert (Sam) Garris Sr. is a sixtyfour-year-old retired pipe welder and fitter, and an avid squirrel hunter. His favorite squirrel-hunting spot is in Jones County in the Tiger Creek swamp east of Ovett, and his favorite time to hunt is early in the morning, usually between 6:30 and 9:00. Still-hunting for squirrel is quite a challenge. As the name implies, when still-hunting, the hunter is stationary most of the time. That does not mean there is no walking associated with still-hunting. The hunter must find an area where there is plenty of mast, the accumulation of nuts on the ground that squirrel feed off of. Where Garris hunts in the Tiger Creek swamp, squirrels feast on an abundance of acorns, pinecones, and hickory nuts. When the hunter locates such an area, he picks a suitable tree to lean against and break up his silhouette, and then he waits. Remaining motionless is the key because it is motion that will alert the cautious squirrel of human presence. The hunter is looking for motion, too. One reason Garris likes to hunt in the early morning is that the dew is still on the leaves, and when he sees drops falling, he knows where a squirrel is moving up above. Garris likes squirrel hunting because “you see more game to shoot at and have a lot more fun.” In fact, the squirrel hunter will likely see and hear plenty of squirrels, but getting a good bead on one of the skittish critters, who have plenty of places to hide, requires patience and skill. This


is especially true when the hunter is using a rifle rather than a shotgun. Depending on the situation and his mood, Garris uses both. Squirrel hunting is often a youngster’s first introduction to the sport, and a .22 caliber is often his first rifle. Seasoned hunters like Garris often continue to use the .22 because its necessity for good marksmanship adds challenge to the hunt. Garris’s .22 is a pump-action Remington 572 Fieldmaster. One of the things he likes about the Fieldmaster is that it takes both short and long rifle cartridges. The .22 short was the first metallic cartridge made in America. With a bullet weight of 29 grains, the .22 short is relatively light, and its low recoil and limited noise make it popular for target practice or just “plinking.” Later came the .22 long rifle cartridge, which, at 40 grains, fires flatter and with greater velocity. These features, along with a relatively low cost, make the .22 long rifle cartridge ideal for small-game hunting. The wider dispersion of a shotgun round compared to an individual bullet fired from a rifle can make it easier to hit a squirrel, and for this purpose Garris uses a 1958 Belgium-made Browning Automatic 16-gauge shotgun. The gauge of a shotgun is a measurement of the diameter of the barrel. Originally, gauge referred to the number of lead balls, each the diameter of the gun’s bore, that it would take to weigh one pound. So a lead ball that would fit exactly in the bore of Garris’s 16-gauge would weigh one-sixteenth of a pound. Later, gauges became standardized by diameter, so that a 12-gauge is .729 inch in diameter, a 16-gauge is .663 inch, and a 20-gauge is .615 inch. The result is that the larger the gauge number, the smaller the diameter. Many squirrel hunters prefer to use a shotgun early in the season when the leaves make it more difficult to spot a squirrel and then transition to the more challenging .22 after the leaves fall off the trees.44

HA N D G UNS Weapons are a means of gaining control, and for many Mississippians, weapons go beyond a tool for hunting to become a means of controlling a person’s destiny. Thus Mississippi carries a strong tradition of supporting


the Second Amendment. Pursuant to this belief, the state legislature passed a law in 1986 prohibiting counties and municipalities from adopting any ordinance restricting the possession, transportation, sale, transfer, or ownership of firearms or ammunition. On the strength of this philosophy and these protections, one study determined that between 1988 and 1997, Mississippi trailed only neighboring Louisiana and Alabama as the state with the highest average gun ownership in the nation.45 Much of the rationale for this attitude is the assumption that Mississippians have the right to use weapons to defend themselves. In fact, in 2006, Mississippi adopted Senate Bill 2426, the “Castle Doctrine” law, which holds that if someone breaks into your home, your occupied vehicle, or your place of business or work environment, you may presume that he is there to do bodily harm and may therefore use any necessary force against him, including deadly force. Indeed, Randy Reeves, owner of Randy’s Sporting Goods in Hattiesburg, says most of his customers are looking for a gun for personal protection, so his biggest sellers are handguns The GUNS1 license plate on his Ford F150 makes him easy to spot as a gun lover. If you stop by his store, he will proudly show you some of his more interesting pieces. “Old guns are beautiful to hold,” he says, and he loves the stories associated with them. Many of his customers who share this appreciation buy old militia guns and rifles. Reeves is quick to add that on top of all their other virtues, guns are a good investment and rarely lose value. Reeves is such a lover of guns of all shapes and sizes that it is hard to get him to pick a favorite. When pressed, he will confess a partiality to Smith and Wessons, including a .38 caliber Model 10-5 that he has in his store. The Smith and Wesson Model 10s were developed principally for military and police work, and the particular pistol Reeves has bears the stamp “Detroit Police Force.”46 Philip Hemphill describes the Smith and Wesson Model 10 .38 as having once been “the weapon of choice among the law enforcement community.” He ought to know. Hemphill, a Mississippi Highway Patrol captain from Clinton, won the NRA National Police Shooting Individual Championship an unprecedented nine times between 1988 and 2007. Six


Randy Reeves (right) shows his Smith and Wesson Model 10–5 to Robert Roseberry of Purvis. Photo from the author’s personal collection.

of his victories occurred in Jackson, which hosted the event until it moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2006. Hemphill describes the Smith and Wesson Model 10 as being “simple to operate, totally reliable, and very accurate,” characteristics that made it “a great pistol to train the rookies with.” Because the Model 10 has a fixed sight system, training focused on the fundamentals of sight alignment and trigger control, a fact that Hemphill appreciated. The only limitation he could think of concerning the Model 10 was that it held only six rounds. It was used by the Mississippi Highway Patrol into the 1970s, when it was replaced by the Model 66 .357 Magnum. For his competition shooting, Hemphill used a Smith and Wesson Model 64, which he describes as “basically a stainless version of the Model 10.” His affection for the Smith and Wesson brand is obvious, describing them as having “the best internal parts to make the best and smoothest action anywhere in the country.” Hemphill modified his competition pistol by taking the stock barrel off the frame and replacing it with a Shilen Match barrel. “With the accuracy of the Shilen barrel and the smoothness of the Smith and Wesson revolver,” Hemphill says, “it was a winning com-


bination every time.” With nine championships under his belt, it would seem Hemphill knows what he is talking about.

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING RIFLE S, BOW S, A ND GU NS WEAPON S O F M I SSI SSIPPI HUNTERS From the earliest prehistory, native Mississippians survived by hunting. During the territorial and antebellum days, Mississippians developed a martial spirit that included a love of the outdoors and a familiarity with firearms. The state’s still relatively low population and lack of urbanization has preserved much land for wildlife. All these factors have combined to make hunting a vital part of Mississippi culture. Mississippians are by and large a traditional people who look upon the past with a fond nostalgia. They see hunting as a tangible connection to an earlier time, and they cherish its purity, challenge, and mystique. Because Mississippi supports a variety of animal life and types of hunting, Mississippi hunters use a mix of weapons ranging from the most modern high-tech rifles to bows that the region’s early residents would recognize. Regardless of the weapon of choice, however, Mississippi hunters share a passion for the sport that transcends the mere act of hunting and is a deeply rooted part of the state’s social and cultural character. Mississippians also value their right to own guns and use them for personal protection. For many, there is an unquestioned assumption of a federal effort to whittle away at the Second Amendment, and they are quick to dig in their heels to safeguard gun ownership. Again, the issue is one of control. Whether dominating animals in a contest of wit and power, ensuring a hunter’s ability to provide food for his family, or safeguarding a law-abiding citizen’s life and property, weapons give individual Mississippians a measure of control that they hold dear. The result is that if you want to strike up a conversation with a random Mississippian, the subject of guns, hunting, and shooting is a pretty safe place to start.

9 TRAINING C AMP S AN D M ILITARY MOBILIZ ATION W EAPONS OF MISSISSIPPI DURING THE T WO WORLD WARS

In the first half of the twentieth century, Mississippi was still largely an agrarian state with a small industrial base. The massive military mobilizations that swept the nation in conjunction with the world wars, especially World War II, brought a large increase in military activity to the state. An influx of military training camps and defense-related industry served both to increase the presence of weapons in Mississippi and to expose the state to a variety of economic, social, and demographic changes. Camp Shelby and Keesler Field were the largest of Mississippi’s military installations to emerge during this era. Camp Shelby, some ten miles south of Hattiesburg, opened during the mobilization for World War I but closed after the war. In 1938 it saw service as headquarters for the Third Army’s “Mississippi Maneuvers” held in the De Soto National Forest. In 1940 Camp Shelby was reactivated, and at its height in 1943, the post encompassed over 300,000 acres of ranges and maneuver areas and had a peak population of 100,000. Its impact on the surrounding area 143

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during this period and beyond has been far-reaching both economically and socially. Camp Shelby remains an extremely active training center, but it is also the home of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, a must-see venue for anyone interested in the weapons of Mississippi and the military history of the state and nation. Another Mississippi training center that figured prominently during this era is Keesler Field in Biloxi, which hosted a basic training and technical training facility. During World War II, 141,000 mechanics and 336,000 basic trainees passed through Keesler. At its peak strength of 69,000 personnel, Keesler was the largest air base in the world. Among the key weapons present at Keesler during World War II was the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, as Keesler served as a training center for the aircraft’s mechanics. Like Camp Shelby, Keesler remains an active installation with a profound impact on the surrounding area. In addition to Camp Shelby and Keesler Field, a variety of smaller military installations dotted Mississippi. Camp Van Dorn, just outside Centreville, and Camp McCain, eight miles south of Grenada, served army troops. Large air bases at Greenville, Columbus, Jackson, Laurel, Greenwood, and Meridian, as well as smaller ones at Clarksdale, Grenada, Gulfport, Hattiesburg, Madison, and Starkville, covered the Mississippi landscape with the men and equipment of the air corps. A small naval activity even developed at Gulfport. The result was a state saturated with the weapons of modern war.1 World War II also brought to Mississippi an industrial boom that transformed the state’s economy. The International Shipping Company had come into existence during World War I but then gone dormant. The city of Pascagoula acquired the property and leased it to Robert Ingersoll Ingalls in the late 1930s as part of the state’s Balance Agriculture with Industry Plan. With the increased demand in World War II, Ingalls became a critical component of the maritime supply system. One hundred and twenty C3 cargo ships were built during World War II, and the vessel formed the backbone of the U.S. merchant fleet. Of that 120, Ingalls produced 70.2 In all, Ingalls delivered ninety ships to the war effort, including combat loaded transports, escort aircraft carriers, submarine tenders, and troop ships.3 These

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This 100-pound general-purpose bomb was among those produced at the Gulf Ordnance Plant. Bomb courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

vessels featured Ingalls’s pioneering work in all-welded ship construction, an example of the application of technology to weaponry. Ordnance plants also sprang up in Mississippi to fuel the war effort. The investment in this activity was huge, with one source estimating 70 percent of Mississippi’s federally financed manufacturing construction capital going to ordnance plants.4 The first one, built in Flora at the cost of $15 million, was designed to produce smokeless powder bags for everything from 16-inch naval guns to smaller artillery pieces. In practice, however, the plant generated only 105 mm howitzer bags, of which some 959,281 were produced.5 Even larger than the Flora plant was the $25 million Gulf Ordnance Plant built in Prairie, near West Point. The Prairie plant included over three hundred buildings spread over 6,200 acres and produced artillery shells from 1942 to 1945.6 While neither of these plants produced actual weapons, they did manufacture the munitions the weapons needed to fire, and serve as good examples of how war impacted employment, social norms, and industry in Mississippi.


In fact, the training camps and ordnance plants in Mississippi during the two world wars represent a host of weapons-related themes. The purpose of the nation’s mobilization was obviously to control the fascist threat in Europe and the Pacific. That U.S. soil was safe from the battlegrounds of the war allowed the conducive geography and climate of Mississippi to be used as a centralized location for producing weapons and training for their use. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of federal military activity in the state had a centralizing effect on Mississippi’s previous economic and social localism. Finally, the massive industrial capacity of the United States allowed for the application of technological advances, such as those seen at Ingalls, to military weapons. All these factors helped set a solid foundation for the continuing role of Mississippi in the military-industrial complex of the twenty-first century.

I N G A L L S S H I P YA R D In many ways, the story of Ingalls Shipyard’s presence in Mississippi began in 1926, when Hugh White became mayor of Columbia. This was a time of poverty throughout the state, and White combated the situation in Columbia with a plan to attract industries and provide employment for the area. He traveled to Chicago and brokered an agreement that brought Reliance Manufacturing, a men’s clothing manufacturer, to Columbia. As part of the deal, Marion County provided $85,000 for the construction of a plant building. To assuage Reliance’s worries that Columbia, a town with a population of less than five thousand, could muster the required thousand-man workforce, White pledged “a personal bond of one million dollars guaranteeing sufficient labor for your plant.” White’s confidence was based on his plan to draw workers not just from Columbia but from the surrounding countryside.7 The resulting partnership between Columbia and Reliance was a stellar success and became the basis of White’s “Balancing Mississippi Agriculture with Industry” platform when he ran for governor in 1931. White narrowly lost that election but won when he ran again in 1935. When


White took office the next year, Mississippi’s farm income was $185 million, compared to an industrial payroll of just $14 million. White set out to change that ratio, and with his leadership, the state enacted the Industrial Act of 1936, a comprehensive program by which a local community would gain approval from the Balance Agriculture with Industry (BAWI) Board to float bonds to build plants for lease to prospective manufacturers.8 From 1936 to 1940, twelve plants were established under the provisions of the Industrial Act of 1936, and by the end of World War II, these plants accounted for nearly a quarter of Mississippi’s industrial payroll. The most important of these, and the one generally considered the finest achievement of the BAWI program, was the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation in Pascagoula.9 In 1910, Robert Ingalls purchased a half interest in Richards Iron Works Company in Birmingham, Alabama. The company, which then became Richards-Ingalls Iron Works Company, was largely a machine shop with a workforce of fifteen. A year later, Ingalls bought out Richards’s interest and became the owner of the new Ingalls Iron Works Company. As the United States moved ever closer to entering World War I, Ingalls Iron Works grew and began taking on larger projects. In 1915, Ingalls employed forty-five workers. After World War I, he was employing between 150 and 175 and was shipping significant quantities of fabricated steel throughout the South. During the 1920s, Ingalls used a formula of close estimating, cost control, and low labor costs to win contracts for structural steel and to grow the company. In 1924 he bought an old ironworks in North Birmingham and converted it into a tank and steel plate fabricating plant. In 1930 he bought a steel fabricating plant in Verona, Pennsylvania. Throughout this period of expansion, Ingalls did pioneering work in welding research and, in the midst of the Great Depression, made the fortuitous decision to enter the field of all-welded barge and towboat construction.10 By 1933, Ingalls owned shipyards in Chickasaw and Decatur, Alabama, and by 1938, he was building barges and miscellaneous river craft of up to 2,500-ton capacity at both locations. Still, Ingalls lacked a shipyard with a deepwater channel, rail access, and room to expand. When the U.S. Congress created the U.S. Maritime Commission in 1936 to oversee a program


designed to rebuild the country’s merchant fleet, Ingalls knew it was time to act. He assigned his naval architects to redesign preliminary contract plans for an all-welded C3 cargo vessel for proposal to the Maritime Commission. At the same time, he sent two of his vice presidents, Monro Lanier and W. R. Guest, to find a new site suitable for building huge cargo ships.11 Lanier and Guest explored Pensacola and Panama City, Florida, as possible sites and had tentatively selected Pensacola when they received an invitation from a group of Jackson County’s leading citizens to inspect an old World War I shipbuilding site at Pascagoula. On September 26, 1938, Lanier and Guest visited the site and liked what they saw. The site was forty-six acres of what had once been a larger shipyard operated by International Shipbuilding Corporation until 1921. After International closed, the property had passed through several hands until it reverted to the city for taxes.12 Ingalls’s interest breathed new life into the old property, and on October 20, 1938, the Industrial Commission issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity authorizing District Three in Jackson County to acquire the site, make necessary improvements at a cost of no more than $100,000, and enter into a contract with Ingalls Iron Works Company for the establishment of a shipyard and sale of the property.13 On December 6, the $100,000 in district bonds was purchased by the Pascagoula National Bank, and that same day, Ingalls Iron Works Company signed a contract for the property.14 Work on establishing the new site began immediately and progressed quickly. By the end of the year, Ingalls had transferred all portable equipment from its Chickasaw shipyard to Pascagoula. Work also began on the first four of fourteen 26 x 100 foot all-welded steel barges.15 This construction technique was novel. Previously ships had been built by riveting steel plates together, but Ingalls’s all-welded technique was much more cost efficient, and it became the shipyard’s signature.16 Improvements were also made to the facilities. Ingalls dredged the channels, erected steel buildings, and laid a 3,500-foot spur railroad track.17 These efforts paid off. On July 15, 1939, the company was awarded a contract for four 17,600-ton C3 cargo ships, and on September 28 it received a contract for four more.18


On June 8, 1940, the Ingalls-built Exchequer became the world’s first all-welded ship. The ship displaced 17,600 tons and could transport about 9,000 tons of cargo. It was intended to be delivered to the American Export Lines of New York for service to Mediterranean and Black Sea ports but was instead turned over to the U.S. Navy for use as a transport.19 Indeed, global developments were greatly affecting operations at Ingalls, and on August 6, 1941, the navy requisitioned all four C3 ships under construction there.20 While not yet at war, the United States was clearly moving in that direction. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The country was now at war, and Ingalls would play a major part in the effort. Some of the C3s built by Ingalls, such as the HMS Battler, were converted from cargo ships to combat ships and were transferred to Great Britain under the Lend-Lease Program. In fact, the Battler was the first British combat ship built in the United States.21 The Battler was an aircraft carrier that was comparable in everything except size with the large battle fleet carriers. It had seven decks with hydraulic lifts to accommodate several squadrons of fighters and torpedo-bomber reconnaissance planes. In both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, the Battler protected convoys from German submarines and planes.22 The planes that flew off the Battler were the Seafire and the Swordfish. The Seafire was an agile and speedy plane that could reach speeds of 352 miles per hour. It was equipped with two 20 mm cannons and four .303 caliber machine guns and excelled in combat. Its carrier operations were more problematic, and it suffered a high incidence of deck accidents, because its poor visibility on approach, inadequate speed control, and fragile and bouncy landing gear made the plane tricky to land. The Seafire’s range was limited to eight hundred miles, which prevented it from serving all the British navy’s fighter needs, and because of its limitations, the Seafire often served in a fleet defense role only.23 The Swordfish was a reliable but aged torpedo-bomber that carried two .303 machine guns and either one 17.7-inch torpedo or 1,500 pounds of bombs. It was an open-cockpit biplane that had seen service in World War I, but during World War II it was transitioned from a torpedo to a rocketattack role. Its long endurance made it highly suited for antisubmarine


Vera Anderson on the way to defending her trophy in the Second Women’s Welding Championship. Signal Corps photo courtesy of the Armed Forces Museum, Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

patrols, and a Swordfish was the first plane to destroy a submarine by rocket attack.24 Back in the United States, more and more men entered the armed services, and production increases demanded workers to replace them. To meet this need, Ingalls turned to women. The first women welders entered the production line in September 1942, and thousands of additional women were soon hired as welders and other skilled laborers.25 Ingalls soon had so many women employees that the federal government built a special room for women workers experiencing difficulties with their pregnancies.26 To demonstrate and publicize the role women played in the shipbuilding war effort, an American Women’s Welding Championship was held at Ingalls in 1943. The competition was judged by a three-man committee representing the U.S. Navy, the Maritime Commission, and the American Shipping Bureau, and Ingalls’s Vera Anderson defeated Hermina Strmiska of the Henry Kaiser Shipyard in Portland, Oregon, in a close contest. For her efforts, Anderson received a large silver cup, which is displayed today at the Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby, and $350 in war bonds, while Strmiska won $175 worth of bonds. Both women received an invitation to the White House to meet Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Anderson successfully defended her title in a competition held the next year and went unchallenged in the 1945 contest.27

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While the war boom created unprecedented opportunities at Ingalls for Anderson and other women, black workers still labored under traditional restrictions. Although blacks made up approximately 12 percent of Ingalls’s wartime workforce, opportunities for advancement were limited. At Ingalls and most other shipyards, blacks were often considered unsuitable for the more technically challenging jobs.28 In addition to racial issues, the Pascagoula area experienced several other demographic stresses as a result of the increased activity at Ingalls. Housing shortages, inadequate public services, increased crime, and health and sanitation problems all surfaced and had to be dealt with.29 Nonetheless, Ingalls is clearly the most economically successful BAWI project. Between January 1, 1939, and June 10, 1943, the ratio between wage disbursement at Ingalls and the amount of the subsidy bond was 73.2 to 1. Of the other eleven BAWI industries established between 1936 and 1944, the ratio was less than 8.7 to 1. More than two-thirds of the total wage disbursements through the second quarter of 1943 came from Ingalls.30 Perhaps more than any other example of the World War II era, Ingalls shows the positive economic benefit that military industry can bring to a Mississippi community.31

MUNITIONS PL ANTS Shipbuilding was not the only defense-related industry in Mississippi during World War II. In the summer of 1941, it was announced that a munitions plant would open in Flora, in the southwest corner of Madison County. The plant was officially named Brecon Bag Loading Plant, although it is commonly called the Mississippi Ordnance Plant. It was operated by General Tire and Engineering Company of Akron, Ohio, for the purpose of filling ammunition bags for artillery pieces. At the time of the announcement, Flora had a population of some five hundred, but by February of 1942, the number had doubled. The plant drew workers from Madison, Hinds, Rankin, and Yazoo counties, an area that supported a labor force of approximately 225,000. Of these, over 50


percent were black, and issues of race and gender were among the many factors that had to be sorted out as the plant began operation.32 As at Ingalls, the issue was job type and quality. The plant management at Flora refused to use blacks in production jobs unless there were insufficient numbers of white laborers. Thus black men were employed only as janitors, yard workers, freight loaders, truck drivers, and maintenance men, and black women were used only as maids and cafeteria workers.33 The Fair Employment Practice Committee complained of these discriminatory practices, arguing that they were designed by the white community to keep black women available for employment as household maids and cooks in and around Jackson, and to keep black men available as cheap day laborers on farms. After formal hearings conducted in Birmingham, Alabama, in June 1942, Brecon modified its employment practices.34 The situation is an interesting case study of the greater collision of wartime necessity, federal oversight, and local race relations and societal traditions that would increasingly play out in Mississippi in the World War II era and later. At some point during the plant’s operation, an M2A2 tank arrived there. Glenn Husted, a historian at the Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby who has done much research into the tank, speculates that it was part of the Armed Forces Training Center–Ordnance (AFTC-O), another activity on the Flora site. The AFTC-O was built to train 8,500 troops and included a training area nicknamed “German Town.” There soldiers were trained in passive defense measures against enemy tanks, such as rolling on the ground perpendicular to the tank’s approach to avoid detection and danger. The fact that, when it was discovered, the Flora M2A2 had swastikas painted on it supports Husted’s theory that the tank was used as a training aid. As part of the process that had brought the plant to Flora, 320 acres of land belonging to C. W. Floyd were seized through eminent-domain laws for a mere $35. After the war, Floyd was able to reacquire his property from the government, and in 1977 a Military Journal article reported that Richard Birdsong, a local high school student, had discovered the abandoned tank. By this time, there were no other surviving M2A2s, and when officials


at the U.S. Army Historical Department learned of Birdsong’s discovery, they sent an inquiry to the Mississippi United States Property and Fiscal Office in Jackson to determine ownership. Major James “Tommy” Thomas of the Mississippi Army National Guard was sent to study the situation and determined the tank was on Floyd’s property. The federal government tried to retrieve the tank, but Floyd, still smarting from the original seizure of his land, argued that the terms of the postwar transaction stated that he owned the property and everything on it. Floyd’s argument prevailed, and he kept the tank. He then donated the prize to the state, with the caveat that the federal government never be allowed to gain possession of it.35 The M2A2 light infantry support tanks were built at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, and were the first American-designed tanks that were not merely prototypes to enter into production. The M2A2 had twin side-byside turrets, which gave the tank its nickname of “Mae West,” in honor of the voluptuous screen star of the day. There was a .50 caliber machine gun located in the commander’s, or the left, turret and a .30 caliber machine gun located in the right turret. This configuration allowed the machine guns to swing left or right, forming a 180-degree angle that facilitated the trench-clearing operations that had been such a huge requirement during World War I. The M2A2 also had an additional .30 caliber machine gun located in a hull ball mount at the bow gunner’s station. The U.S. Army doctrine of the period envisioned tanks fighting enemy infantrymen rather than other tanks, a mission that the army believed would be handled by special tank-destroyer units.36 Although no M2A2s saw combat, they were used as training tanks, including participation in the 1938 Mississippi Maneuvers in the De Soto National Forest, the first effort by the U.S. Army to employ all mounted troops in a large-scale exercise.37 Based on its markings, the M2A2 found at the Flora plant appears to have been the eleventh tank, meaning a tank in the Third Platoon of F Company of the Eighth Tank Regiment, Eighth Armored Division. After Floyd won his struggle with the federal government for possession of the tank, it was acquired by the Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby in 1991, where the one-of-a-kind piece is on display today.38


Glenn Husted, arms conservator at the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, stands in front of the M2A2 tank that has been the subject of much of his research. Tank courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum. Photograph by Jay Van Orsdol.

