Mississippi Territory


The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that was created under an organic act passed by the Congress of the United States. It was approved and signed into law by President John Adams on April 7, 1798.
The Territory was dissolved after 19 years on December 10, 1817, when the western half of the Territory was admitted to the Union as the new State of Mississippi. The eastern half was redesignated by Congress and then 5th President James Monroe as the new Alabama Territory for the next two years, sandwiched between the new state of Mississippi in the west, Georgia to the east, Tennessee on the north, and to the south with a narrow strip of land to the Mobile Bay and Gulf of Mexico coast and further to the southeast of the western panhandle of the Royal Spanish colony of Spanish Florida in the Florida peninsula.
The Territory of Alabama was admitted to the Union as the State of Alabama on December 14, 1819. The Chattahoochee River played a significant role in the definition of the Territory's borders during its brief two years of existence, 1817-1819.
The population greatly increased in the southeast United States with movement and immigration from the East Coast along the Atlantic Ocean as it grew in the early 1800s from settlement, and American westward and southwestward expansion from the original Thirteen States, with cotton being an important cash crop.

History

The United States and Spain disputed these lands east of the Mississippi River until Spain relinquished its claim with the Treaty of Madrid, initially signed in 1795 by the two countries' representatives. The Mississippi Territory was organized in 1798 from these lands, in an area extending from 31° N latitude to 32°28' North — or approximately the southern half of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi. The territorial capital was originally in Natchez, but was moved to Washington, six miles up the Natchez Trace, on February 1, 1802.
The state of Georgia had maintained a claim over almost the entire area of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi, until it surrendered its claim in 1802 following the Yazoo land scandal. In 1804, Congress extended the boundaries of the Mississippi Territory to include all of the Georgia cession.
Beginning about 1808 the legislature of the Mississippi Territory held its official meetings in one of the houses owned by Charles DeFrance of the Natchez District. The DeFrance house, also known as Assembly Hall, was located in Washington, Mississippi, about 10 miles from the city of Natchez.
In 1812, the US annexed the Mobile District of West Florida, between the Perdido River and the Pearl River. The U.S. declared that it had been included in the Louisiana Purchase. But Spain disputed this and maintained its own claim over the area.
The following year, a Federal statute was secretly enacted authorizing the President to take full possession of this area with the use of military force as deemed necessary. Accordingly, General James Wilkinson occupied this district with a military contingent; the Spanish colonial commandant offered no resistance. This annexation extended the Mississippi Territory south to the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern border being the boundary of the state of Tennessee, taking in all of what is now Alabama and Mississippi.
Federal statutes enacted on March 1 and 3, 1817, provided a plan for the division of the Mississippi Territory into the state of Mississippi in the west and the Alabama Territory in the east. On December 10, 1817, the division was finalized when the western portion was admitted to the Union as Mississippi, the 20th state.

Borders

The final boundary between Georgia and Mississippi Territory was defined to follow the Chattahoochee River north from the border with Spanish Florida. However, the Chattahoochee's upper course veers northeast, deep into Georgia. So the boundary was defined to follow the river until it turned northeast, and from that point to follow a straight line north to the 35th parallel. The line was not run straight north but rather angled to meet the northern border of the territory one-third of the way west, leaving the other two-thirds for two future states, Alabama and Mississippi.
Congress delineated the boundary between Mississippi and Alabama by dividing the territory into approximately equal-sized parts, similar in size to Georgia. The agriculturally productive lands were divided by a straight line running south from the northwest corner of Washington County to the Gulf of Mexico. The border north of this point was angled westward in order to keep Mississippi and Alabama roughly equal in size. At its northern end, this angled border follows a short section of the Tennessee River. Congress chose this boundary because if the straight line had been run all the way to the Tennessee border Mississippi would have jurisdiction over a small piece of hilly land cut off from the rest of the state by the wide Tennessee River.

Settlement

The attraction of vast amounts of high quality, inexpensive cotton land attracted hordes of settlers, mostly from Georgia and the Carolinas, and from tobacco areas of Virginia and North Carolina at a time when growing tobacco barely made a profit. From 1798 through 1820, the population soared from less than 9,000 to more than 22,000. Migration came in two fairly distinct waves – a steady movement until the outbreak of the War of 1812, and a flood afterward from 1815 through 1819. The postwar flood was caused by various factors, including high prices for cotton, the elimination of Indian titles to much of the land, new and improved roads, and the acquisition of new direct outlets to the Gulf of Mexico. The first migrants were traders and trappers, then herdsmen, and finally planters. The uplands in the Southwest frontier developed a relatively democratic society.
In the 1810 United States census, 11 counties in the Mississippi Territory reported the following population counts :
1810
Rank		County1800
Population		1810
Population
1Adams4,66010,002
2Wilkinson–5,068
3Amite–4,750
4Madison –4,699
5Jefferson2,9404,001
6Claiborne–3,102
7Washington 1,2502,920
8Franklin–2,016
9Baldwin –1,427
10Wayne–1,253
11Warren–1,114
Mississippi Territory8,85040,352

At statehood in 1817 there were 14 counties: Adams, Claiborne, Jefferson, Wilkinson, Amite, Franklin, Warren, Wayne, Marion, Greene, Hancock, Jackson, Lawrence, and Pike.

Cotton

After 1800, the development of a cotton economy in the South changed the economic relationship of native Indians with whites and slaves in Mississippi Territory. As Native Americans ceded their lands to whites, they became more isolated from whites and blacks. A great wave of public sales of former Indian land plus white migration into Mississippi Territory guaranteed the dominance of the developing cotton agriculture.

Government

President John Adams appointed Winthrop Sargent as the first governor of the Mississippi Territory, effective from May 1798 to May 1801. William C. C. Claiborne, a lawyer and former Democratic-Republican Congressman from Tennessee, was governor and superintendent of Indian affairs in the Mississippi Territory from 1801 through 1803. Although he favored acquiring some land from the Choctaw and Chickasaw, Claiborne was generally sympathetic and conciliatory toward the Indians. He worked long and patiently to iron out differences that arose, and to improve the material well-being of the Indians. He was also partly successful in promoting the establishment of law and order, as when his offering of a two thousand dollar reward helped destroy a gang of outlaws headed by Samuel Mason. His position on issues indicated a national rather than regional outlook, though he did not ignore his constituents. Claiborne expressed the philosophy of the Republican Party and helped that party defeat the Federalists. When a smallpox epidemic broke out in the Spring of 1802, Claiborne's actions resulted in the first recorded mass vaccination in the territory and saved Natchez from the disease.
George Mathews, a former governor of Georgia, was appointed the governorship, though the appointment was revoked before he took office. The third governor was Robert Williams, serving from May 1805 to March 1809.
David Holmes was the last governor of the Mississippi Territory, 1809–17. Holmes was generally successful in dealing with a variety of matters, including expansion, land policy, Indians, the War of 1812, and the constitutional convention of 1817. Often concerned with problems regarding West Florida, he had a major role in 1810 in negotiations which led to the peaceful occupation of part of that territory. McCain concludes that Holmes' success was not based on brilliance, but upon kindness, unselfishness, persuasiveness, courage, honesty, diplomacy, and intelligence.
The eastern half of the Mississippi Territory was labeled the Tombigbee District and later Washington County. Ignored by the territorial government, the inhabitants were beset by hostile neighbors, militant Indians, and the usual frontier problems of competing land claims and establishment of law. Solutions to these difficulties came slowly, and were not completely resolved when the territory gained statehood as the U.S. state of Alabama in 1819.