Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.

Mississippian troops fought in every major theater of the American Civil War, although most were concentrated in the Western Theater. Confederate president Jefferson Davis was a Mississippi politician and operated a large cotton plantation there. Prominent Mississippian generals during the war included William Barksdale, Carnot Posey, Wirt Adams, Earl Van Dorn, Robert Lowry, and Benjamin G. Humphreys.

Secession

As sectional tensions grew in the 1850s, the Whig party's support in Mississippi collapsed and Southern Democrats began to take a hard line against any federal measures to restrict the expansion of slavery, to the point of openly discussing secession from the United States and the formation of a Southern Confederacy. During the 1860 presidential election, the state supported Southern Democrat candidate John C. Breckinridge, giving him 40,768 votes (59.0% of the total of 69,095 ballots cast). John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, came in a distant second with 25,045 votes (36.25% of the total), with Stephen A. Douglas, a northern Democrat, receiving 3,282 votes (4.75%). Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate who won the national election, was not on the ballot in Mississippi. According to one Mississippian newspaper in the late 1850s:

Following the election of Lincoln, Mississippi convened a state secession convention in January 1861, and voted to leave the Union on January 9. The state then joined the Confederacy less than a month later, issuing an ordinance of secession listing their reasons for seceding, which proclaimed that "[o]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world".

Fulton Anderson, a Mississippian lawyer, delivered a speech to the Virginian secession convention in 1861, in which he declared that "grievances of the Southern people on the slavery question" and their opposition to the Republican Party's goal of "the ultimate extinction of slavery" were the primary catalysts of the state in declaring secession.

Along with South Carolina, Mississippi was one of only two states in the Union in 1860 in which the majority of the state's population were slaves.University of Virginia Library Historical Census Browser According to Jefferson Davis, Democratic US senator from Mississippi and future Confederate President, Mississippi joined the Confederacy because it "has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal", a sentiment perceived as being threatening to slavery, and because the "Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races", a position that Davis was opposed to.

Military enlistment

The vast majority of white Mississippians supported slavery and the Confederate cause, and thousands volunteered to join the Confederate military. Around 80,000 white Mississippians served in the Confederate Army, supplying 45 infantry regiments, 18 cavalry regiments, multiple artillery batteries, and numerous smaller organizations. Twelve of the infantry regiments and two of the artillery batteries served in the Eastern theater as part of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee, the remainder of the Mississippi infantry and artillery troops, along with all of the Mississippi cavalry units fought in the Western Theater as part of the Army of Tennessee led by Generals Braxton Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston, Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Bell Hood. Initially the Confederate armies were filled by volunteers, until Confederate conscription came into effect in 1862, making white men age 18-35 eligible for the draft. Various exemptions applied, but as time went on these were limited and the age range was expanded as well, with men age 17-50 eligible for conscription by the war's end. According to one historian's analysis, approximately one third of Mississippi's Confederate soldiers died during the course of the conflict.

There were regional variations in enthusiasm for Confederate service. The likelihood of a man volunteering for service increased with a person's amount of personal property owned, including slaves. Poor men were less likely to volunteer. Men living near the Mississippi River, regardless of their wealth or other characteristics, were less likely to join the army than were those living in the state's interior. Many military-age men in these western counties had moved elsewhere. Union control of the Mississippi River made its neighbors especially vulnerable, and river-county residents apparently left their communities (and often the Confederacy) rather than face invasion.Larry M. Logue, "Who joined the Confederate army? Soldiers, civilians, and communities in Mississippi." Journal of social history (1993): 611-623.

In addition to regular Confederate forces, many men served in the Mississippi State Troops, formed in 1862 from the pre-war state militia. The State Troops were under the Governor's direct control, although by law they could take orders from Confederate officers. Poorly organized and managed ineffectively, the State Troops suffered from a lack of discipline and high rates of absenteeism, with many men only joining to avoid being drafted into the regular army. Most of the State Troops cavalry units were mustered into Confederate service in 1864 as part of Forrest's Cavalry Corps.