C AMP SHELBY Like Ingalls, Camp Shelby is an example of the state and its citizens aggressively pursuing a military presence. In fact, had it not been for the efforts of two local residents, Dr. W. W. Crawford and Dr. George McHenry, the training base would likely have ended up elsewhere. As the United States prepared for World War I, the army announced its decision to activate sixteen mobilization sites to train troops for combat in northern France.


This postcard depicts a “Kentucky Machine Gun Detachment” training at Camp Shelby in the World War I era. The weapons are Lewis automatic machine rifles, or “Lewis guns.” Lewis guns were used by American forces for infantry-squad automatic-fire support before the Browning automatic rifle was introduced in 1918. Machine gun battalions were often trained using Lewis guns while in the United States but did not normally use them in the field. Once deployed, machine gun battalions would ideally have M1917 .30 caliber water-cooled machine guns. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Local business and civic leaders petitioned the army to locate a base in the De Soto National Forest outside Hattiesburg, but the competition was stiff. McHenry used his Spanish-American War relationship with General Leonard Wood, Chief of Staff of the Army, to arrange a meeting with himself, Crawford, and Wood to present the benefits of a camp in Mississippi. Wood was interested enough that Hattiesburg’s Commercial Club sent a three-man delegation to Washington to further advance the proposal. The group argued that abundant space, climate, access to railroads, and community support made the Hattiesburg site beneficial. In July 1917, Wood visited Hattiesburg and agreed that it was a suitable location. On July 12, the army announced that construction of a new camp there would begin without delay.39 The first troops to arrive were National Guardsmen of the Thirty-eighth Division from Indiana and Kentucky, which led to the new camp being named after Isaac Shelby, a Revolutionary War hero and the first governor of Kentucky.


During World War I, Camp Shelby reached a population of nearly forty thousand troops, but after the war, it was deactivated and all but four of its twelve hundred buildings were demolished. Compared to what was to come, the Camp Shelby of World War I had little impact on the surrounding community.40 Still, the local residents remained aware of what a military presence could do for them, and in 1934 Mississippi acquired Camp Shelby for use as a National Guard training location.41 The eve of World War II brought increased attention to Camp Shelby, and in 1938 the area supported the Mississippi Maneuvers. In 1940 it was reactivated as a federal installation, and sixty-five thousand acres within the De Soto National Forest were transferred from the Department of Agriculture to the War Department.42 World War II was a busy time for the camp as 1,800 new buildings and 250 miles of road were constructed. The Hattiesburg American described the frenzy of activity in an article titled “City Rises Like Magic in the Hills.”43 At its peak, Camp Shelby was the largest training site in the country, hosting over 100,000 soldiers, and with an average strength of more than 50,000, it was the second-largest city in Mississippi.44 Among the more interesting residents of Camp Shelby were a detachment of the Women’s Army Corps, Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and German prisoners of war. The massive influx of people and construction at Camp Shelby transformed Hattiesburg. Thousands of men rushed to the area seeking employment, many sleeping on the ground and camping in the woods until their turn came.45 For an area desperate to escape the hard times of the Depression, Camp Shelby was an economic godsend. But as Pascagoula had experienced with Ingalls, the economic prosperity associated with Camp Shelby did not come without a price. Hattiesburg was stressed by health issues such as venereal disease, gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, overcrowding, and shortages of housing and recreational activity.46 The growth also presented challenges to the area’s social customs and traditions. For example, local blue laws prohibited the showing of movies on Sunday, but that was the only day the Camp Shelby soldiers were free from their rigorous training program. In spite of protests


from many pastors, Mayor George Calhoun decided to authorize theaters to stay open seven days a week to accommodate the soldiers.47 More problematic were the challenges posed by the influx of black soldiers to Mississippi’s segregated society. Disregarding many strong objections, Chief of Staff of the Army General George Marshall, with the support of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, had ordered every Army Ground Force training post to prepare to receive black troops. By 1942, the first of these, the Ninety-first Engineer Battalion (Negro), had arrived at Camp Shelby.48 Hattiesburg’s police maintained close supervision of these and other black soldiers and warned them to “watch their step in town.” Police Chief Massey Little advised the out-of-state visitors that Hattiesburg’s blacks “are required to stay in the Negro section of town, and Negro soldiers are expected to stay in the Negro section also.”49 Overall, however, Camp Shelby was considered one of the two army camps in the South (Camp Lee, Virginia, being the other) that had good relationships between the civilian population and the black soldiers.50 Certainly Camp Shelby escaped any of the major incidents that occurred elsewhere in Mississippi at Camp Van Dorn and Camp McCain. At Centreville, outside Camp Van Dorn, tensions between black soldiers and white residents climaxed when a military policeman stopped a black private outside the camp and questioned him about his improper uniform and lack of a pass. During the fight that followed, the county sheriff arrived, and when the black soldier tried to flee, the sheriff shot and killed him. In the incident at Camp McCain, black soldiers who had earlier been assaulted by a group of whites in Starkville retaliated by firing random shots into Duck Hill, a small community near the camp.51 While it is easiest to focus on the quantifiable changes Camp Shelby brought to the Hattiesburg area in terms of income, construction, population, and the like, the intangibles also deserve mention. Traditional morals were loosened to accommodate the soldiers’ recreational needs. Previously unemployed people found not just new economic and social mobility but also increased self-esteem. Perhaps most importantly, Hattiesburg was exposed to a federal intervention in local affairs, which undoubtedly


John Garand, inventor of the Garand rifle, explains some of the weapon’s features to Major General Charles Wesson during the general’s visit to the Springfield arsenal. At the right is Brigadier General Gilbert Stewart, commanding officer of the arsenal. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

softened traditional localism and may in part explain Hattiesburg’s relatively smooth transition to racial integration compared to other parts of the state. In the words of one scholar, as a result of the Camp Shelby experience, “Hattiesburg stood much closer to the American mainstream in 1946 than it did in 1940.”52 The basic World War II infantry divisions that trained at Camp Shelby were built around twenty-seven rifle companies totaling 5,184 men. Each rifle company consisted of three rifle platoons and one weapons platoon. The weapons platoon was equipped with two .30 caliber light machine guns, three 60 mm mortars, three antitank rocket launchers, and one .50 caliber machine gun used primarily for antiaircraft defense. The rifle platoons had three rifle squads of twelve men each. The members of the squad were armed with ten M1 Garand rifles, one Browning Automatic Rifle, and one Model 1903 Springfield.53 This organization made the Garand one of the most common weapons on Camp Shelby during World War II.


The Garand was a .30 caliber, gas-operated, semiautomatic rifle with an eight-shot internal magazine fed from a stripper clip. It was invented by John Garand in 1937 at the government-owned Springfield Armory in Massachusetts and was the first fully semiautomatic rifle to appear in large numbers. At first the army was reluctant to adopt the new rifle, since so many of its predecessor, the Model 1903 Springfield, were still on hand.54 Once this obstacle was overcome, however, the Garand became ubiquitous. By the end of 1945, about five million had been produced. According to Lieutenant General George Patton, the M1 was “the greatest implement of battle ever devised.”55 The standard infantry Garand rifle was just one version of the weapon. There were also sniper models and a smaller version that was designed for tankers but never fielded. There was also an M1 carbine introduced in 1942, but not designed by Garand, that was initially built for troops who would benefit from not having a full-size rifle, such as airborne soldiers. Eventually the carbines were issued to infantry troops, and by 1945 some 6.2 million copies had been produced.56 Camp Shelby continues to be an integral part of the state’s and nation’s commitment to defense. After September 11, 2001, the installation has seen its greatest expansion in activity since World War II, serving as a mobilization platform for soldiers bound for Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. To the more than eighty thousand soldiers who have trained at Camp Shelby on the military’s most sophisticated weapons as part of the global war on terrorism, the M1 Garand might seem almost quaint.57 Nonetheless the weapon and the soldiers who carried it serve as a connection between the past and present of Camp Shelby’s contribution to military training in Mississippi.

KE E S LE R AI R FO RCE BAS E What is now Keesler Air Force Base is another result of energetic efforts on behalf of the state to attract a military presence. By the late 1920s, the Mississippi Gulf Coast economy was suffering from declines in the seafood and timber sectors, and even the once steady tourist industry had


sputtered in the midst of the Great Depression. In response, Biloxi mayor Louis Braun and others started exploring other economic opportunities. Among their efforts was the construction of a commercial airport that became the site of a series of Army Air Corps maneuvers in 1938.58 As America braced for World War II, the War Department drafted plans for an air force of up to ten thousand modern combat planes, a tenfold increase in the existing number. Such growth would require a commensurate increase in facilities, training, and personnel, and when the War Department announced its intention to build two new ground crew training bases, Biloxi officials were ready. On November 4, 1940, Chamber of Commerce Secretary Anthony Ragusin forwarded Brigadier General Rush Lincoln, the official responsible for identifying potential training sites, a proposal outlining the benefits Biloxi had to offer, including its airport. Lincoln liked what he read, and he sent two deputies to take a closer look. These men found the location, climate, and strong community support to be extremely conducive, and they gave Lincoln a favorable report.59 As the process continued, the army revised and enlarged its plans. Biloxi responded with a proposal that included some 685 acres of land, covering not just the airport but the Naval Reserve Park, parts of Oak Park, the Biloxi Golf Club, the Wilkes Boy Scout Camp, a softball field, and numerous privately owned parcels. On March 6, 1941, the War Department notified Mayor Braun that Biloxi had been selected as the location of a new technical training base.60 On June 14, 1941, a series of contracts totaling $10 million were awarded to build the facility. At the time, it was the most expensive government project undertaken in Mississippi. By early July, construction was in full swing, and on August 21, the first shipment of recruits arrived. On August 25, the site was officially designated Keesler Army Airfield, named after Second Lieutenant Samuel Keesler, a Greenwood native who had died during World War I while serving as an aerial observer in France. On September 29, classes began at the Airplane Engine and Mechanics School at Keesler.61 A year later, Keesler was directed to focus its efforts more heavily on training mechanics for the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. Seven B-24s


B-24 maintenance training was taught at Keesler’s Airplane and Engine Mechanics School until 1945. Courtesy of the Eighty-first TRW History Office, Keesler Air Force Base.

were sent to Keesler, and specialized B-24 maintenance training began on October 19. Soon there was a tremendous increase in activity, with the technical school beginning round-the-clock operations of classes as large as one thousand students.62 B-24s were produced by Ford Motor Company at a mammoth facility twenty-seven miles west of Detroit called Willow Run. By 1944, the factory was producing one B-24 every sixty-three minutes; all told, Willow Run manufactured 8,685 of the bombers.63 The B-24 succeeded the B-17 Flying Fortress as America’s primary heavy bomber. It had an amazing range of 2,850 miles and could deliver up to 8,800 pounds of bombs. The plane’s defensive weaponry included ten .50 caliber machine guns distributed in four turrets and two waist-mounts.64 This weapon will be discussed in more detail in chapter 11. Like nearly all U.S. bombers in World War II, the B-24 used the Norden bombsight (NBS), a significant improvement over the horizontal bombsights that had preceded it. The NBS had a computing device that was set for wind speed, altitude, ballistic data, and the aircraft’s movements over the ground. It generated course corrections that the bombardier could use to control lateral movements of the aircraft via the automatic flight control system or “automatic pilot.” With the bomb bay doors open, the bombardier flew the plane, lining up the crosshairs on the NBS and making altitude and lateral corrections using two level knobs on the sight. The bombs were then dropped automatically at the release angle calculated by the sight’s computer. The pilot took back control of the aircraft after the bombs were away.65


B-24 maintenance training ended at Keesler in 1945, but the base continued to be a hub of various activities. After the air force became an independent branch of the armed services, Keesler Field was officially redesignated as a U.S. Air Force base on January 13, 1948. Since then it has provided a variety of technical training programs that have graduated over two million students.66 Like other military activities in the state, Keesler is a vital part of Mississippi’s economy. Its total economic impact for fiscal year 2007 was over $1.1 billion, and as of 2008 it employed 11,200 people, including nearly 6,900 military members, and created nearly 3,500 local and contract jobs.67

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F M IS SI SS IP PI DURING THE T WO WORL D WA RS The mobilizations associated with World War I and World War II brought a huge number of weapons to Mississippi, in the form of either soldiers bearing arms or the industries that produced them. This phenomenon was the result of an aggressive pursuit of such activity on the part of the state and its citizens. In the midst of the Depression and other hard times, a robust military presence seemed to be an answer to Mississippi’s economic woes. Training camps and defense-related industries meant new construction, jobs, federal revenues, and money for local merchants and businesses. The areas around these activities both courted and welcomed them. The bounty associated with the mobilizations did not come without a cost. Local communities found themselves stressed to provide adequate housing, entertainment, and other services. Disease, crime, and vice also increased. Perhaps most significantly, the influx of out-of-state forces exposed a largely insular state to new ideas, demands, and expectations. Mississippi found its social customs and traditions challenged, and struggled to balance the desired benefits of outside influences with the perceived threats they posed. In many ways, it was a transitional period for the state. Industry began to appear where agriculture had once dominated. People of different origins and personalities descended on once isolated


communities. Sacrosanct social mores were exposed to outside scrutiny. In the final analysis, Mississippi emerged from the experience with its traditional character intact, yet with an increased awareness that its ways were not the country’s only ways. It can certainly be argued that the effects of weapons on the state during the two world wars helped pave the way for greater changes whose time had not yet come.

10 F IRE B OMBS AND ROP E S W EAPONS OF TERROR IN MISSISSIPPI

The civil rights era in Mississippi was a violent time when central authority was under serious challenge. Many white Mississippians, disgruntled and threatened by the social change going on around them, resisted by using weapons to terrorize and intimidate blacks who moved to exercise their growing rights. Some blacks responded by arming themselves in a challenge to the whites’ weapons advantage. The story of weapons in Mississippi during the civil rights era parallels the story of weapons in the days of the outlaws of the Natchez Trace. Control of weapons, even in the crudest form, gives one party a local advantage and poses a serious threat to central authority. To restore order, the central authority must dominate the control of weapons. During this tumultuous time in Mississippi history, the central authority often manifested itself in the form of federal agencies. The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools left Mississippians “shocked and stunned,” according to Governor Hugh White. Mississippi was “never going to have integration in its schools,” vowed White, and the state proceeded to enact a series of legislative measures to embody a strategy of “massive resistance.” Still, Mississippi’s efforts to insulate itself from change came under continuous challenge. In 1962, James 164

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Meredith became the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi, commonly known as Ole Miss. His arrival touched off a massive riot that left two people dead and 375 injured. The insurrectionary mob wielded stones, bricks, clubs, bottles, iron bars, gasoline bombs, and firearms against U.S. marshals augmented by federalized Mississippi National Guardsmen and U.S. Army soldiers who relied mainly on tear gas. Known as the “Battle of Oxford,” the violence represented the most serious challenge to federal authority since the Civil War. At maximum strength, thirty thousand troops descended on Oxford to restore and maintain order. Three hundred remained there until July 1963. It was only this massive presence of a well-armed, central force that allowed Meredith to register and remain at Ole Miss.1 In fact, Governor Ross Barnett announced that he had been forced to yield to the “armed forces and oppressive power” of the federal government.2 Meredith’s registration at Ole Miss was the triumph of centralized control of weapons over local control, but even so, the armed mobs posed a serious threat. Of the 375 wounded, 166 were U.S. marshals. One marshal reported, “I was more frightened at Mississippi than I was at Pearl Harbor or any other time during the war.”3 For a National Guardsman whose jeep was riddled with gunfire and who sustained three broken bones when he was hit by a brick, it was “absolute hell.”4 It was also far from the end of the violence. Even after Meredith registered, weapons abounded on the Ole Miss campus. Again, it required central authority to take control of the situation. During the week of October 12, 1962, at the army’s request, all guns were removed from campus, though many students were avid hunters. Large quantities of fireworks were shipped to campus and used to harass Meredith and the soldiers protecting him. On October 31, the army investigated a rumor that seventeen sticks of dynamite had been taken to Baxter Hall, Meredith’s dormitory. Although no dynamite was found, one student was expelled as a result of the investigation.5 The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the “Freedom Summer” of that same year, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 further strained white Mississippians’ ability to control their affairs. Many used weapons to fight back

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against what they saw as outside interference and agitation. Lawless mobs, individual vigilantes, and the Ku Klux Klan used an array of shotguns, firebombs, and lynching ropes to victimize blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Many of the targets were black leaders such as Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer. Other victims were mere boys such as Emmett Till. All died at the hands of men who used weapons to challenge (in Max Weber’s terms) the state’s “monopoly of the legitimate use of violence.” In his history of the Ku Klux Klan, David Chalmers states: “It is an often demonstrated truth that the degree of violence practiced is directly proportionate to the helplessness of the victim. The power of the Klan over the Negro . . . depended on the latter’s impotence and subjection. By the latter part of the 1960s, the black was no longer powerless.”6 Part of this change occurred because blacks began to arm themselves and fight back. The Deacons for Defense and Justice, a Natchez-based group that acquired “hand grenades, machines, [and] whatever we needed” to negate the whites’ weapons advantage, is one example.7 Weapons facilitate control. Controlling weapons is essential to that control. The Deacons challenged the whites’ control of weapons and, therefore, their control of Mississippi at night. Thus the civil rights era in Mississippi was its own arms race. Acting individually and in groups, whites used crude weapons to terrorize blacks. In some localities, blacks were able to organize and arm themselves to fight back. Ultimately, however, it was the central power of the federal government, including its control of armed federal agencies, that restored order to Mississippi during its “defiant years.”

