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Timothy B. Smith - The Mississippi Secession Convention: Delegates and Deliberations in Politics and War, 1861-1865

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Book:
The Mississippi Secession Convention: Delegates and Deliberations in Politics and War, 1861-1865
Author:
Timothy B Smith
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi
Genre:
History / Science
Year:
2016
City:
Jackson
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5 / 5
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The Mississippi Secession Convention is the first full treatment of any secession convention to date. Studying the Mississippi convention of 1861 offers insight into how and why southern states seceded and the effects of such a breech. Based largely on primary sources, this book provides a unique insight into the broader secession movement.

There was more to the secession convention than the mere act of leaving the Union, which was done only three days into the deliberations. The rest of the three-week January 1861 meeting as well as an additional week in March saw the delegates debate and pass a number of important ordinances that for a time governed the state. As seen through the eyes of the delegates themselves, with rich research into each member, this book provides a compelling overview of the entire proceeding.

The effects of the convention gain the most analysis in this study, including the political processes that, after the momentous vote, morphed into unlikely alliances. Those on opposite ends of the secession question quickly formed new political allegiances in a predominantly Confederate-minded convention. These new political factions formed largely over the issues of central versus local authority, which quickly played into Confederate versus state issues during the Civil War. In addition, author Timothy B. Smith considers the lasting consequences of defeat, looking into the effect secession and war had on the delegates themselves and, by extension, their state, Mississippi.

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THE MISSISSIPPI SECESSION CONVENTION

THE
MISSISSIPPI
SECESSION
CONVENTION

Delegates and Deliberations in Politics and War, 18611865

TIMOTHY B. SMITH

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

First printing 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Timothy B., 1974
The Mississippi Secession Convention : delegates and deliberations in politics and war, 18611865 / Timothy B. Smith.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62846-097-1 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-1-62846-098-8 (e-book) 1. SecessionMississippi. 2. SecessionMississippiSources. 3. MississippiPolitics and governmentTo 1865. 4. MississippiPolitics and governmentTo 1865Sources. 5. Political leadershipMississippiHistory19th century. 6. Political leadershipMississippiHistory19th centurySources. 7. VotingMississippiHistory19th century. 8. VotingMississippiHistory19th centurySources. I. Title.
F341.S66 2014

973.713dc23

2014008804

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

TO
DAVID G. SANSING

CONTENTS

PrologueDramatis Personae:
The Major Actors in the Mississippi Secession Convention

PREFACE

A NORTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER COVERING THE MISSISSIPPI SECESsion convention wrote a seemingly odd line given the situation early in 1861. Looking on the crowd of delegates debating such aspects as secession, connection to the new Confederacy, and war, the New York Tribune reporter wrote, You feel that the future historian may well say of these times: There were giants in those days. This statement gives rise to thoughts of heroes or villains as far as secession is concerned, and there are many even today who flock to each school of thought. But while this book attempts to understand both those delegates and their deliberations, it does not seek to lay blame or canonize. Instead, I choose to hone in on the reporters reality that a future historian would examine these men. That is exactly what I propose to do in this study.

The great historical riddle of secession, historian Christopher Olsen has called it, has actually been the subject of much writing through the decades. Well-known historians such as William Freehling and David M. Potter have covered the topic in great detail. Concerning Mississippi specifically, one of the states foremost historians, Percy L. Rainwater, has written the seminal text on the subject, Mississippi: Storm Center of Secession. To Rainwater, the secession movement was primarily an effort to protect slavery. Writing in 1938, he argued that secession was a political device for preserving a social system which was believed to be in greater danger in the Union than out of it. He described Mississippians as being thin-skinned in defense of slavery, thus resulting in the major 1860 move toward secession. In the end, he concluded that her valor in defense ran far ahead of her discretion.

That was certainly a novel thesis in 1938, parting ways as it did with the famous Dunning school of historiography as well as the Lost Cause mentality. Yet its accuracy is very apparent today because many other historians have followed Rainwaters blazed trail. These individuals have examined Mississippis secession story from deeper and varied angles, such as Ralph A. Wooster in his quantitative examination of the delegates. His

William L. Barneys The Road to Secession (1972) and particularly The Secessionist Impulse (1974) argue that economic and racial factors were predominant in Mississippis movement toward secession. The middle class of lawyers and young planters needed secession to keep up their self-esteem by remaining masters to blacks and superiors to poorer whites. To get poor whites on board, who had little stake in leaving the Union economically, they used race and warned against Lincoln-led black equality in areas such as marriage, education, and jobs. Moreover, nonslaveholders saw in secession a chance to advance into the slaveholding class, and small-scale slave owners saw a chance to become big planters. Thus most support for secession came from new cotton counties opened since the Indian-suppressing days of Andrew Jackson, when new citizens formed and maintained an almost unyielding bond with the Democratic Party. In those new areas, the chance for upward mobility was greatest. Conversely, older cotton counties along the Mississippi River, containing large numbers of rich planters and old Whigs, saw little to gain in secession and thus were much less enthusiastic.

Most recently, Christopher Olsens social history of the movement has added another layer of analysis that seems contradictory to Barney, but they may in fact not be mutually exclusive at all. While Barney focuses on party functions between Democrats and old Whigs on the national and state level, Olsen argues that Mississippi and probably other Deep South states seceded because of an antiparty political culture at the most basic county and precinct level. That antiparty culture revolved around masculinity, honor, violence, and community and caused a severe reaction to Lincolns election that led to ultimate confrontation. Where Barney sees white supremacy and racism as the key to understanding the nonslaveholders, Olsen sees a personal and communal reaction leaning toward Jacksonian Democracy. It was, after all, under Jacksons leadership that many of those young citizens settled into and became rooted in their locations in the 1830s. In contrast, border states had a more developed party system and less dependence on personal responses, thus shaping their delayed reactions.

Other historians have devoted similar study to the subject, beginning with Luther W. Barnhardts 1922 masters thesis, The Secession Conventions of the Cotton South. Mississippi historian John K. Bettersworths important Confederate Mississippi pays some attention to the secession convention as

Despite so many studies, there is still a glaring gap in the academic treatment of secession in Mississippi. While Wooster and Barnhardt deal with the convention delegates and the deliberations themselves, most of the major sources on Mississippi secession look primarily at the politics, society, and events leading up to the actual convention. Rainwater, Olsen, and Barney all study the period prior to 1861, some reaching as far back as the 1820s. The capstone of each of their works is the convention itself, with the passage of the ordinance of secession three days into the convention as the final act. They seek to explain why secession came by looking at the various facets and angles of the years prior to it. William L. Barney, in examining secession in both Mississippi and Alabama, interestingly wrote, In the main the conventions were not deliberative bodies in the sense of carefully assessing various alternatives and then hammering out compromises. He went on to explain his reasoning, focusing entirely on the act of secession itself: The secessionists knew what they wanted and had the voting strength to push across their program regardless of what the cooperationists said.

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