John Jones McRae (January 10, 1815May 31, 1868) was an American politician from Mississippi. A Democrat,Colin J. McRae Collection, Columbia, South Carolina: South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum he served in the Mississippi House of Representatives, the US House and Senate, the Confederate Congress, and as governor of Mississippi.
Biography McRae was born in Sneedsboro, North Carolina. In 1817, he moved with his parents to Winchester, Mississippi. McRae graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1834, and the same year he founded the town of Enterprise in Clarke County. McRae attempted to find a navigable path from his new town to the sea via the Chickasawhay River, and in 1842 managed to sail a steamboat from Lake Ponchartrain to Enterprise.
He studied law in Pearlington and was admitted to the bar. McRae was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, serving from 1847 to 1851. During that time, he helped establish the University of Mississippi.Donald C. Simmons, Jr., Confederate Settlements in British Honduras, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2001, p. 91
McRae was selected as a Democratic US Senator from Mississippi in 1851 to fill a vacancy, serving in that office until 1852. He ran for Governor of Mississippi in the November 1853 election, defeating his Whig opponent Francis M. Rogers by a sizeable margin. In the 1855 election he stood again, defeating his Know Nothing opponent by a similar margin to the prior election.
Prevented by term limits from running again for governor, McRae left that office in 1857 and stood for Congress, winning a seat in the US House of Representatives. A staunch advocate of southern secession, McRae withdrew from Congress in January 1861 when Mississippi left the Union. He then won election to the First Confederate Congress in 1861, but was defeated for reelection by John Tillman Lamkin in 1863 due to war-weariness in his home state.
He died on a visit to British Honduras (now Belize), where his brother Colin J. McRae lived in exile.
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