W HIT E MIS SI S S I PPIANS In their resistance to civil rights for blacks, white Mississippians enjoyed almost total control of the state’s political and judicial machinery, as well as a virtual monopoly on weapons and unrestrained use of force. Mississippi jurors refused to bring convictions in seemingly ironclad cases such as the murders of Emmett Till and Clinton Melton. The situation allowed


whites to act with near impunity to intimidate, brutalize, and even kill blacks. One observer commented, “There’s open season on Negroes now. They’ve got no protection, and any peckerwood who wants can go out and shoot himself one, and we’ll free him.”8 In such an environment, lynchings proliferated. In fact, Mississippi led the nation in an act that John Dittmer claims “had always been the ultimate form of social control.”9 Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck expand on Dittmer’s statement, explaining that lynching enhanced social control because it kept blacks in a social condition the white population had defined for them, eliminated black competition for economic, political, and social benefits, and preserved the privileges of the white members of society.10 Perhaps the weapon most commonly associated with lynching in the American consciousness is the rope, but victims were also shot, burned, drowned, and killed by many other terrible means. Most scholars agree that the origins of the word “lynching” can be traced to Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter and justice of the peace who headed an irregular court designed to deal with criminals at a time when the chaos of the American Revolution made due process inexpedient. People disloyal to the American cause appear to have been chief among Lynch’s targets. Thus the term “lynch law” grew to mean a self-constituted court that imposes sentence without due process of law. But what separated lynching from murder was that it was a form of collective violence in which individuals acted with the explicit or implicit support of the community, or at least without its condemnation.11 In a “traditional” lynching, a mob abducted its victim from the custody of law enforcement officials.12 Three such lynchings, all executed by rope, occurred in one sad week in Mississippi in October 1942. To put this in perspective, in the previous year only four lynchings had occurred in the entire nation. The article in Time that described the bloodshed was ominously titled “Lynch Week.”13 The week’s first incident involved two fourteen-year-old black boys named Charlie Lang and Ernest Green. They lived in Shubuta, a small town of 756 people near the Alabama border. Seen chasing a thirteenyear-old white girl underneath the railroad bridge that spanned the


Chickasawhay River, the boys were apprehended and taken to the Quitman jail on charges of attempted assault.14 On the night of October 12, G. F. Dabbs answered a knock at his jailhouse door only to be met by a lynch mob that threw a blanket over his head, grabbed his keys, and locked him in a cell. The attackers then seized Lang and Green and hung them from the railroad trestle where the incident allegedly occurred.15 Langston Hughes immortalized the lynching in his poem “Bitter River” with the lines “Oh, tragic bitter river / Where the lynched boys hung.”16 Five days later, another “traditional” lynching occurred in nearby Laurel, where a forty-five-year-old black farmhand named Howard Wash had been found guilty of murdering his white dairyman employer. Because the jury could not agree on the punishment, Mississippi law dictated Wash’s sentence would be life imprisonment. Many in the community were dissatisfied with this outcome and demanded Wash’s death. At 1:00 a.m., a mob of about one hundred men armed with rifles and shotguns descended on the Laurel jail. Governor Paul B. Johnson was an outspoken opponent of mob violence, and the local authorities telephoned him, asking for help. Johnson dispatched state police and also called two Laurel ministers, asking them to intervene. However, by the time this help arrived, the mob had whisked Wash away. The next morning he was found hanging from Welborn’s Bridge over Tallahoma Creek.17 Johnson was not the only governor to try to intervene with state assets to stop a local lynching. Among the first were Andrew Longino, who served as governor from 1900 to 1904 and called out the National Guard at least five times, and Governor James Vardaman, who did so at least eleven times during his time in office from 1904 to 1908.18 Governor Edmund Noel, who succeeded Vardaman, also called out the National Guard at least twice, declaring in one case, “The state is on trial, as well as [the black defendant] William Mack.”19 These governors were motivated less by humanitarianism than by the threat lynchings posed to the social and economic development of the state. Governor Vardaman is perhaps the best example of the conflicted


logic. A rabid racist, Vardaman declared lynching to be the only proper punishment for a black who had raped a white woman. Then, shortly after becoming governor, he traveled two hundred miles to prevent a lynching.20 The problem for governors like Vardaman was that lynch mobs challenged centralized control of the state’s law-and-order function and attracted unwanted attention to Mississippi, which by the beginning of the twentieth century had developed a reputation as one of the most lawless states in the Union.21 However, the efforts of the governors to exert their authority were at best mixed. Governor Noel, for example, tried unsuccessfully to use the National Guard to protect Ely Pigot from a lynching on February 10, 1908. The effort was a farce, as a mob of five or six hundred men attacked the sixty National Guardsmen trying to safeguard the prisoner as they moved him through the streets of Brookhaven. The mob violently assaulted the soldiers, succeeded in throwing a lasso over Pigot’s head, and dragged him away. They then fired close to five hundred rounds of ammunition into Pigot and ultimately hung his mangled body from an electric light pole.22 Noel held Lincoln County Sheriff J. F. Greer directly responsible for Pigot’s death, and the incident profoundly affected Noel’s approach to the case of William Mack.23 Like Pigot, Mack was alleged to have raped a white woman, the most horrific violation of white Mississippi’s control of the social code of the day. Realizing from the Pigot debacle that more force was needed, Noel dispatched 250 well-armed National Guardsmen, authorized to fire on mobs who meant to harm prisoners, who safely delivered Mack to the Rankin County Courthouse in Brandon, where he was then hanged on June 23, 1909, after a “speedy trial.”24 The efforts of Noel in 1909 and Johnson in 1942 to uphold Mississippi’s legal system are indicative of the struggle for control going on in the state. At the local level, “lynch law” was the order of the day as armed whites were more than willing to use force to perpetuate the traditional social order. Sheriffs were often either complicit in the mob actions or, at best, had divided loyalties. Governors were thus forced to call on state military and police assets to enforce the state’s claim to control of the legal


process. In the midst of this struggle was the court system, an institution that one scholar of the era considers “in the middle, caught between the conflicting demands of caste and law.”25 Indeed, federal grand juries seldom brought indictments for lynching, but the Wash case was different. Harriet S. Gibbons, editor of the local newspaper, the Leader-Call, criticized the murder, and Governor Johnson vowed punishment for the perpetrators of the crime. In this quest for justice, Deputy Sheriff Luther Holder and four leaders of the lynch mob were charged with inflicting what the federal jury described as “unusual and different punishment [on Wash] because of his race and color.”26 Holder, who after seeing the mob reportedly said, “Come on, Wash, they want you,” was charged with failing to properly protect Wash.27 Although the Wash case represented the first time in forty years that a federal grand jury had returned an indictment in a lynching, there would be no guilty verdict. In fact, guilt appears not even to have been the issue at hand. The chief defense counsel closed his argument not with pleas of the defendants’ innocence but with an invocation of state’s rights, white supremacy, and the changes occurring in the Democratic Party: We may as well face the truth. This trial is not a trial to vindicate the lynching of Howard Wash, the Negro, nor is it a trial to convict only the three defendants. . . . It is just another effort on the part of the crack-brained interests of the political party of our forefathers to see how much further we of the South will permit invasion of state’s rights as guaranteed by the Fourth [sic] Amendment of our Federal Constitution. The cause of white supremacy has been indicted. The people of this great Southland are on trial.28 The logic worked. With several of the members of the all-white jury winking at the defense table upon returning to the courtroom, the defendants were acquitted of all charges. The defense counsel reportedly winked back at the jurors.29 At this point, power in the contest for social control in Mississippi remained in local hands.

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The stark differential between the social order in Mississippi and the northern United States was revealed in the lynching of Emmett Till. It was also an incident that began to elevate outside interest in Mississippi’s relatively closed society. Till was a fourteen-year-old boy who had come to Mississippi for a two-week visit to his great-uncle Moses Wright. Till had boasted to his Mississippi friends that he had experience with white women. When his friends challenged his claim, Till entered a small country store in the hamlet of Money to defend his boast. Inside behind the counter was twenty-one-year-old Carolyn Bryant. What exactly transpired next is a matter of conjecture, but Bryant later testified that when she sold Till a two-cent piece of bubble gum, he squeezed her hand and asked her for a date. Bryant said Till then wolf-whistled at her as he left the store. Till’s friends did not know the exact details of the exchange, but they did know that in some way Till had violated the strict decorum black males were expected to maintain around white women. They quickly hustled Till back to Wright’s house three miles from town. Bryant’s husband, Roy, had been out of state driving a truck when the incident occurred and did not return until two days later. When he got back home and learned of the incident, he developed a plan with his half brother J. W. Milam to exact revenge. “Big” Milam was a hulking six-foot two-inch, 235-pounder who had the reputation of being able to “handle Negroes better than anyone in the county.”30 Shortly after midnight on August 28, 1955, Milam and Bryant showed up at Wright’s door and demanded he turn over his nephew. Wright’s protests that “the boy ain’t got good sense,” and pleas that the pair “just take him out in the yard and whip him” were of no avail. Till was loaded into Milam’s pickup truck, and that was the last time Wright saw Till alive. The boy was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, his partially submerged body tied to a cotton gin fan. Before Till was killed, he had been badly beaten with a pistol and possibly an ax. His teeth had been knocked out, and one of his eyes was gouged out. Then he was shot at relatively close range.31 The world saw the evidence of this brutality when Till’s mother insisted on an open-casket


The U.S. Army .45 caliber pistol was developed to meet the need for a weapon with enough striking power to stop the ferocious charges of Moro tribesmen, as seen in this depiction of the battle of Bagsak Mountain on Jolo Island, the Philippines, June 11–15, 1913. Courtesy of the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

funeral so that people could “see what they did to my boy.” Over ten thousand people filed by the casket, and countless more saw the carnage when Jet magazine ran photographs of Till’s mutilated corpse.32 The pistol Milam used to beat and kill Till was a Colt .45 Milam had picked up during World War II while he was in the army in Europe. He considered it the “best weapon the Army’s got. Either for shootin’ or sluggin’.”33 Milam was correct that the .45 packed a punch. The army had adopted it after its .38 caliber proved to have insufficient stopping power against the motivated attacks of the Moro tribesmen the army had encountered in the Philippines. In 1904 the Ordnance Department ran a series of tests that led to a specification for a .45 caliber pistol that would fire a 230grain bullet at a speed of 800 feet per second. Manufacturers responded with proposals for nine pistols that were submitted for testing in early 1907. John Browning’s Model 1906 semiautomatic won the competition, and the army adopted a redesigned version of the pistol in 1911. With only


minor modifications, the Browning served as the army’s main handgun until 1985.34 The army, however, never intended the .45 to be used for the purpose Milam found for it. The trial three weeks after the murder drew national attention. Dozens of news reporters swarmed Sumner, the place where Till’s body had been found and where the trial was conducted. The NAACP was also involved by publicizing the case, producing witnesses, and demanding justice. As in the Wash trial, white Mississippians rallied against these outside influences. Defense counsel John Whitten argued in his summation that “there are people in the United States who want to destroy the customs of Southern people.” He then called on the jury for an acquittal, adding that he was confident “every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to do it.”35 Again this tactic carried the day. After a little over an hour, the jury returned and delivered a “not guilty” finding. Milam and Bryant lit up cigars, kissed their wives, and grinned before a crowd of well-wishers. Although many white Mississippians welcomed the verdict, there was some dissent. Norma Bradley wrote in the Jackson State Times, “We showed the world all right, that Mississippi does not bow to the dictates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but the NAACP is not the real loser. Justice is the real loser and when that is true, Mississippi suffers.”36 When Milam and Bryant sold their story to a Look reporter in 1956 and admitted that they had killed Till, many in the white community turned against them. Even before that, however, the Till case had galvanized many young blacks of around Till’s age who had seen the injustice and vowed to do something about it. Many of these men and women grew to be the major activists of the 1960s. Some even credit the Till lynching with being the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in Mississippi.37 For Milam, the entire Till affair was about control. In his Look confession, Milam is quoted as saying: I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place.


Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’. I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we’ve got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. “Chicago boy,” I said, “I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. . . . I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.”38 Thus Milam seems to be contending that he killed Till not so much in response to his specific behavior at the country store but as part of a larger societal effort to defend the southern way of life from being encroached upon by northern blacks who challenged the traditional standards.39 H. C. Strider, the Tallahatchie County sheriff responsible for investigating the murder, would no doubt agree. “We never have any trouble,” Strider explained, “until some of our southern niggers go up North and the NAACP talks to them and they come back here.”40 The lynching of Till, like the lynching of Lang and Green, exemplifies an effort to control blacks socially by isolating them from white women. In fact, defending the honor of white women was a long-standing justification of the lynching tradition.41 The lynching of Wash shows an effort to maintain control of the relationship between white management and black labor reminiscent of the master-slave relationship. This too is a traditional theme in white violence against blacks in the former Confederate states.42 As blacks began pressing for enhanced rights in the turbulent 1960s, Vernon Dahmer became a victim of the terrorism in the name of maintaining another aspect of white control in Mississippi, this time of the political process. Dahmer was a successful businessman and cotton farmer who owned a store, sawmill, planing mill, and a two-hundred-acre farm. He was also active in the civil rights movement, having served several terms as president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP and having led several voter registration drives. Dahmer and his family lived in a farmhouse about five miles north of Hattiesburg.


The smoking ruins of Vernon Dahmer’s house on the morning it was firebombed, January 10, 1966. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Dahmer had long been the victim of intimidation from whites who resented his activism. He routinely received harassing phone calls throughout the night, and strange cars often pulled up into his driveway and turned around. The fear of attack was so great that Dahmer and his wife Ellie had begun sleeping in shifts to protect their family. Vernon usually kept the first watch, and Mrs. Dahmer took the second. By the time of the fatal attack, the harassment had slackened off. However, Dahmer’s announcement on a Sunday radio program that he would help blacks register to vote by making his store one of the few spots in the area where they could pay their two-dollar poll tax seemingly restored Dahmer as a Klan target. On January 10, 1966, at about 2:00 a.m., two carloads of Klansmen descended on the Dahmers’ store and house. As one group torched the store, another fired gunshots into the house, shattering a picture window. The attackers then hurled a firebomb through the window. Waking to find her house in flames, Mrs. Dahmer told her husband, “Vernon, I believe they got us this time.” Dahmer fought off the attackers with his gun, and the Klansmen drove away. His wife and three children fled out of rear windows, and Dahmer also managed to escape, but not before he was severely burned on his head,


face, arms, and upper body. He died the next day from burns in his respiratory tract. His ten-year-old daughter also suffered painful burns, and the family home, grocery store, and car were destroyed.43 The firebombs used against the Dahmers and countless other targets of white terrorists were usually varieties of “Molotov cocktails.” These incendiary devices are made by filling a glass container with a combustible such as gasoline and a thickener such as soap flakes. A rag is stuffed into the bottle to act as a wick. The rag is then lit, and the bottle thrown at its target. As the bottle breaks, the thickened fuel quickly bursts into flames and engulfs its target. The origin of the weapon’s name lies in the Russian invasion of Finland in 1939. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet minister of foreign affairs, claimed that Soviet planes were delivering food to the starving Finns rather than dropping bombs. The Finns, who knew better, derisively started to call the bombs “Molotov bread baskets.” The joke at Molotov’s expense continued when the resolute Finns nicknamed the incendiary weapons they were using against the Russian tanks “Molotov cocktails,” after their nemesis. The undermanned Finnish army used some seventy thousand of these devices against the onslaught of Russian tanks. The weapon’s ease of construction allowed twenty thousand of the total to be manufactured at the front lines.44 That same ease of construction made Molotov cocktails a staple of night riders bent on terrorizing Mississippi’s blacks in the civil rights era. Not all the weapons controlled by whites during the civil rights era were crude devices such as ropes and firebombs in the hands of private citizens. Some were technologically advanced weapons controlled by central authorities. For example, Mayor Allen Thompson bolstered Jackson’s already formidable 390-man police force to a strength of 450. The department purchased two hundred new shotguns, stockpiled tear gas, and had enough gas masks for each member of the force. The pride of what journalists began calling “Allen’s Army” was the 13,000-pound “Thompson’s Tank.” For $15,000, Jackson, a city of less than 150,000 residents, now had its own armored vehicle with bullet-proof windows, a seating capacity of ten fully equipped men, and the capability to fire tear gas canisters in all directions.45


With some of the most advanced weapons a city government could buy, as well as the rough-and-ready weapons of the mob, white Mississippians stood ready to protect their way of life from the efforts of the Freedom Riders and other activists bent on enhancing the rights of blacks.

BL ACK MI SS I S S I PPIANS It was easy for blacks to be paralyzed by fear in such an environment, but many chose to fight back. Among these were the Deacons for Defense and Justice, which grew out of a clandestine armed self-defense organization that began in Jonesboro, Louisiana, in 1964 as a means of protecting civil rights activists from the Ku Klux Klan and other violent white vigilantes. By the end of 1966, there were some twenty-one chapters of Deacons throughout Louisiana and Mississippi.46 The more successful ones in Mississippi were patterned after the model of the Deacons’ organization in Natchez. Natchez in the 1960s was an important New South city that had attracted a significant manufacturing base built around the likes of Armstrong Tire and Rubber, the International Paper Company, and the JohnsManville Corporation. Natchez was the county seat of Adams County, where in 1965 blacks made up half the population. Still, white supremacy remained the norm. The median income for whites in Adams County was $5,600 per year compared to just $1,994 for blacks. Attempts to implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act had failed miserably. Natchez was also a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, and the Natchez Klan was among the most organized and violent in the state. The Natchez police chief was also an avowed advocate of white supremacy and had no problems using force to intimidate blacks.47 The tense racial situation in Natchez boiled over on August 27, 1965, when a bomb exploded as George Metcalf turned the ignition key in his car as he prepared to leave the Armstrong Tire and Rubber plant after completing his shift. Metcalf was a local NAACP leader who had recently been active in a legal effort to desegregate Natchez public schools, and the blast left him hospitalized with facial lacerations, a broken arm and leg, and other assorted cuts and burns. It was also part of a series of house


bombings, church bombings, and other terrorist attacks that had plagued Adams County since the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups active in Mississippi, had stepped up operations beginning in 1963. Metcalf had been the victim of one of these attacks in January 1965, when a vehicle full of night riders sprayed his home with gunfire.48 After the Metcalf bombing, Charles Evers assumed control of NAACP activity in Natchez. Evers was the brother of Medgar Evers, who had been assassinated by the white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith on June 11, 1963. Unlike previous black activists in Mississippi, Charles Evers spoke openly about armed resistance. In 1964 at a NAACP fund-raiser in Nashville, Tennessee, he had avowed his respect for Martin Luther King Jr. but went on to say: “Non-violence won’t work in Mississippi. . . . We made up our minds . . . that if a white man shoots a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back.”49 On the day of the Metcalf bombing, Evers promised, “There is going to be trouble, no question about that. . . . The Negroes have armed themselves.” Evers advised blacks not to initiate violence against whites, but cautioned, “If they do it any more, we’re going to get those responsible. We’re armed, every last one of us, and we’re not going to take it.”50 Evers’s statements were not idle threats. Some weeks before the Metcalf bombing, a small group of Natchez black men had met to secretly form a paramilitary group to safeguard local black activists and supporters who could not rely on police protection. The group had heard of the success of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Jonesboro and Bogalusa, Louisiana, in neutralizing white terrorist attacks. On August 28, one day after the Metcalf bombing, James Jackson, a local barber, publicly announced a chapter of the Deacons had been formed in Natchez. By October, Deacons were visible on the streets of Natchez, providing security at marches and demonstrations.51 Part of the Deacons’ strategy was to keep the particulars of their organization secret. By not revealing their size, they created doubt in the white community about the organization’s capabilities. The Deacons also were highly selective in their membership, ensuring trustworthiness initially by recruiting only men with whom the original members had grown up. Many


had served in the military, where they had not only gained a taste for life outside the strictures of Jim Crow but also become familiar with weapons. Recruits were warned that revealing organizational secrets could result in the death of the informant. Only a small group within the organization knew the entirety of any particular plan. To safeguard secrecy, individuals were given the details only of their particular assignment. These measures effectively prevented the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Ku Klux Klan from gaining an accurate picture of the organization’s strength.52 What the Deacons did was challenge the tradition throughout the South that had denied blacks the right to carry guns. The origins of this standard stretched as far back as the Louisiana Code Noir of 1724. By the 1960s, however, Mississippi law allowed civilians to openly carry loaded firearms in public and carry loaded weapons in their vehicles so long as they were not concealed. The Deacons took advantage of this law to openly carry weapons as they protected black community activities. This visible show of force was a useful deterrent against attacks by whites.53 The Deacons’ carrying guns was controversial not just among whites but among many in the black community as well. In her 1965 memoir Freedom Summer, Sally Belfrage, a northern volunteer, deliberately omitted any reference to armed self-defense after being warned by a black activist, “If you write about the guns, we’ll kill you.”54 The controversy over the Deacons within the black activist community was that the Deacons’ approach directly conflicted with the nonviolent rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. The issue came to a head after June 5, 1966, when James Meredith, the man who had forced the integration of Ole Miss in 1962, now a Columbia University law student, began a march from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson to encourage voter registration and to increase national awareness of “the all-pervasive and overriding fear that dominates the day-to-day life” of blacks in the South. Marching with just six friends, Meredith was ambushed by Aubrey James Norvell on June 6 along Highway 51 near Hernando. He was superficially wounded in the neck, legs, head, and right side by some sixty birdshot pellets Norvell fired from three shotgun blasts, two of which wounded Meredith.


The attack drew national attention, and on June 7, King, representing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLLC), Floyd McKissick, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), announced that their organizations would be participating in what was to become Meredith’s March Against Fear. This renewed march would be of an entirely different character than the first. On the first march, Meredith told reporters he had debated whether to carry a gun or a Bible. To his later regret, he had chosen the Bible, and he said he “was embarrassed because I could have easily knocked the intended killer off with one shot if I had been prepared.” This time, Meredith said, “I will return to the march . . . and I will be armed unless I have assurances I will not need arms.”55 Meredith would not be alone in being armed. Deacons from both North and South began to converge on Mississippi, including Earnest Thomas from Chicago. When Thomas arrived at the Loraine Motel in Memphis and began unloading M1 rifles and bandoliers from his vehicle, the police investigated. A police superintendent checked Thomas and his group’s records and found them clean, but the officer asked Thomas why he was so heavily armed. “That’s the only way I’m going to Mississippi, sir,” was Thomas’s reply.56 The decision was more difficult for King. Carmichael advocated participation by the Deacons, but more moderate leaders such as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League disagreed. King was torn. According to SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers’s account of the debate, for King, “self-defense was not the point here. The point was whether they should carry guns in an organized demonstration. To do so would only confuse and obscure the moral issues, and it would not expose Mississippi injustice. If Negroes came marching through the state brandishing .38s and rifles, they were bound to precipitate a calamitous confrontation. Whites from the governor down would use it as an excuse to start shooting Negroes at random.”57 But while King favored nonviolence, he was also committed to maintaining a united front. He also likely appreciated the Deacons’ protection, even if he felt he could not say


so publicly. In the end, he sided with Carmichael and reluctantly acquiesced to the Deacons’ participation. Wilkins and Young withdrew their support and did not join the march.58 During the march, the Deacons served as bodyguards for the participants in a variety of roles. They questioned whites who were loitering suspiciously along the route. They walked the ridges adjacent to the road to thwart ambushes. They guarded the campsites at night with rifles, pistols, and shotguns. They provided armed escorts for marchers who traveled at night to the airport in Memphis. They even provided security for King when he went to the funeral service of Armstead Phipps, an elderly participant who died of a heart attack on the march.59 Although the Meredith March ended without incident, King did make an excursion with some twenty people to Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21 to attend a memorial service for the three civil rights workers who had been killed there two years earlier. Before he left for the service, King had asked Thomas to go to Jonesboro to retrieve some radios to set up a communications system along the march. While in Philadelphia, King led an impromptu march that was quickly surrounded by a mob of several hundred armed whites. A group of about twenty-five whites descended on the marchers and viciously assaulted them. Later that night, whites made four gunfire attacks on the black community. Thomas was infuriated by what he interpreted as a ruse used by King to prevent the Deacons from accompanying King to Philadelphia. While Carmichael took the Meredith March as an opportunity to introduce his Black Power slogan, King, in spite of the Philadelphia incident, continued to preach nonviolence. “Some people are telling us to be like our oppressor, who has a history of using Molotov cocktails, who has a history of dropping the atom bomb, who has a history of lynching Negroes,” argued King. “Now people are telling me to stoop down to that level. I’m sick and tired of violence.”60 King’s disapproval notwithstanding, several incidents point to the Deacons’ success in using control of weapons to counter threats from armed whites. In Centreville, a small town in the southwest corner of Wilkinson County, an armed white mob threatened a voting rights demonstration on September 4, 1967. Twenty-five Deacons from the Natchez


and Wilkinson County chapters armed with carbines, .30-30 rifles, and pistols responded to secure the demonstrators. James Young remembered, “We pulled in there and started unloading all of this heavy artillery and they loaded up and left.”61 When a lone white man emerged from a gas station along the march route and threatened the demonstrators with a rifle, the Deacons quickly surrounded him. He beat a hasty retreat back into the gas station.62 In another case about the same time, the Deacons secured a large meeting in a rural church in Jefferson County. Guards observed a carload of whites approaching the church with their vehicle lights out, and when one man in the car began preparing a Molotov cocktail, the Deacons’ security team responded with a dozen shotguns that blasted the vehicle. The Deacons’ armed presence and willingness to meet force with force allowed the black community to gather without being helpless victims of white violence or intimidation.63 Possession of weapons is what made the difference, and the white authorities moved quickly to try to eliminate the Deacons’ access to this equalizer. On September 3, 1967, the governor received a proposal to make it illegal for the Deacons in Mississippi to possess firearms. The next day, the same day as the confrontation in Centreville, three Deacons were arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Lenox Forman, the district attorney for the southwestern district of the state, authorized the Mississippi State Highway Patrol “to disarm all members of the Deacons for Defense and Justice.” Mississippi also began limiting its citizens’ ability to carry weapons, making it illegal to transport rifles and shotguns in the cab of a car. From now on, these weapons could be carried only on a rack in the back of a vehicle.64 Enforcement of this law, however, was done in an inequitable fashion. The highway patrol confiscated weapons of blacks, but not of whites, and NAACP protests against this practice fell on deaf ears. Undaunted, the Deacons relied on strict secrecy to protect their weapons, but in response, the highway patrol began to indiscriminately seize weapons from any black in Wilkinson County, whether the man was a Deacon or not.65 It was a flagrant violation of the Second Amendment and certainly an unequal


