Mississippi, state, United States: Territorial Status and Statehood

In the Pinckney Treaty (1795), Spain accepted lat. 31°N as the northern boundary of its territory but did not evacuate Natchez until the arrival of American troops in 1798. Congress immediately created the Mississippi Territory, with Natchez as the capital and William C. C. Claiborne as the governor. After Georgia's cession (1802) of its Western lands to the United States (see Yazoo land fraud) and the Louisiana Purchase (1803), a land boom swept Mississippi. The high price of cotton and the cheap, fertile land brought settlers thronging in, most of them via the Natchez Trace, from the Southern Piedmont region and even from New England. A few attained great wealth, but most simply managed a living.

In 1817 Mississippi became a state, with substantially its present-day boundaries; the eastern section of the Mississippi Territory was organized as Alabama Territory. The aristocratic planter element of the Natchez region initially dominated Mississippi's government, as the state's first constitution (1817) showed. With the spread of Jacksonian democracy, however, the small farmer came into his own, and the new constitution adopted in 1832 was quite liberal for its time.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Natural Disasters and Economic Difficulties
• The Persistence of Racial Conflict
• Public Works
• Disenfranchisement and Sharecropping
• Reconstruction
• Expansionism and Secession
• Territorial Status and Statehood
• Native Inhabitants and European Settlement
• Government and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures

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