Corinth, Mississippi

“ By examining the map I enclose you will at once perceive why a place of so little apparent strength has been enabled to resist the combined fleets of the upper and lower Mississippi. The most economical plan for the reduction of Vicksburg now is to push a column from Memphis to Corinth, down the Mississippi Central railroad to Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi. ”

“ It was at the crossing of the only two trunk lines in the South at that time, and by these lines the Confederacy could transport whatever supplies, men, and guns it possessed to this point. Corinth was the key to the richness of the Mississippi Valley and the outer gateway to the Eastern South; and so if with these reasons urging Richmond, Corinth and these two essential lines of transportation could not be saved, the future of the Confederacy would be dark indeed. ”

“ It has woollen mills, cotton compresses, clothing, furniture, and spoke and stave factories and machine shops, and is a cotton market. Because of its situation and its importance as a railway junction, Corinth played an important part in the western campaigns of the Civil War. After the first Confederate line of defence had been broken by the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson (February 1862) , Corinth was fortified by General P. G. T. Beauregard, and was made the centre of the new line along the Memphis & Charleston railway, “the great East and West artery of the Confederacy.” ”

“ His plan was to unite the old followers of the Whig party for the control of the negro element, and save the white people from the ruin that would result from negro control. The new governor was soon found to be in the way [Pg 196] of the negroes and carpet baggers, and he was sent to Washington as a senator of the United States.
Ex-Gov. Robert Lowry thus writes of Alcorn and Ames as Senators from Mississippi, in his history of the State:
"Governors Alcorn and Ames were occupying their seats in the United States Senate. ”

“ He led the way forward a few feet and paused.
“Oh-h-h-h-!” cried Clarence.
Far, far below, the river rolled its flashing length, the broad river, silvery in the sun, the broad river with its green wooded islands, its lagoons, its lesser streams, its lakes. To the southeast another body of water, yet more silvery, emptied itself into the Mississippi. Beside both and around both and all the way that eye could see up and down the Mississippi River rose the full-bosomed hills, older than the Pyramids, holding their secrets of the past in a calm not to be broken till the day of judgment. ”

“ In the early days, before the institution of slavery had assumed its subsequent gigantic proportions, resulting in the concentration of great landed estates in the hands of a few wealthy slave-owners, Adams county was divided into a great number of small farms, owned by white settlers. ”

“ Politics ran high; Whigs and Democrats were ready at all times to give reason for the faith within them, to fight for it, yea, even to die for it at need. But through it all ran an intense loyalty to the state. Prentiss was once on a boat coming to Natchez, when some one remarked that the Governor of Mississippi [Pg 203] was a dog. "Sir," said Mr. Prentiss, rising, "you cannot call the Governor of Mississippi a dog in my presence; it may be that he is a dog, but he is our dog." ”

“ A fine capitol commands the little city, and a magnificent State prison, just completed, stands with its foundations in the waters of the Noah's flood.
The Mississippi is at this point very broad. There are in the river sand-banks and verdant islands. Its waters are now clearer; the sun shines; the scenery of the shores is pleasing and quiet: plantations, orange groves, white slave-villages, amid the green fields; extensive views beneath the mild heavens of summer. The river is full of vessels, steamers, boats, and barges. We are approaching the gay city of New Orleans. ”

“ The soil rests on a rock foundation, which renders it incapable of being undermined by the Mississippi. Its streets are broad and laid out at right angles. It has several Protestant churches, a Catholic cathedral, a public land office, two banks, four printing offices, and by the last census contains a population of 7,500, the county of which it is the seat of justice, has 10,840. ”

“ The ground is high and rolling, and the great oaks, with their heavy hanging moss, lend a grandeur and charm to the place. There are only two schools of similar grade in the State open to colored people—Alcorn, in the extreme south-west, and Shaw University, in the extreme north. The field is before us. Mississippi, with her 350,000 souls, over sixteen years of age, who cannot read and write, is calling for our teachers. ”

“ Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. ”

“ Aquila and Priscilla were also tent-makers and part of the time they all worked at this trade to get money to live by. Then they gave all the rest of their time to the main business for which Paul had come to Corinth. It was a very happy group of workers for they all loved and enjoyed each other and they all 127loved and enjoyed their work. As Corinth was a great city close to the sea, people from all countries in the world came there. There were men of many colours and men of many languages. They had not learned how to live good and beautiful lives. ”

“ As they were nearing Savanna up in the northwest corner of Illinois, Jack told his pal that they would soon strike the Mississippi River and that from there on to St. Paul the railroad parallels the ‘father of waters.’
“The Mississippi is a thousand five hundred miles long, has its head waters at Lake Itaska in Northern Minnesota and empties into the Gulf of Mexico about a hundred miles south of New Orleans,” explained Jack. “You will see from this, Bill, that there are other rivers in our United States besides the noble Hudson.” ”

“ These counties were named after John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, General Wilkinson, General Warren, who fell at Bunker's Hill, and General Ferdinand Claiborne, a distinguished citizen of the Territory. As a Territory, Mississippi extended to and comprised all the territory east to the Alabama River or to the Georgia line. In fact, there was no distinct eastern boundary until the admission of the State into the Union.
The leading men of the communities first formed in the five counties on the Mississippi were men of intelligence and substance. ”