enforcement of the law, but it was also a testimony to the extent white Mississippi would go to in the 1960s to resist the challenge to its monopoly on the control of weapons. In spite of such efforts to thwart it, the Natchez model became a paradigm for Deacon organizations throughout the state. Because Jefferson County and Wilkinson County bordered Adams County, the Natchez Deacons assumed the bulk of responsibilities in those counties. In Claiborne and Copiah counties, local blacks established chapters that were autonomous from the Natchez Deacons. The Claiborne Deacons, known as the Black Hats after the black helmets they wore when on duty, proved to be one of the most effective organizations in the state. The Deacons from Bogalusa were able to export a chapter from Louisiana to Hattiesburg that was known as the “police unit.” From contacts made in Hattiesburg, the Bogalusa group then established another chapter in Laurel. In all, eight named chapters and several unnamed ones operated throughout the state.66 In addition to protecting the black community, the Deacons also helped enforce local boycotts of white businesses, such as the one that had been effective in Natchez in 1965. The Deacons originally drew their members from the more disciplined and established members of the community, but they later began recruiting younger men in their late teens to early twenties to serve on “enforcer squads” that became known as “Da Spirit.” These enforcer squads used intimidation and often violence to compel black residents to comply with the boycotts. A Deacon reported that if a black violated the boycott and shopped at a white business, the enforcer squad made sure “you weren’t hardly going back anymore.”67 After reading a list of violators at the regular Tuesday night NAACP meeting, Evers would warn them that the “spirit’s going to get you.”68 While the enforcer squad was generally a separate entity from the defense organization, it was still an example of the Deacons’ use of force to change behavior. Although the white power structure in Mississippi was able to challenge the Deacons’ possession of weapons, the group still maintained enough control of weapons to threaten white dominance. In his study of the organization, Akinyele Umoja describes the Deacons’ possession of


weapons as “a serious bargaining chip.”69 He concludes that “the armed aspect of the [Deacons] . . . was essential for gaining basic rights in communities throughout the state.”70 What the Deacons’ possession of weapons did was offset the previous white monopoly on the use of force and helped level the playing field in the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi. It is a classic example of how weapons are used for control and how overall control rests on control of weapons. Armed black groups like the Deacons of Defense and Justice had tactical and strategic implications for Mississippi society in the 1960s and beyond. At the tactical or immediate level, they provided security for blacks in the absence of legal order. They challenged the white control of weapons and served as an equalizer. As one Deacon put it, the Klan “found out that the same type of guns that they had could kill them—just like they would kill us.”71 In their attempt to correct this inequity, the Deacons transformed blacks from being helpless victims of white violence to being equally able to return that same violence to their attackers. As CORE organizer Ronnie Moore explained, “I think that the greater white community became afraid. You have to understand that the Klan in the South had a free hand with no threat of retaliation in any organized fashion until the Deacons were announced. And just the thought that there might be a legitimate, or reactionary response to Klan activities made the white community afraid.”72 Lance Hill, a historian of the Deacons, probably exaggerates when he claims that “the Deacons . . . neutralized the Klan in the South,” but his point remains valid.73 By arming themselves, the Deacons gave blacks the ability to “shoot back” that Charles Evers had promised in 1964. On the strategic or more long-term level, Christopher Strain astutely observes that the entire black resistance movement was designed to elevate society to a point where “every American has the right to live without fear and without relying on firearms.”74 In a bit of irony, by challenging the traditional white fear of the armed black, the Deacons were part of a larger movement that Strain argues was designed “to make ‘Negroes with guns’ obsolete.”75 Weapons facilitate control, but that control should ideally be used to further the rule of law rather than the rule of the mob. Strain concludes that “the civil rights movement itself represented a step toward a


Grim-faced federal marshals escort James Meredith on the Ole Miss campus. Meredith had the utmost praise for the marshals and soldiers who protected him. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

more civilized United States, [obviating] the need for armed camps, glaring at each other across racial divides.”76 To be sure, racial tensions still exist in Mississippi, but they are no longer routinely arbitrated by weapons.

O BS E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA IN MISSISSIPPI The struggle that dominated Mississippi throughout the civil rights era was over control of the state’s social, political, economic, legal, and educational institutions. Whites had long enjoyed dominance in these areas, a dominance they were able to maintain even in instances of inferior numbers by superior control of weapons and organization. Some black groups like the Deacons for Defense and Justice were able to challenge this local dominance by acquiring their own weapons. Statewide, however, white Mississippi was strong enough to maintain its control against such an internal force. It took outside influences, whether they were black activist organizations like the NAACP and CORE, Freedom Riders, news organizations, federal troops, or the FBI, to wrest social control of Mississippi from its white population. The showdown on the Ole Miss campus in 1962 is a good example. Although he was under constant threat during his time at Ole Miss, James Meredith credits the “superb” marshals who remained on campus


with keeping the situation under control.77 Marshals and soldiers set up a headquarters in Meredith’s dormitory living room, and there were always five or six soldiers and four or five marshals present.78 Of the marshals’ professionalism, Meredith writes, “They have had an image of America— that the law must be obeyed, no matter what they may think of it or what anybody else may think of it.”79 Of particular interest is the fact that there were two black marshals who helped protect Meredith. Like Meredith’s integration of Ole Miss, this too was a history-making event, and the issue was weapons. Meredith explains: The unprecedented aspect of the Negro U.S. marshals being in Mississippi was that they had guns and the authority to use them. Negro soldiers had been withdrawn from the University of Mississippi the day after the riot because Southern Congressmen had objected to Negroes bearing arms against whites in the South. This is a cardinal sin. Wherever there are Negro policemen in the South, it is the law, written or unwritten, that the Negro officer’s authority does not extend to whites. But here were Negroes with unrestricted authority and guns to back it up.80 According to Meredith, among the black population, the black marshals were a greater attraction than he was. He said blacks would drive a hundred miles to see the marshals, and “you would see people bumping into or brushing against the marshals just to feel their guns.”81 In spite of the violence that surrounded Meredith’s registration, his graduation on August 18, 1963, was fairly calm and routine. The marshals accompanied him to the end, even driving with him out of Mississippi as he returned home to Tennessee.82 On his frightening first night on the Ole Miss campus, Meredith had astutely identified the issue as being “the state against the federal government.”83 In the end, the more organized and centralized federal government, the side that ultimately controlled the weapons, triumphed.


The civil rights era is perhaps most remembered by Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of nonviolence. At the same time, however, there was a violent struggle to either repress or empower blacks that revolved around control of weapons. At first, white Mississippians controlled the weapons and therefore controlled local efforts. As time passed, black groups such as the Deacons for Defense and Justice and federal authorities reversed this situation. As control of weapons changed, so did control of Mississippi.

11 S HIPS, AIRCRAFT, AND ARTILLERY W EAPONS OF MISSISSIPPI’S POST–WORLD WAR II MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Building on the tradition of BAWI and the industry brought to the state by the two world wars, Mississippi continues to host a variety of weapons manufacturing, testing, and training activities for the U.S. military. In Pascagoula, Ingalls carries on its shipbuilding tradition as an operation under Northrop Grumman Ship Systems (NGSS), which produces amphibious assault ships and guided-missile destroyers for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. In Hancock County, the John C. Stennis Space Center serves as the training ground for the navy’s Special Boat Team 22 (SBT-22), which uses the impressive array of machine guns, grenade launchers, and miniguns that can be mounted on the Special Operations Craft–Riverine (SOC-R) to support SEAL operations. In Hattiesburg, the defense firm BAE Systems produces the M777 towed 155 mm howitzer for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, a state-of-the-art weapon that is the world’s first artillery system to incorporate large-scale use of titanium and aluminum alloys, resulting in drastic weight reductions and increased deployability. In Columbus, EADS North America produces the UH-145 188

S H I P S, A IR C R AFT, AND ART ILLE RY 189

military helicopter, which has been selected by the army as its next-generation light utility helicopter (LUH). Whether for land, sea, or air, Mississippi continues to make significant contributions to the weapons of the U.S. military and shows the steady march of technology in weapons production. This high-tech weapons industry also demonstrates how far Mississippi has come from its largely agrarian roots in the early twentieth century. Mississippi is an enthusiastically pro-military state with a history of senators and congressmen who have championed a strong defense-contractor presence in their constituencies. The result is an industrial base that produces some of the most sophisticated weapons in the U.S. military’s arsenal and a strong testimony to the role weapons have played in Mississippi’s economic, labor, and industrial sectors.

S T E NNI S SPAC E CE NTE R When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite, on October 4, 1957, many American citizens and politicians were gripped by panic. This Soviet achievement in the midst of the Cold War provoked a deep questioning of American exceptionalism and superiority. In an address to Congress on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy responded, asserting his belief that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” Mississippi senator John Stennis shared Kennedy’s vision and became a staunch advocate of the space program. Building on the tripartite partnership between the aviation industry, the military, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics that had emerged in the South during World War II, the United States designated a “Space Crescent” of facilities that stretched across the Gulf States, connecting Houston, Texas; Huntsville, Alabama; Cape Canaveral, Florida; and a new test site located in Hancock County, Mississippi, on the Pearl River. The new site was called both the NASA Mississippi Test Operations and the Mississippi Test Facility (MTF) until 1965, when the MTF designation became official.

190 SH I PS, AI R C R AF T, AN D A RT I L L E RY

Before selecting the Hancock County site, NASA had considered locations in New Orleans; Brownsville and Corpus Christi, Texas; Cumberland Island, Georgia; and Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The final report concluded that the Mississippi site was the best choice because of its location on navigable water, its proximity to the Michoud plant in New Orleans where the Saturn rocket was fabricated, the sparsely populated area, and the closeness to support communities, although many consider Senator Stennis’s influence to have also been a deciding factor.1 The decision to locate the site in Hancock County was an economic boon to the area. During 1961 and 1962, more than $260 million was committed to construction of the site. The facility also created approximately 9,000 new jobs, generating an annual income of $65 million in southern Mississippi and Louisiana.2 However, the move also disrupted local communities as NASA acquired easement rights to about 128,000 acres surrounding the test site, taking in 103,000 acres in Pearl River and Hancock counties, Mississippi, and 25,000 acres in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.3 For many residents of the small communities of Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Westonia, the process was traumatic. William R. Matkin, the land acquisition agent for the Army Corps of Engineers, explained, “These communities were virtually untouched when we first came in.” “A lot of people just didn’t want to leave,” he said. “Some of these people were born and raised right here in this area, maybe in the same house.”4 Some of the residents who were forced to leave began calling State Highway 43, which ran through the middle of the future test site, the “Mississippi Trail of Tears,” a reference to the Trail of Tears from the days of Indian removal. Senator Stennis often found himself in the awkward position of championing a federal program he helped bring to the state and helping his constituents deal with the disruption the program brought with it. The final day for evacuations was officially October 1, 1962, but some property owners held out until as late as January 1963.5 Even after the evacuation, there were numerous challenges to construction, including an unprecedented mosquito problem. One study estimated


that an exposed person at the site received 110 mosquito bites per minute, and NASA responded by spraying the entire construction area with chemicals from two specially equipped C-123 aircraft. The planes then sprayed the Gulf Coast counties with the remainder of the chemicals, and within ten days, the results could be seen. The bites were reduced to only ten per minute, which was considered a “livable condition,” and the project was a public relations victory for NASA. Building on this momentum, the MTF commander began organizing a two-state Mosquito Control Commission, which continues to serve the Gulf Coast today.6 In addition to the mosquitoes, there were other construction obstacles to hurdle. A navigation lock and bascule bridge, literally a smaller version of the Panama Canal, had to be built to lift rocket stages and propellant barges as much as twenty feet from the Pearl River’s sea-level elevation. The state’s civil rights record threatened release of federal funds. Snakes, alligators, and mud harassed workers. When Hurricane Betsy slammed into the Mississippi-Louisiana coast on September 10, 1965, it scattered everything that was not tied down, but the MTF also served as a place of refuge for some 350 Hancock County residents seeking shelter.7 By the time the MTF was completed, it had become the largest construction project in Mississippi and the second largest in the United States. The first mission of the MTF was the testing of first and second stages of the Saturn V.8 The first static test firing was conducted on April 23, 1966 and continued into the early 1970s. The work done at the MTF was instrumental in America’s successful Apollo 11 mission, which answered President Kennedy’s challenge by putting a man on the moon on July 20, 1969. In May 1988, the MTF was renamed the John C. Stennis Space Center in honor of Senator Stennis and his leadership and support of the space program. From its initial purpose as a Saturn test site, the Stennis Space Center has expanded into a “federal city” comprising government and private research facilities. Its residents include the U.S. Navy, Lockheed Martin, and NASA research programs.9 Among its U.S. Navy tenants are the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School and Special Boat Team 22, whose facilities are the result of a $25 million construction project that began in September 2000.


Special warfare combatant-craft (SWCC) crewmen assigned to Special Boat Team 22 traverse the waterways of the Stennis Space Center as they use the new riverine live-fire training range in 2008. Courtesy of U.S. Navy photo/released.

Special Boat Team 22 (SBT-22) specializes in riverine insertions and extractions of special-operations forces such as Navy SEALs. To perform this function, it uses the Special Operations Craft–Riverine (SOC-R), a high-speed boat whose shallow two-foot draft is well suited for coastal environments and inland waterways. Because SBT-22 must perform its mission in a hostile environment, the SOC-R is well armed with mounts for the M60 7.62 mm machine gun, MK19 grenade machine gun, and M2HB .50 caliber machine gun. The facilities at the Stennis Space Center allow SBT-22 to continue to experiment and refine its weapons platform on the SOC-R and other special-operations boats.10 The M60, MK19, and M2 that can be mounted on the SOC-R are all types of machine guns. When the trigger is pulled on a machine gun, the weapon will continue to fire until its ammunition is exhausted. The Browning .50 caliber M2 is a heavy machine gun, and the M60 is a light or general-purpose machine gun. Both have been around for decades; the


M2 was introduced to the U.S. Army inventory in the late 1930s. Production increased with the onset of World War II, and by 1943, each American infantry division was being issued 236 of the weapons. The .50 caliber is a belt-fed, recoil-operated, air-cooled, crew-served weapon that can fire a variety of ammunition types, including ball, incendiary, and armor piercing, in the single-shot or automatic mode.11 When firing ball or armor-piercing ammunition, the M2 has a maximum effective range of 7,400 meters, and its maximum effective range for incendiary ammunition is 6,050 meters.12 The M60 machine gun began replacing the .30 caliber Browning machine gun in 1957. The M60 fires 7.62 mm ammunition and is gas operated and air cooled. At 23 pounds, it is significantly lighter than the 74-pound Browning .30 caliber it replaced.13 Like the M2, the M60 can fire several ammunition types, including ball and armor piercing. When fired from its tripod, the M60 has a maximum effective range of 1,100 meters.14 Although development of the MK19 began in 1963, the weapon is a fairly recent addition to the military’s inventory. The initial version was a hand-cranked, multiple-grenade launcher called the M18. In 1966 the need for additional firepower led to the development of a self-powered 40 mm machine gun called the M19 MOD 0. Problems with the safety and reliability of the MOD 0 led to the production of six improved MOD 1 versions in 1972. The MOD 1 performed well in tests conducted aboard navy riverine patrol craft, and soon broader applications were also found. The navy developed an improved MOD 2 design in 1973 and a MOD 3 in 1976. The army adopted the MOD 3 in 1983.15 The MK19 is an air-cooled, blowback-operated machine gun that fires high-explosive, dual-purpose (HEDP) and high-explosive (HE) 40 mm grenades. The HEDP round can penetrate two inches of steel armor and has a wound radius of fifteen meters. The HE round lacks the armorpiercing capability of the HEDP round but has the same ability to inflict personnel casualties to a radius of fifteen meters.16 The MK19 has a maximum effective range of 1,500 meters for a point target and 2,212 meters for an area target.17 With an arsenal such as this, the SOC-R is well equipped to provide the firepower SBT-22 needs.


S HIP S AND DE S TROYE RS In addition to his support for what became the Stennis Space Center, Senator Stennis used his position as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1969 to 1980 to consistently support a strong U.S. military, especially its naval arm. Stennis’s work in this area was so great that President Ronald Reagan nicknamed Stennis “the father of America’s modern navy,” and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier the USS John Stennis is named in the senator’s honor. Stennis’s strong support of the navy, as well as the shipbuilding tradition started by Ingalls, makes it no surprise that Mississippi boasts a significant contribution to naval weaponry. A good example of this is the amphibious assault ships and guided-missile destroyers built by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems (NGSS) for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. After World War II, Ingalls made further advances in producing combat naval vessels. In 1956 the navy awarded the shipyard a contract for two Sherman-class destroyers, whose weaponry would include three 5-inch guns, three antiaircraft guns, and one set of torpedo tubes.18 Then in 1958 Ingalls entered the atomic era when it was awarded a contract to build the first of twelve nuclear-powered submarines.19 In 1961, Ingalls was acquired by Litton Industries of Beverly Hills, California. Litton continued the tradition of public-private cooperation begun by Ingalls, and state, county, and city governments passed bond issues to finance the construction of a new 611-acre “shipyard of the future” across the Pascagoula River from the original facilities. Litton also brought a vision of applying increasingly advanced electronics technologies to its ship construction.20 Thus, in the late 1970s, Ingalls became the first shipyard to build ships equipped with the Aegis Combat System, whose radar can scan in all directions simultaneously. Ingalls also became the first shipyard to build and refit ships with vertical-launching missile systems, which allow the ship to carry more missiles and launch them more rapidly.21 In 2000, Litton Ingalls was acquired by Northrop Grumman Corporation. At the time, Litton Ingalls was employing 10,500 workers, making it Mississippi’s largest private employer. Even in the midst of an economic


downturn, the shipyard had remained strong, with work beginning on a $130 million expansion, the largest since 1968, even before the purchase by Northrop Grumman. One of the amphibious assault ships built by Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding was the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7), delivered to the navy on April 6, 2001. At the commissioning ceremony held on June 30, navy officials had great praise for Ingalls. Rear Admiral Dennis Morral said, “I have been fortunate enough to witness Ingalls Shipbuilding producing these ships for over fifteen years, and I’m amazed and thoroughly impressed at their work. Nobody does it better.” Captain John Nawrocki, commander of the Iwo Jima, gave “special recognition to the Northrop Grumman Ingalls team that helps keep our Navy vibrant and modern. . . . They are master shipbuilders.”22 At 40,500 tons, the LHD-7 is second in size only to the Navy’s aircraft carriers. It is designed to establish a position off of the objective area and insert its two-thousand-member Marine Expeditionary Unit ashore by helicopters and hovercraft. The LHD-7’s armament system includes two NATO Sea Sparrow Surface Missile Systems for antiair warfare protection, two RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile Systems, and two Phalanx Close-In Weapon System mounts to counter threats from low-flying aircraft and missiles. It can also mount four .50 caliber machine guns and three 25 mm machine guns for defense against close-in attack by small craft. The NATO Sea Sparrow Surface Missile System is a medium-range, rapid-reaction, surface-to-air missile weapon system. It has an all-weather, all-altitude operational capability and can attack high-performance aircraft and missiles from any direction. Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Hughes Missile Systems are all Sea Sparrow contractors.23 The Phalanx Close-In Weapon System combines a 20 mm M61A1 Gatling gun with radar that provides target detection and engagement. The M61A1 fires armor-piercing, discarding sabot rounds at up to 4,500 shots per minute. The system is manufactured by Raytheon.24 The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile is a lightweight, quick-reaction, fire-and-forget missile designed to destroy antiship missiles and


The amphibious landing craft USS Iwo Jima moors next to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans to support recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Courtesy of U.S. Navy photo/released.

asymmetric air and surface threats. It contains a 5-inch missile that uses technologies of the air-to-air Sidewinder missile for its warhead and rocket motor, and of the Stinger surface-to-air missile for its seeker. It is made by Raytheon.25 Although the Iwo Jima has deployed in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Gulf Coast residents remember the vessel in a different role. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Iwo Jima sailed up the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where it directly supported relief operations and acted as the central command center for all federal, state, and local disaster recovery operations. Among its contributions during this critical period were serving as the region’s only fully functional airfield for helicopter operations; providing hot meals, showers, drinking water, and berths to thousands of National Guardsmen and relief


workers; providing medical services for disaster victims; and conducting cleanup operations in the city and suburbs of New Orleans.26 When a ship is commissioned, the traditional first order given by the ship’s sponsor is “Man the ship and bring her to life.” In a sense, the Iwo Jima had come home to help the hands who had once built her and brought her to life now rebuild their own lives.

HO WIT ZER S In addition to naval activity, Mississippi hosts weapons production for ground forces through BAE Systems, a global defense company with home markets in Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The corporation claims to be the sixth-largest defense company in the United States, where BAE Systems Inc. acts as its subsidiary. Although BAE Systems Inc. is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, an extremely important part of its operation in the


United States is located in Hattiesburg. About sixty people work at the final assembly and integration facility for the company’s M777 155 mm lightweight field howitzer.27 The M777 is the world’s first 155 mm howitzer weighing less than 10,000 pounds. Its light weight is attributable to its innovative use of titanium and titanium castings, which make the weapon highly mobile and deployable. These high-tech materials reduce the weight of the howitzer by 7,000 pounds while retaining the full ammunition and range capability of the old M1989 howitzer. The M777 can be transported by the Marine Corps MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft and air-dropped by C-130 aircraft. Additionally, the M777 features a low thermal and radar signature, rapid emplacement and displacement, and a low silhouette. Both the U.S. Marine Corps and Army selected the M777 to replace the M1989 howitzer, and BAE was awarded an initial contract for 94 guns in November 2002. In March 2005, BAE was awarded an additional contract to produce 495 M777s over the course of four years. The model being produced now is the M777A2, which fires M982 Excalibur precisionguided projectiles at better than 10-meter accuracy at all ranges out to 40 kilometers. The M777A2 is currently deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where local insurgents have nicknamed it the “Desert Dragon.” When the current contract is complete, BAE will have produced more than seven hundred systems.28 Critical to Hattiesburg’s selection for the BAE assembly plant was the city’s strategic location. John Measell, director for BAE Systems North America, explained, “The plant’s proximity to Camp Shelby and to the port of Biloxi were deciding factors in locating a plant in South Mississippi.”29 Senator Trent Lott echoed Measell’s assessment, saying, “The company’s investment speaks well of the assets which Mississippi can offer to both small and large companies seeking places for manufacturing, especially for products relating to military production which are enhanced by proximity to military installations and to vibrant communities such as Hattiesburg.”30 BAE conducts short-range test firing of the M777 at Camp Shelby, and numerous field artillery units headed for overseas duty train on the


Members of Bravo Battery, 109th Field Artillery of the Pennsylvania National Guard, train on the M777 howitzer at Camp Shelby in 2008. Courtesy of Denise Bonura and the Waynesboro (Pa.) Record Herald.

