Weapons of Mississippi

3. MILITIAS, OUTLAWS, AND KENTUCKY RIFLES: WEAPONS OF TERRITORIAL MISSISSIPPI

28 MILITIAS, OUTLAWS, AND KENTUCKY RIFLES WEAPONS OF TERRITORIAL 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 3 MILITIAS, OUTLAWS, AND KENTUCKY RIFLES 29 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. MILITIAS, OUTLAWS, AND KENTUCKY RIFLES 30 TERRITORIAL MILITIA Oneof thefirstordersof businessforWinthropSergeant,Mississippi’sfirst 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...