“ When truth is free and men are just,
Then will his epitaph appear."
Mississippi was enriched by the power and ability of George Poindexter, her brilliant governor and United States senator; she points with pride to the executive ability and constructive statesmanship of Robert J. Walker, Polk's great minister of finance, and author of the Walker Tariff Bill; she looks back with wondering admiration to that king of orators and eccentric genius, S. S. Prentiss, who thrilled the American heart with his god-like eloquence ”

“ The uprising of the people of Mississippi against Negro rule was a most magnificent example of that spirit of Southern patriotism that animated the hearts; first of such men as Walthall, Lamar, George, Featherston, Stone, Lowry and Harris, and then spread to the hearts of every true man in Mississippi. The young men of the State, the rising generation, have the greatest reverence and love for the brave men who fought such a gallant fight for the preservation of white supremacy in Mississippi. ”

“ Upon the extreme southern border of the State, where the Magnolia blooms in its native perfection, where the crested waves of the gulf work the sunbeams and the moon's silvery sheen into forms of laughing beauty that suggest the noble womanly character of the wife and the "daughter of the Confederacy," where the roaring sea, that cannot be hushed, tells of the unconquerable spirit of devotion to our people and their cause, that stood erect amid all the indignities and wrongs put upon it by a vindictive and cruel foe ”

“ This is further evidenced by the great number of private burying grounds scattered throughout the county adjacent to Natchez and Washington, in which are found tombs with inscriptions often a century old, and names without a living representative here.
But if slavery produced decadence in one way, it produced growth in another. Adams county, and especially the suburbs of the city of Natchez, became the home of wealthy families, owning broad acres, not only in this but in many other counties, and in the neighboring State of Louisiana. ”

“ Society was a chaos, and sauve qui peut, or, take care of yourself, the rule. Every one who owed money, however inconsiderable the sum, was ruined. Under such circumstances, Prentiss determined on removing from Mississippi, and selected New Orleans for his future home. The civil law, or Roman Code, was the law in Louisiana, and materially differed from the common or English law, which was the law of authority in Mississippi. ”

“ When the West Florida revolution was crowned with success and an addition of new territory to the United States resulted, Mississippi received her portion as well as Louisiana. When in the days of the American Revolution the notorious Willing came down from Philadelphia, ostensibly to protect but really to rob, our district of Baton Rouge felt his vulture clutch as keenly as did your district of Natchez. ”

“ The first state constitution (1817) provided a high property qualification for governor, senator and representative, and empowered the legislature to elect the judges and the more important state officials. In 1822 the capital was removed to Jackson from Columbia, Marion county. [4] The constitution of 1832 abolished the property qualification for holding office and provided for the popular election of judges and state officials. Mississippi thus became one of the first states in the Union to establish an elective judiciary. ”

“ In March, 1817, Congress passed an enabling act for the admission of Mississippi to the Union, and the State was formally admitted December 10, 1817. The most notable features of the first Constitution of Mississippi were the high property qualifications for holding office, the short tenures of offices, and the large appointing power of the Governor and Legislature. The first Governor was David Holmes, and during his administration the capital was permanently located at Jackson, near the headwaters of the Pearl River. ”

“ The earth is extremely fertile, and produces corn, wine, and fruits, besides the honey and figs you like so much. The people manufacture silks and cottons, and export quantities of small raisins, which grow very luxuriantly in and about the city of Corinth. Corinth is one of the most charming places that you can fancy to yourself, and is surrounded by beautiful views and the remains of ancient temples, columns, and statues ”

“ Paul is not on the west side of the Mississippi, but on the east. Though it is rather too elevated and rough in its natural state to have been coveted for a farm, it is yet just such a spot as a pioneer would like to plant himself upon, that he might stand in his door and have a broad and beautiful view towards the south and west. And when the speculator came he saw that it was at the head of navigation of what be thought was the Upper Mississippi, but which in reality is only the Middle Mississippi. ”

“ From the slope of the Atlantic our population with ceaseless tide has poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific, from the West and the East the tides are rushing towards each other—and the mind is carried to the day when all the cultivable and will be inhabited, and the American people will sign for more wildernesses to conquer. ”

“ E. of this ridge, the surface of the State consists of broad rolling prairies, while to the W. the land is broken into valleys and ridges. The State is very low, the highest altitude being but 800 feet. Mississippi is well watered. Flowing W. from the central watershed are the Homochitto, Big Black, Yazoo, Sunflower, and Tallahatchie rivers, all emptying into the Mississippi, which forms the entire W. boundary line. On the E. of the ridge are Pearl river, the Pascagoula, and Tombigbee, all emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ The debtor's prison still existed in England,—the stocks and pillory were instruments of common use both here and there,—the public whipping post claimed its daily victims,—the rack and thumb-screw were still applied to refractory witnesses in some of the courts of the old world and there was not yet in all Christendom a country in which women had equal property rights with men,—which, by the way, Mississippi was the first community in the civilized world to confer, and she had not progressed thus far by some twenty odd years. ”

“ It needs the united power, harmonious action and concentrated will of the people of all these States to roll the wheel of progress to the end which our fathers contemplated, and which their sons, if they are wise and true, may behold. May the kindness and courtesy which have characterized the present occasion on which Mississippi has been greeted by Maine, be a type of the feeling which shall ever exist between the extremes of our common country. ”

“ We move up the river—always through enchanting scenery, there being no other kind on the Upper Mississippi—and pass Moline, a center of vast manufacturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons, great lumber centers; and presently reach Dubuque, which is situated in a rich mineral region. ”