M777 there before deploying. Camp Shelby continues to play an important role in supporting not just the Mississippi National Guard but many military units of the United States and its allies. The hard work of W. W. Crawford and George McHenry to bring the installation to Mississippi in 1917 continues to pay dividends both for the security of the country and for the economy of the local area.

HE L ICO PTE RS In addition to BAE, other international defense activities have been attracted to Mississippi, including European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the world’s second-largest aerospace and defense company, and the largest in Europe.31 In 2004, EADS North America began operations at an 85,000-square-foot plant at the Golden Triangle Regional Airport near Columbus to build A-Star AS350 helicopters and


handle the assembly and customization of other Eurocopter helicopter models, including reengining and upgrading U.S. Coast Guard Eurocopter HH-65 helicopters. The plant began with a workforce of 44 employees and quickly expanded to more than 115.32 Columbus offered an attractive site to EADS for several reasons. The region has strong ties to aviation, largely because of Columbus Air Force Base, another Mississippi military installation that came to the state during World War II as a result of aggressive efforts on the part of local citizens. Today the base is the home of the Fourteenth Flying Training Wing of the Air Education and Training Command, which provides specialized undergraduate pilot training in T-6 Texan II, T-38C Talon, and T-1A Jayhawk jet trainers. As an added advantage to EADS, the close proximity of Columbus to Starkville makes available the strong engineering and hightechnology programs found at Mississippi State University. The result, according to Marc Paganini, president and CEO of American Eurocopter (the subsidiary of EADS that conducts its activities in the United States), is that “we have found the right home in Mississippi, a community strong in spirit and talented employees.”33 This relationship became even more important in June 2006, when EADS was awarded a contract to supply the U.S Army with up to 322 UH-72A Lakota Light Utility Helicopters. The UH-72A is a militarized version of the Eurocopter EC145 and is used to perform a variety of missions in environments where enemy opposition is negligible, such as responding to homeland security requirements, conducting civil searchand-rescue operations, supporting damage assessment, conducting medical evacuation, conducting border security operations, and providing support to counterdrug operations. The Lakota is designed to transport six soldiers plus its crew of two pilots. It may also be configured to carry two patients on litters and one medical attendant.34 The Mississippi National Guard received its first Lakotas at a ceremony in Tupelo in June 2008. The selection of EADS to produce this helicopter resulted in a significant expansion of the Columbus operation. The plant grew to a 325,000-square-foot covered area and provided some 330 jobs.35 Mississippi politicians were quick to seize on the importance of EADS’s commitment


to Columbus. Governor Haley Barbour said, “EADS North America’s decision to produce the UH-145 [the original name of the UH-72] in Mississippi is further evidence of our industrial growth in high technology fields, and particularly in aerospace technology. We are proud of Mississippi’s success in attracting leading manufacturers like EADS North America and American Eurocopter to our great state.”36 Senator Lott echoed, “This decision also is indicative of this world class company’s confidence in Mississippi’s workforce.”37 EADS is one more example of how Mississippi’s long-standing efforts to attract military- and defense-related activity to the state have resulted in economic benefit.

O BS E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS OF MISSISSIPP I’S POST–WORLD WAR II M IL ITAR Y- INDUS TRIAL COMPLE X The economic impact of military industry in Mississippi cannot be overstated. For example, there was certainly a time in Pascagoula “when [if ] anyone at Ingalls sneezed, everyone here caught pneumonia.”38 Although the casino industry has helped to diversify the Gulf Coast economy today, with a workforce of thirteen thousand, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems is still Mississippi’s largest private employer.39 Mississippi continues aggressively to pursue military-related activity such as the programs at the Stennis Space Center, but the recent arrival of international corporations such as EADS and BAE demonstrates the impact of globalization on a once largely closed society. Mississippi is able to leverage its workforce, pro-military disposition, and geographic position to attract not just domestic but also overseas defense interests. The result is not just the introduction of the latest weaponry to the state but also the ideas, people, and capital of other countries and cultures. None of these developments happened in a vacuum. Had BAWI not brought Ingalls to Pascagoula, there would be no NGSS there today. Had Drs. Crawford and McHenry not lobbied to bring Camp Shelby to Hattiesburg, there would be no BAE there today. The presence of Columbus


Air Force Base helped draw EADS to the state. A large part of Mississippi’s economic, social, and infrastructural growth has been generated by weapons-related activity, and this growth seems to be a part of a strategic vision shared by several generations of Mississippians.

12 NUCLE AR TE S TING W EAPONS OF THE ATOMIC AGE IN MISSISSIPPI

When most people think of nuclear testing, they think of places like Los Alamos, New Mexico, or the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In spite of these larger and better-known sites, Mississippi has a history involving nuclear weapons. Two nuclear tests were actually conducted in Mississippi, and a massive nuclear earthmoving project was planned but rejected. The explosion of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 brought unprecedented destruction and suggested that warfare might someday reach the potential of annihilating the human race. The American monopoly on the bomb was broken on August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded is first atomic device. In response, in January 1950, President Harry Truman formally authorized the building of the thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb. By the time Truman left office in 1953, the United States had nearly one thousand atomic weapons in its arsenal, and nuclear weapons were well on their way to becoming the centerpiece of America’s military and foreign policies. Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, championed placing even greater emphasis on nuclear weapons, and in January 1954, his secretary of state John Foster Dulles called for a

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willingness to use “massive retaliation” in the form of a tremendous nuclear strike in response to Soviet aggression. The Soviets were moving in the same direction. In January 1960, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened that if attacked, the Soviets would “wipe the country or countries attacking us off the face of the earth.” In October 1962, the United States and the Soviets went to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but even that brush with disaster did not curb the arms race. In fact, by 1967, the United States and the Soviet Union had reached a state of “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD, in which both countries could absorb a nuclear first strike and retaliate, unleashing a cycle that would leave both unacceptably damaged.1 As the world came to grips with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the potential devastation they might cause, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union signed a Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 that prohibited testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere or underwater. Underground testing was not covered by the treaty, because the parties could not agree on procedures to verify such tests were not being conducted. The United States then set out to study underground detonations to learn more about how they could be detected. The result was Project Dribble, a program designed to investigate the possibility of hiding underground testing as a means of avoiding any future treaty provisions. Project Dribble included two underground detonations near Hattiesburg, the only nuclear explosions on United States soil east of the Rocky Mountain states.2 Also in the 1960s, there was an effort to find peaceful uses of nuclear technology. Project Plowshare, an Atomic Energy Commission effort “to find practical industrial and scientific uses for nuclear explosives,” began in 1958, but by the late 1960s it had come under attack by a variety of scientific, political, and other pressures. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage the beleaguered program, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory enlisted the Army Corps of Engineers to support nuclear excavation of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway through northwest Mississippi. The plan called for using over eighty nuclear bombs of 10- to 50-kiloton yields each to blast a 250-mile-long canal to connect the Tennessee

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and Tombigbee rivers. The planned canal would run within fifty miles of 340,000 people. Ultimately, health and environmental concerns defeated the project, but it still makes an interesting footnote to the story of nuclear weapons in Mississippi. The presence of nuclear weapons in Mississippi brings full circle the story of weapons in the state. From the earliest arms race that led to the invention of the atlatl to tests to investigate nuclear cheating in the midst of the Cold War, Mississippi has been a part of mankind’s quest for more and better weapons. A nuclear detonation would have been unimaginable to a prehistoric Mississippian armed with a spear, but the themes of control, technology, and centralization transcend all eras of Mississippi’s history as told by the history of its weapons.

PROJEC T DRIBBLE Most underground nuclear tests could be detected by seismographs, but some scientists theorized that if a bomb was detonated in an underground cavity rather than in solid rock, the shock waves might be so muffled as to preclude detection. Project Dribble officials studied several potential sites to test this theory before deciding on the Tatum Salt Dome, just north of Baxterville in Lamar County, some twenty-eight miles southwest of Hattiesburg. Tatum Salt Dome is a vast supply of dense salt about one thousand feet below sea level. Scientists developed a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb in the midst of this salt deposit about 2,700 feet down. This explosion, called Project Salmon, was designed to blast a huge cavity in the salt, after which a second, smaller bomb, codenamed Project Sterling, would be detonated inside the cavity left by the first blast. Scientists would learn whether the explosion inside the cavity was subject to seismographic detection. The Atomic Energy Commission began preparing the site at the Tatum Salt Dome in 1964.3 Like other federal projects in the state, Project Dribble impacted the local community. Some one hundred residents of Lamar County found


Chimneys, porches, and outbuildings of some residences near the Tatum Salt Dome nuclear test in 1964 were braced before the blast. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

project-related jobs such as driving trucks, operating heavy machinery, and preparing food. The actual testing also required about four hundred residents to be temporarily evacuated from the area. The evacuation zone stretched five miles downwind from ground zero and about half that distance in other directions. Adults were paid $10 and children $5 for this inconvenience.4 The test was originally scheduled for September 22, 1964, but unfavorable wind conditions caused it to be postponed until October 22. That day, the 1,113-pound bomb was towed behind a Dodge sedan from its heavily guarded assembly location and lowered underground by a crane. As a safety precaution, the 2,700-foot shaft was filled with gravel and capped with an enormous concrete plug. Still, when the detonation occurred at 10:00 a.m., most residents found the shock to be much greater than anticipated. In fact, the explosion delivered the same force as 5,000 tons of TNT, a blast about one-third as powerful as the one that had destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. The editor of the Hattiesburg American reported that his building, located some thirty miles from the blast, swayed for nearly three minutes. Billy Ray Anderson, a local resident, said, “The ground swelled up. It was just like the ocean—there was a wave every 200 feet or so.” The groundswell, according to Anderson, reached a height of eighteen inches.5 A blast


Horace Burge surveys damage to his home, about two miles from the Tatum Salt Dome test site. Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

of that magnitude naturally had an effect on the landscape, and within seven days some four hundred residents filed claims against the government, mostly for damages to homes or for wells that had gone dry or filled with silt.6 One such resident, Horace Burge, lived in a three-bedroom house about two miles from the test site. Burge found considerable damage to his fireplace and chimney, including bricks that had been shaken loose in the blast. Dishes and jars had been knocked off their shelves, and the pipes under his kitchen sink had burst, flooding the house. In spite of complaints


about the damage, the Hattiesburg American, in the spirit of the Cold War era, reminded its readers that the tests were necessary to the country’s national security.7 Project Dribble had successfully created a 110-foot-diameter void in the salt dome. On December 3, 1966, the second part of Project Dribble was executed. The Project Sterling blast, at an equivalent force of just 350 tons of TNT, was much smaller than Project Salmon, and observers a mere two miles away barely felt the explosion. Seismographic readings confirmed the theory that an explosion inside an underground cavity would be harder to detect, with the Sterling blast registering one hundred times less than what would have been expected from the same size bomb detonated in solid rock or salt. The results also helped scientists learn to detect and measure such clandestine tests. Later in 1969 and 1970, the Tatum Salt Dome hosted to two additional tests codenamed Project Miracle Play, but these used conventional rather than nuclear weapons.8 Despite the safety precautions in place during the blast, the site became contaminated two months after the 1964 test. Researchers were drilling a hole to lower instruments into the cavity, and the drilling brought radioactive soil and water to the surface. Then, in 1966, the same thing happened. Since 1972, federal and state officials have regularly visited the site to monitor the water and soil for radiation, and the buildings have been bulldozed and sent to a Nevada test site where other radioactive material was already in storage. Most of the other radioactive soil, rock, water, and other spoil from the tests at the Tatum Salt Dome was put back down into the cavity. A stone monument marks the location, and a brass plaque warns people not to drill or dig nearby, but federal officials insist there are no health risks associated with living near the site.9 Billy Ray Anderson is the closest resident, living less than a mile away, but he is not worried about any harmful effects, reasoning, “If radiation over there was going to kill someone, I should have been dead by now.”10 Others are not so confident. The biggest scare occurred in 1979 when University of Mississippi scientists reported finding a radioactive frog at the Tatum Salt Dome, only to learn a few days later that their instruments, not the frog, were contaminated.11 Of greater concern are fears


that the tests contaminated the water supply, and from 1992 to 2000, Lamar County supervisor Bill Bishop lobbied to get a new drinking water system installed. His efforts came to fruition in 2000, when the federal government built a $1.96 million pipeline to bring water to some 130 people living near the site. “The water system helped a bunch,” according to Bishop, “because it helped alleviate many fears about water.”12 Still, some remain worried, and ninety-six people have filed claims against the government. As a result, one former Project Dribble worker has been paid for unspecified health damages, other claims have been denied, and still others remain pending.13 While the end of the Cold War has relegated the likes of Project Dribble to a historical footnote, the tests at Tatum Salt Dome remain of interest for other reasons. When Hunter Environmental Services Inc. decided to pursue a government permit to create a hazardous waste disposal site in a subterranean salt dome some thirty miles from Houston, Texas, the company based its decision on the Tatum Salt Dome’s record of resistance to hazardous leaks. Oliver Kimberly, Hunter’s chairman, said the Tatum example was “what really sold me” on the project’s possibilities.14 The Project Dribble testing at the Tatum Salt Dome has been finished for decades, but the event remains a source of information for researchers and scientists. As far as the locals are concerned, however, Lionell Lowe says, “You don’t hear too much about it no more.”15

PROJEC T PLOWSHARE Project Dribble was a small part of a much broader effort by the United States and the world to come to grips with how best to use nuclear power. While the tests in Mississippi were reflective of a Cold War suspicion that one superpower might try to circumvent treaty provisions to gain an advantage in nuclear weaponry, other programs sought to develop more altruistic uses of the new technology. On December 8, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower pledged to the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would devote “its entire heart and mind to find the


way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”16 The result was a movement called Atoms for Peace, of which one part was Project Plowshare. The organization mandated to orchestrate this expansion of the new technology beyond military uses was the Atomic Energy Commission, created in 1946. Lewis Strauss served as chairman of the AEC under President Eisenhower, and Strauss regularly professed his dedication to finding peaceful uses of the atom. In fact, he often drew inspiration from the biblical passage of Micah 4:3, which promises that nations “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”17 One of the AEC’s roles was to find peaceful uses of the atom for purposes such as moving mountains, redirecting rivers, and digging harbors and canals. To this end, the AEC initiated Project Plowshare. Enthusiasm for the project was high because much of the overhead costs of a nuclear excavation had already been covered by production from the weapons program. Thus it seemed that nuclear explosions would be far cheaper than similar construction projects using TNT.18 Proposals for how to fulfill Plowshare’s mandate varied, including ideas for building a second canal through Panama or a harbor in Alaska. The idea that got the most traction, however, originated in a meeting of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority in Mobile, Alabama, on April 16, 1964. There Dr. Gerald Johnson, associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, and John Keller, head of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosives Division of the AEC and supervisor of Project Plowshare, presented a proposal to use nuclear explosives to blast a fivemile channel in northeast Mississippi through the natural divide between the Tennessee and Tombigbee valleys. If executed, the plan would be the world’s first peaceful use of nuclear detonations, and Johnson’s and Keller’s enthusiasm for the project was infectious. Regional developers reportedly “could hardly talk about anything else,”19 and Mississippi governor Paul Johnson assured the AEC “that evaluation of nuclear explosives in the construction of civil works will be welcomed rather than opposed” by the state’s citizens.20


What made the idea so exciting were promises of huge savings in money and labor. Traditional explosions merely loosened excavation material, which then had to be hauled away. On the other hand, nuclear explosions would completely expel the dirt and rock from the newly cut channel, eliminating the need for costly earthmoving. The result in this case would be that “one lick on the plunger would create a ferocious explosion, gouging out a ‘trench’ 173 feet deep, 150 feet wide and five miles long.”21 Of course, there were other considerations. Some thirty thousand local residents would require evacuation, and the surrounding area would be “uninhabitable for several weeks.”22 Additional study raised concerns about the effect of radioactive fallout on the region’s dairy cows, an important contributor to the local economy. Perhaps even more threatening was the possibility of contaminating the aquifers that served as the principal water source for northeast Mississippi and northwest Alabama. On top of all these concerns, it was highly possible that the detonation would violate the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibited any nuclear explosives that would deposit radioactive debris across another nation’s borders. In fact, all types of uncertainty quickly materialized in an untested project of this size. Experts could not even agree on how far people would have to be evacuated to reach a safe area.23 Thus, while regional promoters remained enthusiastic for the Tennessee-Tombigbee project, it ultimately succumbed to the increased national scrutiny. Looking back, even the proposal’s ardent supporters are grateful. Glover Wilkins, who as Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority administrator in 1964 had deemed “the study of using nuclear devices on the divide cut of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway . . . particularly appropriate,”24 confessed in 1984 that if the project had gone forward, “we now know [it] could have been disastrous. Divine Providence must have intervened.”25 In the end, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was completed without the help of nuclear earthmoving in 1984 after twelve years of construction. Partially explaining the Project Plowshare effort to find an expedient solution, the waterway remains the largest earthmoving project in history, requiring the excavation of nearly 310 million cubic yards, the equivalent of


Map showing the path of the TennesseeTombigbee Waterway through northeastern Mississippi. A plan to use nuclear weapons to dig the waterway was considered but rejected. Courtesy of Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority.

more than one hundred million dump-truck loads, of soil. The cost of the project was nearly $2 billion, but its economic and recreation benefits are immense. A world-class transportation network, the waterway provides an efficient trade link between the southeastern states and fourteen river systems totaling some 4,500 miles of navigable waterways. Seventeen public ports and terminals are strategically located within the waterway corridor to serve shipping needs, and a variety of fishing, boating, and camping venues provide recreational outlets.26 For Mississippi, the issue was not whether the waterway should be built. It was merely a question of how, and in the final analysis, nuclear detonations were not part of the answer.

O B S E RVATI O NS CONCE RNING WE APONS O F T HE ATO MI C AGE IN MIS S IS S IPPI Mississippi’s role in Project Dribble and Project Plowshare raises interesting points about the theme of weapons and control. They go far beyond the use of weapons to control another human being or animal. Instead they


represent efforts to regain humanity’s control over the frightening potential for destruction that has been the result of the evolutionary quest for more and more technologically advanced weapons. They are a testimony that the creative genius of humankind ultimately resulted in the invention of a weapon that, save for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have since considered too terrible to use in another war. It seems a strange juxtaposition that relatively rural and lightly developed Mississippi would play host to these sagas involving the most sophisticated of weapons. True, a sparse population and conducive geography explain much of the connection, but just as assuredly, Mississippi’s traditional suspicion of federal influence would seem to work against such an arrangement. In the final analysis, it appears that a combination of patriotism and common cause against a Cold War enemy, as well as a welcoming of federal intervention if it is accompanied by economic opportunity, helped Mississippians to entertain nuclear activity in their state.

A FTE R WORD

The themes of weapons facilitating control, control of weapons being critical to this broader control, and centralized societies having an advantage in the possession of quantities—and, more importantly, quality—of weapons run throughout the history of Mississippi. While the weapons themselves are certainly of interest, of even greater importance is how they have impacted the social, military, economic, and institutional fabric of the state. No event occurs in a vacuum. There are always second- and third-order effects, as well as intended and unintended consequences, and this fact holds true as much for weapons in Mississippi as anything else. The Europeans who traded guns with the Mississippi Indians certainly did not foresee the day when Indians would use those weapons to decimate Fort Rosalie. When Jefferson Davis insisted that his regiment in the Mexican War be equipped with Mississippi rifles, he unknowingly initiated a process that, with some historical license, culminated in his election to the presidency of the Confederate States of America. The citizens who lobbied for the World War I–era construction of Camp Shelby in no way imagined that the camp’s continuing presence would help facilitate racial integration over half a century later or still later the arrival of a foreign defense contractor. When Robert Ingalls took a chance and moved his small business from Alabama to Pascagoula, he could only dream of the economic dominance of the region that Northrup Grumman Ship 214

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Systems would one day enjoy, and women like Vera Anderson certainly did not connect Ingalls’s arrival with the opportunities it would one day provide for them. These and other examples illustrate the long reach that weapons have into Mississippi’s historical development. Weapons have always been a significant part of Mississippi’s landscape, from native Mississippians who used bows and arrows to hunt to survive, the conquistadores who used crossbows and halberds to conquer, Civil War soldiers on both sides who used rifles to struggle for Mississippi’s destiny, Klansmen who used Molotov cocktails to terrorize and intimidate, to the countless Mississippians who owe their livelihood to the state’s military and military industrial presence. Those who wish to continue their study of the weapons of Mississippi have a wealth of opportunities. One place to gain an excellent appreciation of the life of southeastern Indians before the arrival of the Europeans is the Moundville Archaeological Park, fourteen miles south of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The site includes Jones Archaeological Museum, which has weapons such as blowguns, atlatls, and bows on display. Fort Maurepas Park in Ocean Springs commemorates Iberville’s presence in the area, although the exact site of the original fort is unknown. The Natchez Trace Parkway Visitors Center in Tupelo does not have any displays of the weapons used by the outlaws of the Trace, but certainly provides background information about that time and place in Mississippi’s history. Rangers there can also answer questions about the nearby Brice’s Crossroads National Battlefield, which is not staffed. Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, north of Dadeville, Alabama, in what was once part of the Mississippi Territory, contains numerous artifacts and weapons of the Red Sticks and Mississippi militia that battled at Holy Ground and elsewhere. Vicksburg National Military Park and the Corinth Civil War Interpretative Center are excellent resources for weapons of the Civil War in Mississippi. For an overall appreciation of Mississippi’s military weapons, the Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby is outstanding. Many times key events at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, such as keel-laying ceremonies, ship christenings, and commissioning ceremonies, offer the public a chance to see platforms for the latest naval weaponry. Of course, any of the gun and knife shows that visit

216 AFTE RWOR D

The Vicksburg National Military Park has some 149 cannons on display, including this James rifle that sits outside the Visitor Center. Courtesy of Vicksburg National Military Park/National Park Service.

the state display countless examples of historic and modern-day weapons used by hunters, shooters, and collectors. The end result is that there are numerous venues dedicated to preserving and showcasing the weapons of Mississippi. But as fascinating as these weapons are in and of themselves, it is important to remember that each tells the story of an individual. Consider the thoughts of the native Mississippian who stood with only a bow and arrow between him and a powerful bear. Imagine the pain and humiliation of the slave as the rawhide whip found its mark on his back. Think about the soldier battling fascism in Europe armed with the Garand rifle he learned to use at Camp Shelby. Each of these stories can be extended beyond the individual to include the weapon’s impact on the community, state, and region. The history of Mississippi can be explored from many different angles, but certainly weapons provide one of the most interesting and comprehensive perspectives.