As the war progressed, a considerable number enslaved men escaped or were freed by advancing Union troops. Initially barred from military service, the United States Colored Troops was formed on May 22, 1863 to allow African-American men to enlist in the Union army. More than 17,000 Mississippian former slaves fought for the Union. Black soldiers died at at higher rate than their white counterparts,Herbert Aptheker, "Negro Casualties in the Civil War", "The Journal of Negro History", Vol. 32, No. 1. (January, 1947). and many Black Mississippi troops distinguished themselves in military service, such as Wilson Brown, a US Navy sailor born as a slave in Natchez who won the Medal of Honor for bravery. An unknown number of enslaved men in Mississippi performed forced labor on behalf of the Confederate government, building fortifications and acting as servants for Confederate officers.

The number of white troops contributed by the state to the Union cause was among the lowest of the slave-holding states, although as the war progressed many Confederate troops deserted and expressed pro-Union sentiments. 545 white Mississippians joined the Union Army,Rein, Christopher. (2001). Trans-Mississippi Southerners in the Union Army, 1862-1865. LSU Master's Theses. Retrieved February 7, 2021. with only a single unit of white Mississippi troops, the 1st Battalion, Mississippi Mounted Rifles formed for service during the war.

Government and politics

Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus, elected in 1859, was a member of the extreme pro-secession faction, known as the "Fire-Eaters". In his inaugural address, Governor Pettus said that the South's only way to maintain slavery was secession, and he pledged to defend the "superiority and supremacy of the white race" against "Black Republicans".

Mississippi's entire Congressional delegation at the time of secession were pro-slavery Democrats, including figures of national prominence such as Senator Jefferson Davis, Senator Albert G. Brown, and US Representative William Barksdale. Mississippi's representatives and senators all withdrew from the US Congress in January 1861, following Mississippi's secession, and many of them took up positions in the Confederate Army or stood for election to the Confederate States Congress.

A formal two-party system did not have time to develop in the Confederacy. Nevertheless, a pro-administration faction supportive of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and an anti-administration faction (often made up of former Whigs) emerged during Congressional debates. Following the 1863 Confederate States House of Representatives elections, more anti-administration members were elected to the Confederate Congress, including Mississippi representatives Jehu Amaziah Orr and John Tillman Lamkin who consistently voted against the administration's policies, giving voice to those who were discontented with the war.

As an example of Herrenvolk democracy, only white men in Mississippi were eligible to vote. Despite the impact of war, state and national elections were held consistently and the state legislature continued to function throughout the Civil War period. After the state capital of Jackson was burned in 1863, the legislature continued to meet at Columbus and Macon.

Governor Pettus was prevented by term limits for running for reelection in the 1863 Mississippi gubernatorial election, and a three-way contest was held between the conservative General Charles Clark, former Whig Absolom M. West, and fire-eater Reuben Davis. Clark won by a wide margin, indicating a weariness with the type of extremist bravado that had led Mississippi out of the Union in 1861, but Clark was not a peace advocate, stating in his inaugural speech that his war-ravaged state "yet has ample resources both in men and means" to continue the fight. p. 37-39. Clark remained in office until May 22, 1865, when he was removed by US troops and imprisoned.

Emancipation of slaves

As soon as Union troops arrived in Mississippi, enslaved people began seeking safety and freedom by fleeing towards Union-held areas. Portions of northwestern Mississippi were under Union control on January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. All of Mississippi had been declared "in rebellion" in the Proclamation, and Union forces accordingly began to free slaves in the U.S.-controlled areas of Mississippi at once.Ira Berlin et al., eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861–1867, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 260 By war's end, approximately one-third to one-half of Mississippi's 436,000 enslaved people had already been freed.

According to one Confederate lieutenant from Mississippi, slavery was the cause for which the state declared secession from the Union, saying that "This country without slave labor would be completely worthless ... We can only live & exist by that species of labor: and hence I am willing to fight to the last."

Unionism, desertion, & discontent

Not all white Mississippians were eager advocates of secession, and during the election of members of the state secession convention in January 1861, a sizeable number of delegates were sent to represent Unionist voices. Pro-unionists came from poorer counties where a smaller proportion of the white population owned slaves, and also from slaveholding counties with massive plantations, where the richest plantation owners feared (correctly) that war would put their lands and holdings of human chattel at risk.