Mississippi
msapostille.Com

On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became the 20th state to join the Union. By the 1830s, most Native Americans remaining in the state had been forcibly displaced to the Oklahoma Territory, and Euro-American settlers had moved in and established farms and plantations. Cotton became integral to Mississippi's economy, with cotton plantations relying heavily upon black slave labor. By the mid-1800s, Mississippi was America's leading cotton-producer and cotton was the nation's top export.

While pro-slavery sentiments predominated among plantation owners, there was at least one remarkable exception in Isaac Ross (1760-1836), who owned Prospect Hill Plantation. In "Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today" (2005), Alan Huffman documents how Ross freed his slaves and paid for their transportation back to Africa. While the repatriation of former slaves to Africa was a late-18th-century attempt to correct the wrongs of slavery, such well-intended efforts did not succeed, particularly, in improving the lives of people descended from Africans and did not forestall the Civil War.

Mississippi seceded from the Union in January 1861, the second state to do so. During the Civil War, a number of fierce battles between Confederate and Union forces took place across the state, including such locations as Corinth and Vicksburg. The war left much of the state in economic ruin. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union in February 1870.

The years between the Civil War and World War II (1939-45) marked a period of economic and social stagnation in Mississippi. Small farms replaced large plantations, and many residents lived an impoverished, rural lifestyle. However, World War II helped ignite industrial growth in the state, and by the latter decades of the 20th century, Mississippi's longtime agriculture-based economy had been balanced out with manufacturing and service jobs.

Tags:  mississippi state cotton union africa plantation plantations slaves civil while