N OT ES

INT ROD U C TI O N 1. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 154.

1. AT L AT LS, B O WS A ND A R R O W S, A N D S TR I K I N G W EAPON S 1. Richard McLemore, A History of Mississippi, vol. 1 (Hattiesburg: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), 26–29. 2. Ibid. 3. Anan Raymond, “Experiments in the Function and Performance of the Weighted Atlatl,” World Archaeology 18, no. 2 (October 1986): 155; and Calvin Howard, “The Atlatl: Function and Performance,” American Antiquity 39, no. 1 ( January 1974): 102. 4. Raymond, 155–57. 5. Ibid., 162. 6. Colin Taylor, Native American Weapons (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 61. 7. Ibid., 63. 8. Charles Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 17–18. 9. McLemore, 73; Don Nardo, ed., North American Indian Wars (San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1999), 47; and Hudson, Knights of Spain, 17–18. 10. Carolyn Kellar Reeves, The Choctaw before Removal ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), 42. 217

218 N OTE S

11. Jesse McKee and Jon Schlenker, The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1980), 18. 12. Nardo, 47. 13. Taylor, 30. 14. McLemore, vol. 1, 51. 15. Taylor, 31. 16. Hudson, Knights of Spain, 19. 17. Greg O’Brien, “ ‘We Are behind You’: The Choctaw Occupation of Natchez in 1778,” Journal of Mississippi History 64, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 112–13. 18. Taylor, 46. 19. Nardo, 47. 20. Brian Handwerk, “Ancient Spear Weapon OK’d for Deer Hunt in Pennsylvania,” National Geographic News, January 24, 2006, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2006/01/0124_060124_atlatl_deer_2.html. 21. Nardo, 50. 22. Taylor, 65–66.

2. GUNS, STEEL, AND FORTS 1. McLemore, vol. 1, 94. 2. Harvey Jackson III, Inside Alabama: A Personal History of My State (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 9. 3. McLemore, vol. 1, 101. 4. Matthew 26:52. 5. “The Narrative of the Expedition of Hernando De Soto by the Gentleman of Elvas,” trans. Theodore Lewis, in Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528– 1543 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 136. 6. McLemore, vol. 1, 92–93. 7. Fulsom Charles Scrivner, The Early Chickasaws: Profile of Courage (New York: Vantage Press, 2005), 55–56; and Theodore Maynard, De Soto and the Conquistadors (New York: AMS Press, 1969), 135. 8. See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). 9. Richard Flint and Shirley Flint, The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva: The 1540–1542 Route across the Southwest (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004), 39–40. 10. Ibid., 39. 11. Ralph Payne-Gallwey, The Crossbow: Its Military and Sporting History, Construction, and Use (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007), 7.

NOT E S 219

12. Maynard, 145. 13. John Hall, “The Search for Hernando De Soto,” Alabama Heritage, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 24. 14. Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds., The De Soto Chronicles, vol. 1, The Expedition of Hernando De Soto to North America, 1539–1543 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), 103. 15. Harold Leslie Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526–1783 (Courier Dover Publications, 2000), 93. 16. Ibid., 92–93. 17. Hudson, Knights of Spain, 18. 18. Charles Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), 147–48. 19. Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds., The De Soto Chronicles, vol. 2, The Expedition of Hernando De Soto to North America, 1539– 1543 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), 335. 20. Ibid., 336. 21. Ibid., 338. 22. Diamond, 76. 23. Jackson, 9. 24. This discussion of Mabila has been compiled from Angie Debo, The Rise and the Fall of the Choctaw Republic (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), 24–26; Clayton, vol. 1, 92–104; Reeves, 68–69; Maynard, 206–13; and McKee and Schlenker, 12–14. 25. Michael Polushin, “The Indians and the French Meet at Biloxi,” in Interpreting the Sources of World Societies, ed. Michael Polushin and Chris Tyler Bowie (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 315. 26. J. E. Kaufmann and H. W. Kaufmann, Fortress America: The Forts That Defended America, 1600 to the Present (New York: Da Capo Press, 2007), 8. 27. Ibid., 403–4. 28. Ibid., 405. 29. Ibid., 26–27. 30. This discussion of Fort Maurepas has been compiled from J. Michael Bunn and Clay Williams, “A Failed Enterprise: The French Colonial Period in Mississippi,” Mississippi History Now, http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/35/french-colonial-periodin-mississippi. 31. Patricia Woods, “The French and the Natchez Indians in Louisiana, 1700–1731,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Society 19, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 422. 32. Jack Elliott, “The Fort of Natchez and the Colonial Origins of Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 52, no. 3 (August 1990): 168–69.

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33. “Presents Given to the Natchez and Speech Made to Them by Order of Bienville, November 6, 1722,” in Mississippi Provincial Archives (hereafter MPA), ed. Dunbar Rowland and Albert Sanders ( Jackson, 1927–32), vol. 3, 327–29. 34. Elliott, 168–69. 35. Woods, 414–16. 36. Bienville to Pontchartrain, January 2, 1716, MPA, vol. 3, 194–95. 37. The cartouche of the map by Ignace Francois Broutin, MLA, vol. 3, 593. 38. Woods, 433; McLemore, vol. 1, 129–30. 39. Woods, 434; Bunn and Williams.

3. MILI TI AS, O U TL AWS, A N D K E N T U CK Y R I F LE S 1. Westley F. Busbee Jr., Mississippi: A History (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 2005), 54. 2. Robert Coates, The Outlaw Years: The History of the Land Pirates of the Natchez Trace (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1930), 136. 3. Mark Pitcavage, “Ropes of Sand: Territorial Militias, 1801–1812,” Journal of the Early Republic 13, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 482–83; Busbee, 55. 4. Gregory Waselkov, A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813– 1814 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 102. 5. Brigadier General Thomas Flournoy to Governor Holmes, August 6, 1813, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 6:397–98. 6. Pitcavage, 484–86. 7. Dunbar Rowland, ed., Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, 6 vols. ( Jackson, Miss.: State Department of Archives and History, 1917), vol. 1, 39. 8. Michael Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2003), 249–50. 9. Pitcavage, 485. 10. Busbee, 59, and Margaret Dunn, “Criminals along the Natchez Trace,” M.A. thesis (University of Southern Mississippi Graduate School, Hattiesburg, 1970), 11. 11. Dunn, 7. 12. Coates, 140. 13. Dunn, 8. 14. Josephus Guild, Old Times in Tennessee (Nashville, Tenn.: Tavel, Eastman, Howell, 1878), 97. 15. This discussion of Mason has been compiled from Coates, 101–65; and Dunn, 41–58. 16. This discussion of the Kentucky rifle has been compiled from M. L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1980),

NOT E S 221

264–65; Ashley Halsey, “All-American Weapon,” Parade, November 26, 1955, 44–45, 109–11; Jack O’Connor, Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns (New York: Outdoor Life, 1961), 19–20; and David Petzal, “Rifle That Made America,” Field and Stream, http:// www.fieldandstream.com/article/Shooting/Rifle-That-Made-America (accessed December 1, 2008). 17. Maurice Matloff, American Military History (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1969), 39. 18. Theron Nunez, “Creek Nativism and the Creek War of 1813–1814,” part 2 (Stiggins Narrative, continued), Ethnohistory 5, no. 2 (Spring 1958): 139. 19. Waselkov, 86–88. 20. Nunez, 139. 21. Sean Michael O’Brien, In Bitterness and in Tears: Andrew Jackson’s Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003), 62. 22. This account of the Battle of Holy Ground has been compiled from Lynn Hastie Thompson, William Weatherford: His Country and His People (Bay Minette, Ala.: Lavender, 1991), 475–93; and H. S. Halbart and T. H. Hall, The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 258. 23. Halbart and Hall, 241–65. 24. Jackson, 38.

4. DU EL IN G AN D S L AVE R Y 1. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), vii. 2. Ibid., 350–51. 3. Busbee, 108. 4. Wyatt-Brown, 351. 5. Busbee, 86. 6. Wyatt-Brown, 351. 7. John Quitman to Elizabeth Quitman, December 9, 1830, Quitman Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 8. Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: A Woman’s World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 107. 9. “The History of Dueling in America,” PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ duel/sfeature/dueling.html (accessed December 28, 2008). 10. William Scarborough, The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 9. 11. Ibid., 8.

222 N OTE S

12. McLemore, vol. 1, 341. 13. Barbara Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood: A Thousand Years of Sword and Pistol (New York: Bloomsbury, 2003), 84–85. 14. Robert Baldick, The Duel: A History of Dueling (New York: Hamlyn, 1970), 131–33. 15. This account of the Maddox-Wells duel has been compiled from Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Bowie Knife,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ BB/lnb1.html (accessed October 10, 2008); Benjamin Cummings Truman, The Field of Honor: Being a Complete and Comprehensive History of Duelling in All Countries; Including the Judicial Duel of Europe, the Private Duel of the Civilized World, and Specific Descriptions of All the Noted Hostile Meetings in Europe and America (New York: Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1883), 110–12; and James Webb, “Pistols for Two . . . Coffee for One,” American Heritage 26, no. 2 (February 1975): 66–84. 16. “The Bowies and Bowie Knives,” New York Times, January 27, 1895, http://query .nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?r=1&res=9B0DE4DA123DE433A25754C2A9679 C94649ED7CF&oref=slogin (accessed October 10, 2008). 17. Eston Ericson and David Shulman, “Bowie Knife,” American Speech 12, no. 1 (February 1937): 78. 18. Robert Scott, “Who Invented the Bowie Knife?” Western Folklore 8, no. 9 ( July 1949): 196. 19. Ibid., 200. 20. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Bowie Knife.” 21. Scott, 201. 22. Harold Peterson, American Knives: The First History and Collector’s Guide (New York: Scribner, 1958); Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Bowie Knife.” 23. McLemore, vol. 1, 338–39. 24. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 87. 25. Scarborough, 8. 26. McLemore, vol. 1, 338. 27. Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. (Carlisle, Mass.: Applewood Books, 2008), 452. 28. Ibid. 29. McLemore, vol. 1, 338. 30. J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: D. C. Heath, 1937), 62. 31. Scarborough, xix, 93; McLemore, vol. 1, 336. 32. Olmsted, Journey in the Back Country, 87. 33. Ibid., 82. 34. William R. Elley Plantation Record Book, State Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Miss.

NOT E S 223

35. Charles Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965), 87. 36. Olmsted, Journey in the Back Country, 79. 37. Stampp, 179. 38. Scarborough, 69. 39. Doro Plantation Account Book, Charles Clark and Family Papers, IX, marginal notation in section titled “Duties of an Overseer,” State Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Miss. 40. Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 183. 41. McLemore, vol. 1, 341–42. See also the reference to Deuteronomy 25:3 in chapter 3. 42. Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, 454. 43. Theodore Rosengarten, Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 185. 44. Stampp, 187. 45. Ibid., 175–76. 46. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 103. 47. Stampp, 176. 48. Doro Plantation Account Book, marginal notation in section titled “Duties of an Overseer,” State Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Miss. 49. Stampp, 176. 50. William L. Van Deburg, The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), 11. 51. Scarborough, 98. 52. Olmsted, Journey in the Back Country, 83. 53. Daniel Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 164–65. 54. U.S. Bureau of Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918), 45. 55. Ibid., 44. 56. Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery: Updated, with a New Introduction and Bibliography (New York: Praeger, 1997), 487. 57. Edwin Miles, “The Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835,” Journal of Negro History 42, no. 1 ( January 1957): 49. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 51. 60. Ibid., 52.

224 N OTE S

61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 55; David Burns McKibben, “Negro Slave Insurrections in Mississippi, 1800–1865,” Journal of Negro History 34, no. 1 ( January 1949): 76. 63. Martha Goodson to Elizabeth Banks, October 13, 1835, Elizabeth Banks Collection, Manuscript Department, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C. 64. Sydnor, 78. 65. Ibid. 66. Randall, 66; Sydnor, 77; Miller, 489. 67. Sydnor, 78. 68. McLemore, vol. 1, 330. 69. Sydnor, 79.

5. MIS S IS S I PPI R I F LE S 1. Joseph Chance, Jefferson Davis’s Mexican War Regiment ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 1–12. 2. Robert Doughty, American Military History and the Evolution of Warfare in the Western World (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1996), 95; Jochren S. Arndt, “The Highly Effective First Mississippi Volunteer Regiment in the Mexican War, 1846–1848,” Journal of Mississippi History 69, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 72–73; Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 172. 3. Joseph Holt Ingraham, quoted in John Hope Franklin, The Militant South, 1800– 1861 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1970), 3. 4. Robert May, “John Quitman and the Southern Martial Spirit,” Journal of Mississippi History 41, no. 2 (May 1979): 157–65. 5. Chance, 9–10; Arndt, 68. 6. Arndt, 70. 7. Jefferson Davis to George Talcott, November 7, 1847, in The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 3, ed. James T. McIntosh (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 245. Hereafter cited as Davis Papers. 8. Cadmus Wilcox, History of the Mexican War (Washington Church News, 1892), 75–76. 9. “Autobiography of Jefferson Davis,” in McIntosh, Davis Papers, vol. 1, liv. 10. Chance, 18–19; Arndt, 72–73. 11. John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 184–85. 12. Ibid., 187–88. 13. Arndt, 73.

NOT E S 225

14. Chance, 28. 15. Arndt, 76. 16. Chance, 27. 17. Ibid., 34. 18. Ibid., 86. 19. “To William Bliss,” March 12, 1847, in McIntosh, Davis Papers, vol. 3, 142. 20. Samuel Chamberlain, My Confession (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), 89. 21. Ibid., 122–23. 22. Eisenhower, 189; Arndt, 65. 23. Weigley, 187. 24. Arndt, 76. 25. Cass Canfield, The Iron Will of Jefferson Davis (New York: Fairfax Press, 1978), 29. 26. Weigley, 190; Matloff, 181; Doughty, 96. 27. Ethan Rafuse, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Modernization in the Struggle for the Union (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 63–64; Stephen Sears, George McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988), 48–49. 28. Matloff, 182.

6. IRON CL AD S A ND TO R P E D O E S 1. James Arnold, Grant Wins the War: Decision at Vicksburg (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 1. 2. Personal interview and e-mail with David Slay, Vicksburg National Military Park ranger, February 19, 2009. 3. Mark Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay, 1959), 560. 4. Christopher Gabel, Staff Ride Handbook for the Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862–July 1863 (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 2001), 17. 5. Boatner, 354. 6. Ibid., 738. 7. Ibid., 758. 8. Gabel, 17. 9. Ibid., 18. 10. Ibid. 11. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 269. 12. Arnold, 34. 13. James Soley, “Naval Operations in the Vicksburg Campaign,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), 559.

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14. As mentioned earlier, the traditional view is that the torpedo was detonated electronically. 15. Edwin Bearss, Hardluck Ironclad: The Sinking and Salvage of the Cairo (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 99. 16. Arnold, 34–35; Michael Ballard, Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 120–21. 17. Clinton Ancker, “Doctrine for Asymmetric Warfare,” Military Review, July–August 2003, 18. 18. Russell Weigley, The American Way of War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 99. 19. Gabel, 16, 100. 20. “USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum,” Vicksburg National Military Park, http:// www.nps.gov/archive/vick/cairo/cairo.htm (accessed January 7, 2009). 21. Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: Free Press, 1984), 155. 22. T. Harry Williams, The History of American Wars (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1981), 216–17.

7. S IE G E G U NS AN D S A B E R S 1. Gabel, 32–34. 2. William Witherspoon, Reminiscences of a Scout, Spy, and Soldier of Forrest’s Cavalry ( Jackson, Tenn., 1910), 34–36. 3. Edwin Bearss, “Brice Cross Roads,” in The Civil War Battlefield Guide, ed. Frances Kennedy (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 194. 4. Robert Selph Henry, First with the Most Forrest (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfoot, 1987), 13; Parker Hills, A Study in Warfighting: Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads (Danville, Va.: Blue and Gray Educational Society, 1995), 16. 5. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), 286–87. 6. Joseph Bilby, Civil War Firearms (Conshohocken, Pa.: Combined Books, 1996), 58. 7. Wiley, 291; Bilby, 59. 8. Ted Ballard, Battle of First Bull Run (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, United States Army, 2003), 57. 9. Wiley, 291. 10. Mark Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay, 1959), 266. 11. Peter Cozzens, The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 183; Boatner, 52.

NOT E S 227

12. Gabel, 21; Bilby, 87; Hogg, 34. 13. Gabel, 37. 14. Ibid., 158–61. 15. W. L. Foster to Mildred, June 20, 1863, W. L. Foster’s Letter, Moore’s Brigade, Forney’s Division (C.S.A.) file, Vicksburg National Military Park. 16. Gabel, 164–65; “Vicksburg: Official National Park Handbook” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1986), 49. 17. Steven Woodworth, Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2005), 412, 418; Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 24, part 2, 272–74. 18. Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 24, part 2, 371. 19. Grant, 522; Warren Ripley, Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), 59. 20. Woodworth, 437–38. 21. Ulysses Grant, “The Vicksburg Campaign,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), 521. 22. E. C. Downs, Four Years a Scout and Spy: “General Bunker,” One of Lieut. General Grant’s Most Daring and Successful Scouts (Zanesville, Ohio: Hugh Dunne, 1866), 245. 23. Ibid., 246. 24. Ibid., 260. 25. Ibid., 261. 26. Boatner, 397. 27. Ibid., 735–36. 28. Boatner, 457, 917; Fred Ray, Shock Troops of the Confederacy (Asheville, N.C.: CFS Press, 2006), 274, 278. 29. Andrew Hickenlooper, “The Vicksburg Mine,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), 539–42; Lang Baradel, “Mushroom Cloud at Vicksburg,” Civil War Times, October 2005, 51–62; Gabel, 168–75. 30. Gabel, 80. 31. Ibid., 27. 32. Grant, 521. 33. David Porter, The Naval History of the Civil War (Boston, Mass.: Sherman Publishing, 1886), 326. 34. “Battery Selfridge,” National Park Service, Vicksburg, http://www.nps.gov/vick/ historyculture/battery-selfridge.htm (accessed December 16, 2008); “Vicksburg,” 71. 35. Ripley, 109–10. 36. Ibid., 114–15. 37. Gabel, 29. 38. Philip Katcher, American Civil War Armies (1): Confederate Troops (Oxford: Osprey, 1986), 5–6; Ripley, 71.

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39. Boatner, 707. 40. Terrence Winschel, Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign (Mason City, Iowa: Savas, 1999), 85; Woodworth, 436. 41. Boatner, 119. 42. Ripley, 45. 43. Gabel, 30. 44. James Hazlett, Edwin Olmstead, and M. Hume Parks, Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 147–48. 45. Ibid., 149–50. 46. Ibid., 150. 47. “Big Guns at Gettysburg,” Gettysburg National Military Park, Department of the Interior, http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/artillery.htm (accessed December 19, 2008); Gabel, 26. 48. Gabel, 33. 49. Ibid., 30–31. 50. Porter, 326. 51. Winschel, 150. 52. Joseph Orville Jackson, ed., “Some of the Boys . . .”: The Civil War Letters of Isaac Jackson, 1862–1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960), 98. 53. Arnold, 263. 54. Mary Loughborough, My Cave Life in Vicksburg (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfort, 1989), 48–49. 55. Ibid., 61. 56. Ibid., 72. 57. Arnold, 263. 58. Loughborough, 91. 59. Gabel, 70. 60. M. Ballard, Vicksburg, 199. 61. Ibid., 202–3. 62. Ripley, 30–31, 32. 63. Edwin Bearss, “The Vicksburg River Defenses and the Enigma of ‘Whistling Dick,’ ” Journal of Mississippi History 29, no. 1 ( January 1957): 26. 64. Ripley, 30. 65. Bearss, “Whistling Dick,” 21. 66. Ibid., 22–24. 67. Ibid., 29. 68. M. Ballard, Vicksburg, 169. 69. Bearss, “Whistling Dick,” 26. 70. Timothy Isbell, Vicksburg: Sentinels of Stone ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 110.

NOT E S 229

71. Bearss, “Whistling Dick,” 26. 72. Ibid. 73. David Martin, The Vicksburg Campaign (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002), 144. 74. Michael Ballard, Civil War Mississippi: A Guide ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 77. 75. William Sherman, Memoirs of William T. Sherman (New York: American Library, 1990), 422–23. 76. John Allan Wyeth, That Devil Forrest: Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 283. 77. Ibid., 44. 78. Cornelia and Jac Weller, “Nathan Bedford Forrest, A Redleg in Disguise,” Field Artillery, April 1991, 21. 79. Henry, 230; Foster, 142. 80. Henry, 231. 81. Wyeth, 287–92; Foster, 143. 82. Bilby, 135. 83. Ibid., 205. 84. Boatner, 782. 85. Wyeth, 300. 86. Bilby, 62; Katcher, 38. 87. Wiley, 292. 88. William Albaugh, The Original Confederate Colt: The Story of the Leech & Rigdon and Rigdon-Ansley Revolvers (New York: Greenberg, 1953), 9–10. 89. Ibid., 21–22; Benjamin Shearer, Home Front Heroes: A Biographical Dictionary of Americans during Wartime (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006), 706. 90. Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 17, part 2, 627. 91. Ibid., 749. 92. Ibid., 770. 93. Ibid., 818. 94. Albaugh, 25. 95. Ibid., 23. 96. “One Hundred Navy Repeaters!” Daily Mississippian, November 7, 1862, 3. 97. Henry, 292. 98. Edwin Bearss, Forrest at Brice’s Cross Roads and in North Mississippi in 1864 (Dayton, Ohio: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1979), 91. 99. Ibid., 94. 100. Chance, 114. 101. Gabel, 25–26. 102. Weller, 20. 103. Ibid.

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104. Gabel, 25. 105. Ripley, 267. 106. Boatner, 119. 107. Weigley, 184; Gabel, 35. 108. Weigley, 236; Gabel, 37. 109. Wyeth, 353. 110. Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 39, part 1, 8226–28. 111. Henry, 286–304; Wyeth, 342–74.

8. RIF LE S, B O WS, A ND G U N S 1. Alan Huffman, Ten Point: Deer Camp in the Mississippi Delta ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 30. 2. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Dick Kingsafer, February 3, 2009. 3. Robert Wegner, Legendary Deer Camps (Iola, Wisc.: Krause, 2001), 182. 4. William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses (New York: Random House, 1940), 163. 5. Ibid., 164. 6. Ibid., 170. 7. Ibid., 171. 8. Robert Elman, Complete Guide to Hunting: Hunting Arms (Broomall, Pa.: Mason Crest, 2002), 39. 9. Wegner, 147. 10. Ibid., 9, 147. 11. Huffman, 7. 12. Ibid., 21. 13. Faulkner, 335. 14. Ibid., 340. 15. Wegner, 185. 16. Ibid., 186. 17. Ibid., 190–91. 18. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Deanna Latham, January 30, 2009. 19. Robert Anderson, Jack O’Connor: The Legendary Life of America’s Greatest Gunwriter (Safari Press, 2002), 290. 20. Anderson, xvii. 21. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Greg Hargett, January 30, 2009. 22. Faulkner, 194–95. 23. Ibid., 230. 24. Jay Parini, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 261–63.

