A New History of Mississippi

Chapter Six: Civil War: Disaster and Freedom

154 Chapter Six Civil War: Disaster and Freedom In congressional debates, Reuben Davis warned his colleagues that failing to protect slavery and denying slaveholders their right to expand into the territories would lead to war and that southerners would resist coercion even if it meant devastating their homeland and making it a wasteland. Yet despite his prophesy, he supported secession. A decade of rhetoric since a majority of white Mississippians supported the Compromise of 1850 boxed the Democratic lawyer-planters into an inescapable position. Secession became a matter of honor because political leaders gave their word over and over throughout the decade as they escalated the debate to eliminate their political rivals and to convince the electorate that further compromise would violate the voters’ honor. Mississippi’s leaders knew what they had done and understood the price that the South would pay for secession. Prosperity based on high cotton prices and slavery deluded the lawyer-planters and most southerners into believing that their economy and their social system pointed to the future both for themselves and the world. Events of the 1850s persuaded them that the North intended to force an end to slavery. For slaveholders, that meant economic ruin. For nonslaveholders, a free society placed them on par with the black population, which they viewed as unacceptable. As a minority, white Mississippians felt the need to keep the black majority enslaved in order to protect themselves from demands for equality. The Civil War initiated a century of racial conflict in Mississippi pitting blacks against whites—first to end slavery and then to achieve racial equality. Few, aside from the leading political leaders, foresaw where secession would lead. The Mississippi legislature, meeting alongside the secession convention,refused to vote adequate funds to permit the hard-charging Pettus to prepare the state’s defenses. Instead, the convention created a military commission to rein in the governor lest he involve the state in unnecessary conflict. In Oxford, the chancellor of the university tendered his resignation after all the students abandoned their studies and enlisted for the war, but the board persuaded him to withdraw it and encouraged him to plan for 155 Civil War: Disaster and Freedom | the fall session on the assumption that war could be avoided. In Vicksburg, the female academy announced its fall schedule. Excitement ran high. The returning congressional members described passing through towns illuminated by thousands of candles, with crowds singing and cannons booming salutes.Secession released a decade of tension,and Mississippians celebrated the end of the Union and the bright prospect of increasing prosperity.Based on recent memories of the Mexican War, they assumed any fighting would be brief and that because of their military prowess, southerners would triumph easily. As with the Mexican War, Mississippians volunteered in such numbers that Pettus could not begin to handle the influx of heady men ready to whip the Yankees. The state lacked the means of equipping any of the units,but local communities often saw to their volunteer company’s needs. Local leaders paid to arm and clothe a company, and the grateful company often elected their patron to lead them into battle. Pettus exerted himself by asking for militia arms early from the U.S. arsenal in Louisiana and buying shotguns with the little funds that he possessed. He appointed Jefferson Davis to lead Mississippi ’s armed forces, but when the Montgomery convention asked Davis to become president of the new Confederate States of America (CSA), Davis resigned. Pettus next turned to Bolivar County planter Charles Clark to head the military. Clark toured the state to inspect the units springing up in almost every community and bluntly told a hostile crowd in Vicksburg that they must look to the governor for leadership and that they could not determine policies themselves. In Natchez, he observed that the militia reminded him of “women with broom handles.” The new CSA army offered Clark a commission, and he escaped the messy Mississippi military situation in June 1861.James L.Alcorn,the Whig Coahoma lawyer-planter who opposed secession until the final vote, stood next in line on the military commission to get the appointment, but Pettus refused to give it to him and turned to Reuben Davis, another member of the commission who had commanded the second Mississippi regiment in the Mexican War. Trying to manage the horde of volunteers, Pettus sent troops to Alabama and Florida to assist in assaulting U.S.facilities and halted accepting any more companies...