Mississippi Territory

“ By such an examination we hope to get a clearer idea of the subject, and how it is that some of the boundaries of our state are where they are. The first of these [Pg 126] grants to embrace the territory now in Mississippi was that made by Charles I. to his Attorney General, Sir Robert Heath, in 1629. This grant known as Carolina was possibly the largest ever made to any one individual, covering as it did almost all that part of the United States south of the present southern boundary of Virginia and of Missouri. Mississippi was completely swallowed up in this princely domain. ”

“ In 1798 Congress organized the region included between the Mississippi River on the west, the Chattahoochee on the east, the 31st parallel on the south, and a line drawn from the mouth of the Yazoo into Mississippi Territory, and in 1804 extended its northern boundary to Tennessee; in April, 1813, the Mobile district was taken from the Spanish by the United States and annexed to Mississippi territory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The vast and almost wholly unknown territory west of the Mississippi, claimed by France, in virtue of her discoveries and settlements on the great river, until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain, was held by that country in 1800. This cession gave Spain complete control of the lower course of the Mississippi, since her province of Florida extended to the east bank of the stream. And she held it in a manner that proved deeply annoying to the American settlers in the west, to whom free navigation of the Mississippi was of great and growing importance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's neighbor. ”

“ But, sir, all these reasons cease when we cross the banks of the Mississippi, into a territory separated by a natural boundary — a newly acquired territory, never contemplated in the formation of our government, not included within the compromise or mutual pledge in the adoption of our constitution — a new territory acquired by our common fund, and ought justly to be subject to our common legislation. ”

“ Northwest, passed to the United States at the treaty of 1783. This
section was organized in 1798 as the Mississippi Territory. In 1802
Georgia relinquished all claim to the northern part as well, which
Congress added to the Mississippi Territory. At this date there were
settlements along the Mississippi bluffs below the Yazoo bottom.
Robert Fulton
CHAPTER VIII.
SOCIAL CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
[1800]
In 1800 the population of our land was 5,305,482, of whom 896,849 were
slaves. New York City had 60,489; Philadelphia, 40,000; Boston, 24,937 ”

“ They hardly averaged a quarter of a mile per day. The Choctaw Indians, through whose country they passed, never disturbed the party, however, therein contrasting with the Creeks beyond Mobile River the next year.
While on Little Bayou Sara they learned of the formation of Mississippi Territory and the appointment of Winthrop [Pg 165] Sargent as governor. [150] The new governor arrived in Natchez August 6th, and General Wilkinson on the 26th, but Sargent's health did not permit him to organize the government until the next month. ”

“ At this point their territorial line crosses from the west to the east banks of the Mississippi, pursuing a southerly course, at the distance of about forty miles from it, until it intersects the lands of the Winnebagoes, north of the Wisconsin. This portion of the territory affords decidedly the largest and best body of farming lands in their possession, and will, probably, hereafter yield them, either by the proceeds of its sale, or cultivation, a more sure reliance at a period when the land becomes divested of game. ”

“ But why had it ever been made the boundary of Florida? The only reason apparent is that Great Britain in 1763 wanted to get immediate control only of the harbors and did not care to have her colonial governments clash with the Indians. The territory above was by the same proclamation made crown lands and reserved for the use of the savages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In common with most of its great tributaries, it widens as it ascends; being wider above the mouth of the Missouri, with a tenth part of its water, than it is in the region of New-Orleans. In the same manner, Arkansas and Red River are wider, a thousand miles up their streams, than they are at their mouths.
No thinking mind can view with indifference, the mighty Mississippi, as it sweeps round its bends from point to point, and rolls on its resistless wave, through dark forests, in lonely grandeur to the sea. ”

“ As if not content with the mischief, the Mississippi sometimes takes a fancy to make a cut off; instead of following the curve or bend which it has made into the country for perhaps twenty miles, it dashes with fury against the earth in front until it cuts its way through and reaches its former channel, tearing away with it houses, lands, and whatever had stood in its path. ”

“ Mississippi was among the last of the states to comply with the conditions of reconstruction, and in the interval the community drifted into a state bordering upon anarchy, the provisional governor at times interfering in the interest of order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One hundred million people are annually regaled and exasperated by the irresistible powers that nature wields in this great central basin.
Men have dammed the little rivulets of a thousand gullies and valleys in the Appalachians to turn the wheels of grist-mills, so that corn can be ground for pone and sprouts ground for moonshine. They have stretched their masonry across the Great Falls of the Missouri to smelt copper and silver. Myriads of horse-power are beginning to serve the nation by hauling railroad-trains over the long divides. They have bridled the upper Mississippi at Keokuk. ”

“ The significance of the Mississippi Valley in American history has lain partly in the fact that it was a region of revolt. Here have arisen varied, sometimes ill-considered, but always devoted, movements for ameliorating the lot of the common man in the interests of democracy. Out of the Mississippi Valley have come successive and related tidal waves of popular demand for real or imagined legislative safeguards to their rights and their social ideals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No line of longitude or latitude, no mountain, no river, can become the demarcation. Every State has rights in every other State. The whole country has a title, which it will never renounce, in every part, whether the voluminous Mississippi as it pours to the sea, or that same sea as it chafes upon our coast. As well might we of the East attempt to shut you of the West from the ocean as you attempt to shut us from the Mississippi. The ocean will always be yours as it is ours, and the Mississippi will always be ours as it is yours. ”

“ The population of Mississippi at that time was of a very mixed sort, being made up of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Indians, negroes, half-breeds of all grades of parentage, renegade Americans and British, and at the same time [500] a ruling class of exceptional uprightness and intelligence. The fact that the better element was outnumbered by the heterogeneous class beneath them, fully justified the governor’s apprehension of lawless outbreaks, which he sought to forestall by urging the organization and arming of a strong militia force. ”

“ Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now--spending loads of money on her. When there used to be four thousand steamboats and ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows, there wasn't a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the snags were thicker than bristles on a hog's back; and now when there's three dozen steamboats and nary barge or raft, Government has snatched out all the snags, and lit up the shores like Broadway, and a boat's as safe on the river as she'd be in heaven. ”