NOT E S 231

25. Joseph Blotner, “Faulkner and Popular Culture,” in Faulkner and Popular Culture: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1988, ed. Doreen Fowler and Ann Abadie ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), 16. 26. Elmo Howell, Mississippi Back Roads: Notes on Literature and History (Memphis, Tenn.: Langford and Associates, 1998), 115. 27. Dean Boorman, History of Winchester Firearms (New York: Lyons Press, 2001), 63. 28. John Phillips, “Beaver Dam Duck Hunting and Bird Hunting at the Willows,” http: //www.nighthawkpublications.com/journal/435/journal_1.htm (accessed February 1, 2009). 29. Ken Ramage, The Gun Digest Book of Deer Guns: Arms and Accessories for the Deer Hunter (Iola, Wisc.: Krause, 2004), 69. 30. Roy Marcot, The History of Remington Firearms: The History of One of the World’s Most Famous Gun Makers (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2005), 113. 31. Chris McNab, Sporting Guns: A Guide to the World’s Rifles and Shotguns (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), 73. 32. Interview with Justin Saffle, February 2, 2009. 33. Interview with Tony Miller, February 7, 2009. 34. Interview and e-mail with Roy Martin, January 30, 2009. 35. Interview and e-mail with Randy Martin, January 30, 2009. 36. Interview and e-mail with Kenny Odom, February 16, 2009. 37. Interview and e-mail with Randy Martin, January 30, 2009. 38. Elman, 91. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 10. 41. Ibid., 14. 42. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Rick Clawson, January 30, 2009. 43. Cliff Covington, “Mississippi’s Dove Hunting Tradition,” Mississippi Game and Fish, September 2008, http://www.mississippigameandfish.com/hunting/ doves-hunting/MS_0908_02/index.html (accessed January 26, 2009). 44. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Sam Garris, January 30, 2009. 45. Matthew Miller et al., “Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across U.S. Regions and States, 1988–1997,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 12 (December 2002): 1992. 46. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Randy Reeves, January 31, 2009.

9. T RAIN IN G C AM PS A N D M I LI TA R Y M O B I LI Z AT I ON 1. McLemore, vol. 2, 121–22. 2. Ibid., 123. As an indication of the size of the overall role of the C3, between 1939 and 1947, a total of 465 were built at all locations. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009.

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3. Jerry St. Pé, A Salute to the American Spirit: The Story of Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Litton (New York: Newcomen Society of the United States, 1988), 13–14. 4. Robert Lewis, “World War II Manufacturing and the Postwar Southern Economy,” Journal of Southern History 73, no. 4 (November 2007): 850. 5. Interview with Glenn Husted, February 5, 2009. 6. Farrell. 7. McLemore, vol. 2, 113. 8. Ibid., 114. 9. Robert Couch, “The Ingalls Story in Mississippi, 1938–1958,” M.A. thesis (Graduate School, Mississippi Southern College, Hattiesburg, 1960), 2. 10. Ibid., 4–7. 11. Ibid., 9–10; St. Pé, 7–8. 12. Couch, 18–19. 13. Ibid., 21–22. 14. Ibid., 24–25. 15. Ibid., 27. 16. St. Pé, 10. 17. Couch, 28. 18. Ibid., 29, 31. 19. Ibid., 34–35; New York City WPA Writer’s Project, A Maritime History of New York (New York: Going Coastal Productions, 2004), 235. 20. Couch, 36–37. 21. Sean Farrell, “Not Just Farms Anymore: The Effects of World War II on Mississippi’s Economy,” Mississippi History Now, http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/ articles/247/the-effects-of-world-war-II-on-mississippis-economy20assessed20 December203 (accessed December 3, 2008). 22. Couch, 53–54. 23. Richard Worth, Fleets of World War II (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002), 80. 24. Ibid., 80–81. 25. Couch, 45. 26. McLemore, vol. 2, 125. 27. Couch, 48–49; St. Pé, 10; interview and e-mail correspondence with Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009. 28. Clarence Mitchell Jr., The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr., vol. 1, 1942–1943, ed. Denton L. Watson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), 52. 29. Couch, 39–43, 46, 50. 30. George Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), 461. 31. Couch, 103–4. 32. Mitchell, 23.

NOT E S 233

33. Ibid., 25. 34. Ibid., 25–26. 35. Bob Harper, “Rare Tank Found, Gets New Home,” Mississippi Guardsman, October 1979, 4–5; interview and e-mail correspondence with Chad Daniels and Glenn Husted, February 5, 2009. 36. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009. 37. Spencer Tucker, Tanks: An Illustrated History of Their Impact (Oxford: ABCCLIO, 2004), 256. 38. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Chad Daniels and Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009. 39. William Schmidt, “The Impact of the Camp Shelby Mobilization on Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1940–1946,” M.A. thesis (University of Southern Mississippi Graduate School, Hattiesburg, 1972), 4. 40. Ibid., 5–6. 41. Ibid., 9. 42. Ibid., 10. 43. Ibid., 11. 44. Ibid., 18. 45. Ibid., 13–14. 46. Ibid., 20–45, 49. 47. Ibid., 50–51. 48. Ibid., 126. 49. Ibid., 36. 50. Ibid., 35, 127. 51. Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 2000), 368–69, 373–74; Busbee, 263–64. 52. Schmidt, 117. 53. Weigley, 464. 54. Weigley, 414. 55. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, “Firearms,” in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (Farmington Hills, Mich.: St. James Press, 2002), 102. 56. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Chad Daniels and Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009; John Beatty, “Infantry Weapons, U.S.,” in World War II: An Encyclopedia, ed. David Zabecki (New York: Garland, 1999), 1016. 57. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Chad Daniels and Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009. 58. A Brief History of Keesler AFB and the 81st Training Wing (Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.: 81st TRW History Office, 2007), 4. 59. Ibid., 5. 60. Ibid., 6.

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61. Ibid., 7–9. 62. Ibid., 9. 63. Ronald Bailey, The Home Front: USA (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1978), 76–77. 64. Interview and e-mail correspondence with Glenn Husted, January 29, 2009. 65. Alexander Molnar, “Norden Bombsight,” in World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. David Zabecki (New York: Garland, 1999), 1063. 66. Brief History of Keesler, 24. 67. “Keesler’s Economic Impact on Mississippi Gulf Coast over $1.1 billion,” Keesler Air Force Base homepage, http://www.keesler.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123084137 (accessed January 15, 2009).

10. F IRE B O MB S A ND R O P E S 1. McLemore, vol. 2, 154–56; C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 175. 2. David Sansing, The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 302. 3. William Doyle, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (Darby, Pa.: Diane Publishing, 2001). 4. Nadine Cohodas, The Band Played Dixie: Race and Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss (New York: Free Press, 1997), 85. 5. James Meredith, Three Years in Mississippi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), 225–26. 6. David Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1968), 395. 7. Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “ ‘We Will Shoot Back’: The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 3 ( January 2002): 280. 8. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 58. 9. Ibid., 15. 10. Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 18–19. 11. Laura Wexler, “A Sorry History: Why an Apology from the Senate Can’t Make Amends,” Washington Post, June 19, 2005. 12. Dittmer, 84. 13. “Lynch Week,” Time, October 26, 1942, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,850139,00.html (accessed December 28, 2008).

NOT E S 235

14. Dittmer, 15; “Lynch Week.” 15. “Lynch Week.” 16. Langston Hughes, “Bitter River,” in Remembrances and Celebrations: A Book of Eulogies, Elegies, Letters, and Epitaphs, ed. Jill Werman Harris (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 240. 17. “Lynch Week.” 18. Lawrence Kight, “ ‘The State Is on Trial’: Governor Edmund F. Noel and the Defense of Mississippi’s Legal Institutions against Mob Violence,” Journal of Mississippi History 60, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 195. 19. Ibid., 191. 20. John Stakes, Mississippi: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 129. 21. Kight, 192–95. 22. Ibid., 217–18. 23. Ibid., 215. 24. Ibid., 219–21. 25. Neil McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 223. 26. “Unusual and Different Punishment,” Time, January 25, 1943, http://www.time .com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850223,00.html?iid=chix-sphere (accessed December 28, 2008). 27. Kevin McMahon, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 165. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 166. 30. Dittmer, 55. 31. Harvey Young, “A New Fear Known to Me,” Southern Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 28. 32. Ibid., 24. 33. William Bradford Huie, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” Look 20 ( January 24, 1956): 48. 34. Richard Stewart, ed., American Military History: The United States Army and the Forging of the Nation, 1775–1917 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2005), 367. 35. Dittmer, 57. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 58. 38. Huie, 50. 39. Young, 32. 40. Ibid., 30. 41. Kight, 193–94; Tolnay, 17, 32.

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42. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 121, 428–29. 43. Dittmer, 391; “Oral History with Mrs. Ellie J. Dahmer,” interview by Orley Caudill, University of Southern Mississippi, Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, July 2, 1974. 44. Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen, The Winter War: The Soviet Attack on Finland, 1939–1940 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1992), 39. 45. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 27, 28; McLemore, vol. 2, 167. 46. Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 2. 47. Umoja, 273–74; Hill, 188. 48. Umoja, 275–76; Hill, 184–85. 49. “If White Man Shoots at Negro, We Will Shoot Back,” Nashville Runner, February 17, 1964, 1. 50. “Natchez Mayor Offers Reward for Bomber,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, August 28, 1965, 1. 51. Umoja, 277–78. 52. Umoja, 279–80; Hill, 195, 200–201; Curtis Austin, Up against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 10. 53. Umoja, 280. 54. Hill, 2–3. 55. Ibid., 245–47. 56. Ibid., 246. 57. Christopher Strain, “The Deacons of Defense and Justice,” in Black Power in the Belly of the Beast, ed. Judson Jeffries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 29. 58. Ibid., 28–29; and Hill, 246–47. 59. Strain, “Deacons,” 29–30. 60. Hill, 249. 61. Umoja, 280. 62. Hill, 211. 63. Umoja, 281. 64. Ibid., 282–83. 65. Hill, 212. 66. Umoja, 287–90; Hill, 207; personal interview conducted with Dr. Curtis Austin, February 21, 2009. 67. Umoja, 285.

NOT E S 237

68. Hill, 208. 69. Umoja, 282. 70. Ibid., 291. 71. Hill, 213. 72. Ibid., 215. 73. Ibid. 74. Christopher Strain, Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 178. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Meredith, 227. 78. Ibid., 231. 79. Ibid., 227. 80. Ibid., 238. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., 328. 83. Ibid., 212.

11. SHIPS, AIRCRAFT, AND ARTILLERY 1. Mack Herring, Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center, NASA SP-4310 (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1997), 10–11. 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Ibid., 15. 4. Ibid., 34. 5. Ibid., 36–38. 6. Ibid., 55–56. 7. Ibid., 60–61, 71–76, 106. 8. Ibid., 45. 9. “Stennis Space Center (SSC),” National Aeronautics and Space Administration homepage, http://history.nasa.gov/centerhistories/printFriendly/stennis.htm (accessed January 2, 2009). 10. Rodney Furry, “Born on the Bayou,” All-Hands, March 2000, http://www .mediacen.navy.mil/pubs/allhands/mar00/index.htm (accessed January 2, 2009). 11. FM 23-65, Browning Machine Gun Caliber .50 HB, M2 (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 1991), par. 1-2. 12. Ibid., table 1-4.

238 N OTE S

13. John Chambers, The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 406–7. 14. FM 3-22.68, Crew Served Machine Guns, 5.56-mm and 7.62-mm (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2003), par. 2-1. 15. FM 3-22.27, MK 19, 40-mm, Grenade Machine Gun, MOD 3 (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2003), par. 1-1. 16. FM 3-22.27, 1-4, 1-5. 17. FM 3-22.27, 1-7. 18. Couch, 92. 19. St. Pé, 16. 20. Ibid., 16–17. 21. Ibid., 19. 22. “U.S. Navy Commissions USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) Built by Northrop Grumman Ingalls Shipbuilding,” Northrop Grumman homepage, http://www.irconnect.com/noc/ press/pages/news_releases.html?d=18239 (accessed January 5, 2009). 23. “Sea Sparrow Missile (RIM-7),” United States Navy homepage, http://www.navy .mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2200&tid=900&ct=2 (accessed January 5, 2009). 24. “Phalanx Close-In Weapon System,” Raytheon homepage, http://www.raytheon .com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/rms/documents/content/rtn_rms_ps_phalanx_ ciws_datash.pdf (accessed January 5, 2009). 25. “RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM),” United States Navy homepage, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2200&tid=800&ct=2 (accessed January 5, 2009). 26. “History,” USS Iwo Jima homepage, http://www.iwo-jima.navy.mil/site20pages/ history.aspx (accessed January 5, 2009). 27. “Manufacturers and Distributors Directory,” Area Development Partnership, Chamber of Commerce–Economic Development, July 2008, http://www.theadp.com/ Traffic20Count20Maps/ManufacturersDirectory2008.pdf (accessed January 1, 2009). 28. BAE Systems homepage, http://www.baesystems.com/index.htm; and http:// www.baesystemspresskit.com/ausa2007/M777A1_Lightweight_155mm_Howitzer.cfm (accessed January 1, 2009). 29. Lynne Jeter, “Strategic Location Perfect for BAE Systems Assembly,” Mississippi Business Journal, April 1, 2002, http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/unitedstates-mississippi/1133878-1.html (accessed January 1, 2009). 30. “BAE SYSTEMS Ramps Up Manufacturing Facility for Lightweight Howitzer,” March 1, 2002, http://artisan-3d.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2002/press_01032002 .html (accessed January 1, 2009). 31. EADS homepage, http://www.eadsnorthamerica.com/800/en/organisation/ organisation.html (accessed January 1, 2009).

NOT E S 239

32. “American Eurocopter’s Columbus, Mississippi, Facility to Produce EADS North America’s UH-145 Light Utility Helicopter,” EADS homepage, http://www .eadsnorthamerica.com/800/en/breaking_news/200620Press20Releases/20060130_ EADS_expands_footprint.html (accessed January 1, 2009). 33. “EADS North America Celebrates Groundbreaking for New American Eurocopter Facility,” Business Wire, August 7, 2003, http://www.allbusiness.com/ government/government-bodies-offices-us-federal-government/5811016-1.html (accessed January 1, 2009). 34. “The Lakota Light Utility Helicopter,” 2008 Army Posture Statement, U.S. Army homepage, http://www.army.mil/aps/08/information_papers/transform/Lakota.html (accessed January 15, 2009). 35. “EADS North America Begins Delivery of UH-72A Light Utility Helicopters to the U.S. Army,” December 11, 2006, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/ news/2006/12/mil-061211–eads01.htm (accessed January 1, 2009).. 36. “American Eurocopter’s Columbus, Mississippi, Facility to Produce EADS North America’s UH-145 Light Utility Helicopter,” http://www.eadsnorthamerica.com/800/ en/breaking_news/200620Press20Releases/20060130_EADS_expands_footprint. html (accessed January 1, 2009). 37. Ibid. 38. Lynne Jeter, “Pascagoula Shipyard Now Part of Global Conglomerate,” Mississippi Business Journal, April 16, 2001, http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/unitedstates-mississippi/1063899-1.html (accessed January 19, 2009). 39. “Defense/Homeland Security: Securing Your Future in Mississippi,” Mississippi Development Authority homepage, http://pressroom.mississippi.org/pdf/tia_6.pdf (accessed January 19, 2009).

12. NU CL E AR T E S TI NG 1. Doughty, 584–96. 2. Stephen Cresswell, “Nuclear Blasts in Mississippi,” Mississippi History Now, http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/293/nuclear-blasts-in-mississippi (accessed December 3, 2008). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. James Crawley, “The Day We Nuked Mississippi,” Waynesboro News Virginian, July 11, 2005, http://washdateline.mgnetwork.com/index.cfm?SiteID=wnv&PackageID= 46&fuseaction=article.main&ArticleID=7294&GroupID=215 (accessed February 16, 2009).

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6. Cresswell; Crawley. 7. Cresswell. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Crawley. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Crawley; Cresswell. 14. Steve Lohr, “Texas Dome: Haven or Hazard? A Special Report; Site for ToxicWaste Cave Stirs Texas Political Fight,” New York Times, May 6, 1991. 15. Steve Phillips, “Who Nuked Mississippi?” WLOX ABC 13 homepage, February 7, 2008, http://www.wlox.com/global/story.asp?S=7836706 (accessed February 15, 2008). 16. Richard Hewlett and Jack Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1962: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 209. 17. Hewlett, 528. 18. Peter Pringle and James Spigelman, The Nuclear Barons (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 220. 19. Nathan Horn, “Converting A-bombs to Plowshares: The Atomic Energy Commission’s Project Plowshare and Domestic Use of Nuclear Weapons,” paper presented at the International Security/Internal Safety Conference at Northwestern State University, April 2008, 1. 20. Ibid., 6. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 9–10. 24. Ibid., 9. 25. Ibid., 11. 26. “The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway,” http://www.tenntom.org/MAINPAGES/ ttwhome.html (accessed February 22, 2009).

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INDEX

action, 119–20 Adams, John, 28 Adams County, Mississippi, 177–78, 183 Aegis Combat System, 194 Afghanistan, war in, 159, 196, 198 agricultural characteristics, of Mississippi, vii, 144, 162, 189 Airplane and Engine Mechanics School, 160–61 Alabama River, 37, 38, 40 Alamo, 48, 61 all-welded ship construction, 144, 147–48 American Women’s Welding Championship, 150 Anderson, Billy Ray, 206, 208 Anderson, Vera, 150–51, 215 Anti-Dueling Society of Mississippi, 44 Armed Forces Training CenterOrdnance, 152 armor, 9, 13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 26, 81 Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, 177 Army Corps of Engineers, 121, 190, 204 artillery, Civil War, 84–85, 91, 98–105, 112–15 255

asymmetric warfare, 72, 74, 76, 79–80, 81, 82–83, 97 atlatl, vii, 3–6, 10, 215 Atomic Energy Commission, 204, 205, 210 Atoms for Peace, 210 axes, 9, 15, 21 B-17 Flying Fortress, 161 B-24 Liberator, 144, 160–62 BAE Systems, 188, 197–99, 201 Baker, Joshua, 32 Balance Agriculture with Industry Plan, 144, 146–47, 151, 188 Barbour, Haley, 201 Barnett, Ross, 165 bastion (part of fort), 22–23, 24 Battery De Golyer, 100 Battery Selfridge, 98–99 “Battle of Oxford,” 165 Baxterville, Mississippi, 205 bayonets, 64–65, 88–89, 111 bear (hunting), 127–30 Bearss, Edwin, 81, 86, 104 Beauregard, Pierre Gustave Toutant, 110

256 IN D EX

Beckworth, Byron de la, 178 Bell, Tyree, 111 Beltzhoover, D., 104 Benelli Nova, 131 Berdan, Hiram, 95 Biloxi, Mississippi, 144, 160, 198 Biloxi Indians, 22, 24, 27 Birdsong, Richard, 152–53 Bishop, Bill, 209 black powder, 77, 92, 108, 129–30, 133–34 blacks, in the weapons-related Mississippi work force, 151–52, 157–58 Blair, Francis, 90 Blakely, Alexander, 104 Blanchard, Alfred, 45–47 Blanchard, Carey, 45–47 blowguns, 7, 215 Bodley, John, 44 Bolivar County, Mississippi, 51 bolt-action, 119–20 Bowie, Jim, 46–48, 58 Bowie, Rezin, 47–48 Bowie knives, 46–49, 54, 65, 67 bows and arrows, vii, 6–7, 13, 17, 20, 21, 26, 37, 40–41, 116, 132–33, 142, 215, 216 Boyd, Mike, 130 Bradley, Norma, 173 Brandon, Gerald, 161 Brandon, Mississippi, 169 Braun, Louis, 160 breastworks, in combination with rifles, 89 Brecon Bag Loading Plant, 151–52 breech-loading rifles, 95, 108 Brice’s Crossroads, Battle of, 86, 107–8, 111–14 Brice’s Crossroads National Battlefield, 215 Brookhaven, Mississippi, 125, 169

Brown, Isaac, 76 Brown Bess musket, 68 Browning, John, 172 Browning automatic rifle, 155, 158 Browning automatic 16 gauge, 139 Browning Model B-80, 134 Bruinsburg, Mississippi, 89 Bryant, Carolyn, 171 Bryant, Roy, 171, 173 Buena Vista, Battle of, vii, 60, 65–68, 70, 112 Burge, Horace, 207 Burris, Bennett, 119 Burris, Forrest, 118–20, 122, 123 C3 cargo ships, 144, 148–49 Caldwell, Isaac, 44 Calhoun, John, 70 canister, 74, 112–13 Camp McCain, 144, 147 Camp Shelby, 143–44, 150, 152, 153, 154– 59, 198–99, 201, 214, 215, 216 Camp Van Dorn, 144, 157 carbines, 86, 96, 108–9, 115, 159 Carmichael, Stokely, 180–81 carriage, artillery, 112 Carson, Joseph, 38–41 Cassels, Major, 38–39 “Castle Doctrine,” 140 cavalry, Civil War, 85–86, 96, 105–15 Cave-in-Rock, 31 Cavelier, René-Robert, 14 centralization, theme of, viii, 3, 4, 12, 14, 28, 29, 41–42, 57, 58, 82, 83, 87, 176, 186, 205, 214 Centreville, Mississippi, 144, 181, 182 Champion Hill, Battle of, 89 Cherokee Indians, 26 Chickasaw Indians, 26, 118

INDE X 257

Chickasawhay River, 168 Childs, Joshua, 44 Choctaw Indians, 9–10, 39 choke, 135–36 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 165, 177 Civil War, U.S., 49, 69–70, 71–83, 84–115, 128 Claiborne, Ferdinand Leigh, 29, 38–40 Claiborne, William, 30, 32, 60 Claiborne County, Mississippi, 183 Clark, Charles, 51, 53 Clark, George Rogers, 31 Clarksdale, Mississippi, 144 Clawson, Rick, 136–38 Cleburne, Patrick, 96 Clinton, Mississippi, 44, 140 code duello, 44 code noir, 54, 179 “Coehorn Mortar,” 93, 114 Cold War, vii, 189, 205, 207, 209, 213 Collier, Holt, 128–30 Colt .45 caliber, 172–73 Colt revolvers (Civil War era), 49, 65, 86, 109–11, 115 Columbia, Mississippi, 110–11, 144, 146 Columbiads (artillery), 74, 85, 98–100 Columbus, Christopher, 12 Columbus, Mississippi, 188, 199–201 Columbus Air Force Base, 200 compound bow, 133 “Confederate Colts,” 109 Congress of Racial Equality, 180, 184, 185 conquistadors, vii, 11, 12–21, 214 control, theme of, vii, 3, 27, 41, 43, 54, 58, 139, 142, 164–66, 176, 182–83, 186–87, 205, 212, 214 Copiah County, Mississippi, 183 Corinth, Battle of, 88–89

Corinth, Mississippi, Civil War Interpretative Center at, 215 Cotton, Joshua, 55–56 Council of Federated Organizations, 178 Crane, Robert, 45–47 Crater, Battle of, 92 Crawford, W. W., 154–55, 199, 201 Creek Indians, 29, 36–42, 215 Creek War, 29, 36, 41 Crimean War, 69–70, 73 crossbows, 15, 16–17, 214 CSS Virginia (Merrimack), 73–74 Cuban Missile Crisis, 204 Cuney, Samuel, 46–47 Dabbs, G. F., 168 Dahlgren (artillery), 85 Dahmer, Ellie, 175–76 Dahmer, Vernon, 166, 174–76 Darlove, Mississippi, 128 Davis, Jefferson, vii, 59–60, 62–70, 96, 112, 214 de Chepart, Sieur, 25 de Gallegos, Baltasar, 20 de Gallegos, Juan, 20 de La Perier, Boucher, 25 de Soto, Hernando, 9, 13–21, 26 De Soto National Forest, 143, 153, 156 De Soto Point, 85, 102 de Tonty, Henri, 14 Deacons for Defense and Justice, 166, 177–85, 187 deer (hunting), 116, 117–18, 130, 132, 133, 135 deer camp, 120–23, 125 Delafield Commission, 69–70 Devil’s Punchbowl, 31 “double-shot,” 113 Douglass, Frederick, 52 dove (hunting), 136–38

258 IN D EX

EADS North America, 188, 199–202 Eisenhower, Dwight, 203, 209–10 Ellisville, Mississippi, 135 Enfield rifles, 84, 87–89, 94, 95, 109 Ericsson, John, 74 Evers, Charles, 178, 183, 184 Evers, Medgar, 166, 178 Ewing, Francis, 76–78, 81

Flynn, Andrew, 51 Foote, Henry, 44 Ford Motor Company, 161 Forrest, Jeffrey, 107 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 85–87, 105–15 Forrest County, Mississippi, 174 Fort Deposit, 38 Fort Donelson, Battle of, 110 Fort Maurepas, 14, 22–24, 27 Fort Maurepas Park, 215 Fort Rosalie, 14, 24–26, 27, 214 Foster, Henry, 93 442nd Regimental Combat Team, 156 Fowler, H. W., 48 Freedom Riders, 177, 185 Freedom Summer, 165

Fair Employment Practice Committee, 152 Faulkner, William, 118, 120, 121, 127–28, 132, 136, 137 federal activity, impact of, in Mississippi, 145, 146, 152, 153, 157–58, 160, 162, 164– 66, 170, 185–87, 190, 205–6, 213 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 179, 185 .50 caliber machine gun, 153, 158, 161, 192–93 firebombs, vii, 166, 175–76. See also “Molotov Cocktails” First Mississippi Battalion Sharpshooters, 95 First Mississippi Regiment (“Mississippi Rifles”), vii, 59–60, 62, 65–68, 70, 96, 112 flintlock, 34, 60, 62, 64, 134 Flora, Mississippi, 145, 151, 152, 153 Flournoy, Thomas, 29 Floyd, C. W., 152–53 Floyd, John, 101

Gainesville, Mississippi, 190 gallows and hanging, 33–34, 55–56 gang system (slavery), 49 Garand, John, 158, 159 Garris, Halbert (Sam), 138–39 Gatlin, 40 gauge, 139 Gaus, Jacob, 106 German prisoners of war, 156 “German Town,” 152 Gibbons, Harriet, 170 gifts and trades, giving of weapons as, 14, 22, 24, 27, 129–30, 214 Glass, Anthony, 32 Golden Triangle Regional Airport, 199 Gordon (slave), 53 Gorgas, Josiah, 87 Grabau, Warren, 81 Grand Soliel, 24 Grant, Ulysses, 72–73, 84–85, 87, 89–91, 94, 98, 103 grapeshot, 74, 112

Downs, Edward, 94–95 drivers, slave, 49–50 duck (hunting), 130–31 Duck Hill, Mississippi, 157 duels and dueling, 43–44, 45–47, 57, 58, 61 Dulles, John Foster, 203

INDE X 259

Great Depression, 147, 156, 160, 162 Green, Earnest, 167–68, 174 Green, Martin, 93 Green Valley Plantation, 51 Greene County, Mississippi, 132 Green’s Lunette, 90 Greenville, Mississippi, 33, 34, 128, 144 Greenwood, Mississippi, 144, 160 Greer, J. F., 169 Grenada, Mississippi, 110, 144 grenades, 91–92, 114 Guest, W. R., 148 Gulf Ordnance Plant, 144 Gulfport, Mississippi, 136–37, 144 gun ownership, private, 117, 140, 142 gun shows, 116, 215 Gwin, William, 44 halberds, 16, 214 Hampton Roads, Battle of, 73–74 Hancock County, Mississippi, 188, 189, 190, 191 Hargett, Gregg, 125, 127 Harpe, Wiley, 33–34 Harper’s Ferry Armory, 69 harquebus, 19–20 Harrison County, Mississippi, 136 hatchet, vii, 9, 24, 34, 37 Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 118, 140, 143, 144, 145, 155, 156, 157–58, 174, 183, 188, 198, 201, 205 Hattiesburg Commercial Club, 155 Hazelhurst, Mississippi, 123 Hemphill, Philip, 140–42 Henry rifle, 94–95, 108 Hernando, Mississippi, 179 Hinds County, Mississippi, 151

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 203, 206, 213 HMS Battler, 149 Holder, Luther, 170 Holly Springs, Mississippi, 87 Holmes, David, 29, 30 Holy Ground, Battle of, 37–42, 215 honor, 43–44, 58, 117 horses and horsemen, 15, 17–18, 20, 21, 26. See also cavalry, Civil War Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, 215 howitzers and guns, differences between, 100–1 Huffman, Florence, 121–22, 128 Huffman, Paul King, 121, 128 Hughes, Langston, 168 Hunter Environmental Services, 209 hunting and hunters, vii, 3, 6, 7, 10, 25, 48, 54, 60, 116–39, 142, 165 hunting clubs, viii, 125–27 Hurricane Betsy, 191 Hurricane Katrina, 196 Huse, Caleb, 87–88 Husted, Glen, 152, 154 Ikanatchaka, Mississippi Territory, 37–39, 41 Industrial Act of 1936, 147 industrial characteristics, of Mississippi, vii, 144, 146–48, 162, 188–94 Ingalls, Robert, 144, 147–48, 214 Ingall’s Iron Works Company, 147 Ingalls Shipyard, 81, 146–51, 152, 154, 156, 188, 194 integration, racial (desegregation), 164– 65, 177, 179, 186 International Shipbuilding Corporation, 144

260 IN D EX

Iraq, war in, 159, 196, 198 ironclads, vii, 72–82, 84 Issaquena County, Mississippi, 55, 121 Jacks, Don, 81 Jackson, Andrew, 35 Jackson, James, 178 Jackson, Mississippi, 48, 89, 144, 152, 153, 176 Jackson County, Mississippi, 136, 148 Jaeger rifle, 34–35 James, Charles, 100 James rifles (artillery), 100–1, 216 Jefferson County, Mississippi, 33, 182, 183 Johnson, Paul, Jr., 210 Johnson, Paul, Sr., 168–69 Joliet, Louis, 14 Jones County, Mississippi, 135, 138 Jonesboro, Mississippi, 181 Keesler, Samuel, 160 Keesler Air Force Base, 159–62 Keesler Field, 143–44, 160–62 Kennedy, John, 189, 191 Kentucky rifle, 29, 34–36, 49, 63 Kerr rifles, 95–96 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 178–81, 187 Kingsafer, Dick, 116 Ku Klux Klan, vii, 166, 175, 177, 179, 184, 214 Kuykendall, 31 Lake, William, 44 Lamar County, Mississippi, 205, 209 lances, 15, 17–18, 68 Lang, Charlie, 167–68, 174 Lanier, Monro, 148 Latham, Deanna, 122–25 Laurel, Mississippi, 144, 168, 183

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 204 Le Moyne, Jean-Baptiste (Sieur de Bienville), 14, 24–25 Le Moyne, Pierre (Sieur d’Iberville), 14, 21–22, 24, 215 Leakesville, Mississippi, 131 Lee, Stephen D., 104 Lee County, Mississippi, 107 Leech, Thomas, 109–10 Lend-Lease Program, 149 lever action, 119 “Lewis guns,” 155 limber, artillery, 112 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 211 Lincoln, Abraham, 71, 96 Lincoln, Rush, 160 Lincoln County, Mississippi, 169 Litton Industries, 194 Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding, 195 Livingston, Mississippi, 55 Lockheed Martin, 191 Logan, John, 92, 97 Logtown, Mississippi, 190 Longino, Andrew, 168 Look, 173 Lott, Trent, 198, 201 Loughborough, Mary, 102–3 Lowndes County, Mississippi Territory, 37 Lynch, Charles, 167 “lynch law,” 167, 169 lynching, 166–74, 181 Lyon, Hylan, 111 M1 Garand, 158–59, 180, 216 M2A2 tank, 152–53, 154 M60 machine gun, 192–93 M777 howitzer, 188, 198–99

INDE X 261

Mabila, Battle of, 13, 15–21, 26 Mack, William, 168–69 Maddox, Thomas, 45–47 Maddox-Wells Duel (Sandbar Fight), 44–48, 57–58 Madison, James, 30 Madison, Mississippi, 130, 144 Madison County, Mississippi, 55, 56, 151 Mangum, William, 128 Marcy, William, 59 Marion County, Mississippi, 146 Marquette, Jacques, 14 Marsh, James, 44 Martin, Randy, 134–35 Martin, Roy, 135 Mason, Samuel, 31–33 match cord, 19–20 Matkin, William, 190 May, James, 33–34 McClellan, George, 70 McClung, Alexander, 46 McComb, Mississippi, 134 McDaniel, Zere, 76–78, 81 McElwaine and Company, 87–88 McHenry, George, 154–55, 199, 201 McKissick, Floyd, 180 McNutt, Alexander, 44 McPherson, James, 94 Melton, Clinton, 166 Menefee, John, 46 Meredith, James, 164–65, 179–81, 185–86 “Meredith’s March Against Fear,” 180–81 Meridian, Mississippi, 105, 109, 144 metal and metallurgy, 4, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17–18, 26–27, 36, 41 Metcalf, George, 177–78 Mexican War, 59–60, 62, 113–14, 214 Michton, Morris, 128 Milam, J. W., 171–74

militia, viii, 28–30, 32, 35, 36, 41, 42, 56–57, 60–62 Miller, Tony, 131–34 mines: explosive, 76; underground, 92–93, 96–97 Minié, Claude Étienne, 69 Minié ball, 69, 88, 95 Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, 144, 150, 152, 153, 154, 215 Mississippi Army National Guard, 125, 153, 165, 169, 199, 200 Mississippi Constitution of 1832, 44 Mississippi Delta, 117–18, 121, 128, 130 “Mississippi Maneuvers,” 143, 153, 156 Mississippi Ordnance Plant, 151 “Mississippi rifle,” 46, 60, 63–64, 66–68, 88, 96, 214 Mississippi River, 22, 28, 31, 71–75, 79, 82, 83, 103, 105, 114, 196 Mississippi River Squadron, 72 Mississippi State Highway Patrol, 140–41, 182 Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, 179 Mississippi State University, 200 Mississippi Territory, 28–34 Mississippi Test Facility, 189, 191 MK19 grenade machine gun, 192–93 Model 1822 musket, 62–63 Model 1840 saber, 106, 107 Model 1841 rifle. See “Mississippi rifle” Model 1841 6-pounder, 112 Model 1855 Springfield rifle, 69, 89 Model 1857 gun-howitzer, 112 Model 1861 Springfield rifle, 88–89 Model 1903 Springfield rifle, 158–59 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 176 “Molotov Cocktails,” 176, 181, 182, 214 Money, Mississippi, 171

262 IN D EX

Monroe, James, 28 Moore, Ronnie, 184 mortar boats, 73, 75, 84, 102 mortars, 101–3, 158 Morton, John, 112–13, 114 Mosquito Control Commission, 191 Moundville Archaeological Park, 215 Murrell, John, 55 muskets and rifles, differences between, 36, 40, 60, 63–65, 95 muzzle loaders. See primitive weapons Napoleon, Mississippi, 190 Napoleonic tactics, 113 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 190–91 NASA Mississippi Test Operations, 189 Natchez, Mississippi, 14, 24, 28–33, 61, 166, 177, 178, 181, 183 Natchez Fencibles, 61–62 Natchez Indians, 24–26, 27 Natchez Trace, vii, 29, 30–34, 41, 55, 164 Natchez Trace Parkway Visitors Center, 215 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 173, 174, 177–78, 180, 182, 185 National Rifle Association, 116, 140 National Urban League, 180 National Wild Turkey Federation, 135 Native Mississippians, vii, 3–4, 7–11, 12–20, 82, 83, 142, 214 NATO Sea Sparrow Surface Missile System, 195 New Madrid, Missouri, 32 New Orleans, Battle of (War of 1812), 35 Nobel, Alfred, 130 Noel, Edmund, 168–69 Norden bombsight, 161

Northrop Grumman Corporation, 194–95 Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, 188, 194–95, 201, 214–15 Norvell, Aubrey, 179 nuclear earthmoving, 203, 204, 209–12 nuclear weapons and devices, vii, 203–13 Ocean Springs, Mississippi, 14, 22, 215 O’Connor, Jack, 124–25 Odom, Kenny, 135–36 Okolona, Mississippi, 87, 106–7 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 50–52 168 Hunting Club, 125–27 overseers, 45, 49–51, 54, 55, 58 Ovett, Mississippi, 138 Oxford, Mississippi, 165 palisade (part of fort), 22, 25 Parker, Billy Ray, 122–25 Parrott, Robert, 99 Parrott guns, 81, 98–99 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 204 Pascagoula, Mississippi, 81, 144, 148, 156, 188, 194, 201, 214 Pascagoula River, 194 Patton, George, 159 Pearl Harbor, Battle of, 149, 165 Pearl River, 189, 191 Pearl River County, Mississippi, 190 Pedro, 48 Pelahatchie, Mississippi, 122 Pemberton, John, 72, 85, 98, 103, 110, 114 percussion cap, 60, 63 Perkins, Jesse, 48 Perry County, Mississippi, 119 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, 195 Philadelphia, Mississippi, 181 Phipps, Armstead, 181

INDE X 263

Pigot, Ely, 169 Pizzaro, Francisco, 15 polearms, 17–18, 21, 26 Polk, James, 59, 62 Port Gibson, Mississippi, 33, 125 Porter, David, 72–73, 82, 85, 98, 101–2, 104 Prairie, Mississippi, 144 Prentiss, Sergeant, 44 primitive weapons, 116, 131–34 Project Dribble, 204–9, 212 Project Miracle Play, 208 Project Plowshare, 204, 209–12 Project Salmon, 205, 208 Project Sterling, 205, 208 Prophet Francis, 38–39 pump (slide) action, 119, 131, 137, 139 Purvis, Mississippi, 141 quail (hunting), 76 Quitman, John, 44, 61–62 Quitman, Mississippi, 168 Ragusin, Anthony, 160 Rains, Gabriel, 76 rams, 73, 75, 84 Randy’s Sporting Goods, 132, 140–41 Rankin County, Mississippi, 122, 151, 169 Reagan, Ronald, 194 Red Stick Indians. See Creek Indians redan, 23, 90 Reeves, Randy, 140–41 reloading (ammunition), 124–25 Remington .270 rifle, 124 Remington 572 Fieldmaster, 139 Remington 870 Wingmaster, 131, 137 Remington Model 11-87, 135 rifle, advantages given the defense by, 68–69, 85, 89, 90, 97–98 Rigdon, Charles, 109–10

RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, 195–96 Ripley, James, 96 River Defense Fleet, 72 Rock Island Arsenal, 153 Rodman, Thomas, 100 Rodney, Mississippi, 33 Roosevelt, Theodore, 128–30 Rucker, Edmund, 111 Runnels, Hiram, 44, 56 Runnelstown, Mississippi, 119 Russell, Gilbert, 38–39 Russell, Samuel, 92–93 sabers, 86–87, 106–7, 115 Saffle, Justin, 130–31 Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 59, 65–66, 68 Santa Rosa, Mississippi, 190 Saturn rockets, 190–91 Saunders, William, 55–56 Savage Arms .243 Winchester Youth Model, 119–20 scalping, 10 Scarborough, William, 50, 57 Schively, Henry, 48 Scott, Winfield, 60, 64–65, 96 Seafire, 149 Seales, Daniel, 48 Second Amendment, 140, 142, 182 Selfridge, Thomas, 78, 98 semiautomatic action, 119, 137, 150 Sergeant, Winthrop, 30, 60 Sewell, Lewis, 36 Sharkey County, Mississippi, 128 Sharps, Christian, 95 Sharps rifle, 95, 108 sharpshooters, 94–96, 100 shell, exploding, 74, 112

264 IN D EX

Sherman, William, 85–86, 90–91, 107, 109, 114 Shiloh, Battle of, 21 Ship Island, Mississippi, 22 shipbuilding, 82, 146–51, 188, 194–97 shot, solid, 74–75, 112 Shubuta, Mississippi, 167 siege, 85, 87, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 100, 114 Sikaboo, 40 slave insurrection, 43, 45, 54, 55–56, 58, 61 slave patrols, viii, 43, 45, 56–57, 58 slaves and slavery, 43, 45, 49–58, 59, 128, 130, 174, 216 “slicking,” 56 Smedes Plantation, 128 Smith, William Sooy, 105–6, 109 Smith and Wesson Model 10, 140–41 Smith and Wesson Model 64, 141 Smith and Wesson Model 66, 141 smokeless powder, 129–30, 145 Smoot, Benjamin, 38–39 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 180 Sowell, John, 48 Spanish-American War, 155 spear, vii, 3, 4 Special Boat Team 22, 188, 191–93 Spencer, Christopher, 108 Spencer repeating rifle, 108–9 spherical case, 112 Springfield Armory, 69, 89, 159 Sputnik, 189 squirrel and small game (hunting), 116, 138–39 Starkville, Mississippi, 144, 157, 200 steam-powered ships, impact of, 80, 82 Steele Bayou, 121 Stennis, John, 189–91, 194 Stennis Space Center, 188, 191–92, 194, 201

Stewart, Virgil, 55 Stiggins, George, 36 Stockade Redan, 90–91 Strauss, Lewis, 210 Strider, H. C., 174 striking weapons, 4, 8–10 Strmiska, Hermina, 150 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 180 Stump, Captain, 33 Sturgis, Samuel, 107, 111, 114 Sumner, Mississippi, 173 sword canes, 15, 18, 29 Swordfish, 149–50 swords, 15, 18, 29 Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, 174 Tallahatchie River, 171 Tallahoma Creek, 168 Tatum Salt Dome, 205, 206, 208, 209 Taylor, Zachary, 65–66, 68 technology, theme of, vii–viii, 3–4, 10–11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 26–27, 29, 41–42, 60, 64–65, 69–70, 73, 79–81, 82–83, 84, 113, 144, 146–48, 176, 188–89, 194, 198, 201, 205, 209, 214 “Teddy Bears,” 128–29 Ten Point Deer Camp, 121–22, 125, 128, 136 Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, 204, 210 Tensaw River, 29 Third Louisiana Redan, 92 .30 caliber machine gun, 153, 155, 158, 193 Thirty-Six Mississippi Regiment, 90 Thomas, Earnest, 180 Thompson, Allen, 176 Thompson/Center Omega, 133–34 “Thompson’s Tank,” 176 Till, Emmett, 166, 171–74

INDE X 265

tinclads, 73, 75, 84 tomahawks, 4, 8, 11, 33, 34, 37 Tombigbee River, 29, 106 torpedoes, 72–73, 76–79, 81, 83, 97, 115 Truman, Harry, 203 Tunica, Mississippi, 130 Tupelo, Mississippi, 200, 215 turkey (hunting), 134–35 Tuscaloosa, 15–17 UH-72A Lakota helicopter, 200 UH-145 helicopter, 188 University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”), 165, 185, 208 University of Southern Mississippi, 122 USS Cairo, 72–73, 77–82, 98, 115 USS Exchequer, 149 USS Indianola, 76 USS Iwo Jima, 195–96 USS John Stennis, 194 USS Marmara, 77–78 USS Monitor, 74 USS Pittsburgh, 78 USS Queen of the West, 76 USS Signal, 78 Van Buren, A. De Puy, 45 Vandiver, T. L., 51 Vardaman, James, 168–69 Vicksburg, Mississippi, 62, 71–73, 79, 82, 85, 87, 89–90, 93–97, 98–105, 114; cave life at, 102–3; civilians at, 102–3 Vicksburg National Military Park, 73, 81, 95, 105, 215, 216 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 165 Walker, John, 98 war clubs, 8–9, 36–37, 40, 41 War of 1812, 29, 30, 99

Wash, Howard, 168, 170, 173 Washington, Mississippi, 33 Washington County, Mississippi, 51, 55 Wayne County, Mississippi, 135 Weatherford, William, 38–40 Weber, Max, viii, 166 Welborn’s Bridge, 168 Wells, Samuel, 46 West Florida, 28 West Point, Mississippi, 128, 144 Westonia, Mississippi, 190 whips and whipping, 32, 34, 45, 50–54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 216 “Whistling Dick,” 85, 104–5 White, Hugh, 146–47, 164 White Apple Village, 25 Whitney, Eli, 64 Whitten, John, 173 Whitworth (artillery), 85 Whitworth rifles, 95–96 “Widow Blakely,” 85, 104–5 Wilcox, Cadmus, 63 Wilkins, Glover, 211 Wilkins, Roy, 180–81 Wilkinson County, Mississippi, 181–83 Willow Run, 161 Wilson, John, 44 Winchester .30-.30 Model 1894 rifle, 129–30, 33 Witherspoon, William, 86, 111 wizard or magic circles, 38–39 women, in the weapons-related Mississippi work force, 150–52, 214 Women’s Army Corps, 156 Wood, Leonard, 155 Wool, John, 65–66 World War I, 143–46, 147, 148, 149, 153, 154–56, 162, 214 World War II, vii, 143–46, 147, 149,

266 IN D EX

151–53, 156, 158–59, 160–61, 162, 172, 189, 193, 194, 200 Wright, Moses, 171 Wright, Norris, 45, 47 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, 43, 58 Yazoo City, Mississippi, 130–31 Yazoo County, Mississippi, 151 Yazoo River, 28, 72, 78, 81 Young, Whitney, 180

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