Mississippi - mĭsˌəsĭpˈē, one of the Deep South states of the United States. It is bordered by Alabama (E), the Gulf of Mexico (S), Arkansas and Louisiana, with most of the border formed by the Mississippi R. (W), and Tennessee (N).

Facts and Figures

Area, 47,716 sq mi (123,584 sq km). Pop. (2000) 2,844,658, a 10.5% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Jackson. Statehood, Dec. 10, 1817 (20th state). Highest pt., Woodall Mt., 806 ft (246 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Magnolia State. Motto,Virtute et Armis [By Valor and Arms]. State bird, mockingbird. State flower, magnolia. State tree, magnolia. Abbr., Miss.; MS

Geography

Mississippi's generally hilly landscape reaches its highest point (806 ft/246 m) in the northeastern corner of the state along the Tennessee River. The most distinctive region in the state's varied topography is the Mississippi Delta, a flat alluvial plain between the Mississippi and the Yazoo rivers in the western part of the state. A wide belt of longleaf yellow pine (the piney woods) covers most of southern Mississippi to within a few miles of the coastal-plain grasslands. Important there are lumbering and allied industries. Most of the state's rivers belong to either the Mississippi or the Alabama river systems, with the Pontoctoc Ridge the divide. The climate of Mississippi is subtropical in the southern part of the state and temperate in the northern part; the average annual rainfall is more than 50 in. (127 cm).

The state, in the path of waterfowl migration routes down the Mississippi valley and home to many species of birds, is noted for its duck and quail hunting. Along the Gulf Coast, a favorite fishing area, are several resort cities and part of Gulf Islands National Seashore. Historical sites in Mississippi include Old Spanish Fort, the oldest house on the Mississippi River, near Pascagoula, as well as Vicksburg National Military Park, Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, and Tupelo National Battlefield (see National Parks and Monuments, table). In Natchez and Biloxi are many fine antebellum mansions. Jackson is the capital and largest city. Other important cities are Biloxi, Greenville, Hattiesburg, and Meridian.

Economy

Mississippi is traditionally one of the more rural states in the Union; not until 1965 did manufacturing take over as the leading revenue-producing sector of its economy. In 2000, Mississippi ranked third in the nation in the production of cotton, but soil erosion resulting from overcultivation and the destruction caused by the boll weevil have led to the increased agricultural diversification. The other most important crops are rice and soybeans. Today broiler chicken production, aquaculture (chiefly catfish raising), and dairying are increasingly important. The state's most valuable mineral resources, petroleum and natural gas, have been developed only since the 1930s.

Industry has grown rapidly with the development of oil resources and has been helped by the Tennessee Valley Authority and by a state program to balance agriculture with industry, under which many communities have subsidized and attracted new industries. Revenue from industrial products, including chemicals, plastics, foods, and wood products, have exceeded those from agriculture in recent years. On the Gulf coast there is a profitable fishing and seafood processing industry, and gambling is now booming in Biloxi and in long impoversihed Tunica County, in the northwest. There are military air facilities at Columbus, Biloxi, and Meridian, as well as the Stennis Space Flight Center at Bay St. Louis. The state's per capita income, however, remains the lowest in the nation.

Government and Higher Education

Mississippi is governed under the 1890 constitution. The bicameral legislature consists of 52 senators and 122 representatives, all elected for four-year terms. The governor is also elected for a four-year term. The state has two U.S. senators, five representatives, and seven electoral votes. In 1991, Kirk Fordice was elected Mississippi's first Republican governor since Reconstruction; he was reelected in 1995. Democrat Ron Musgrove won the 1999 gubernatorial election but with less than a majority of the vote, which required the state house of representatives to confirm his win. Musgrove lost in 2003 to Republican Haley Barbour.

Institutions of higher learning in the state include the Univ. of Mississippi, at Oxford (which was also the home of writer William Faulkner) and at Jackson; Mississippi State Univ., at Mississippi State; the Univ. of Southern Mississippi, at Hattiesburg; Jackson State Univ., at Jackson; and Mississippi Univ. for Women, at Columbus.

History

Native Inhabitants and European Settlement

Hernando De Soto's expedition undoubtedly passed (1540–42) through the region, then inhabited by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez, but the first permanent European settlement was not made until 1699, when Pierre le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville, established a French colony on Biloxi Bay. Settlement accelerated in 1718, when the colony came under the French Mississippi Company, headed by the speculator John Law. The region was part of Louisiana until 1763, when, by the Treaty of Paris (see Paris, Treaty of) England received practically all the French territory E of the Mississippi River and also East Florida and West Florida, which had belonged to Spain.

English colonists, many of them retired soldiers, had made the Natchez district a thriving agricultural community, producing tobacco and indigo, by the time Bernardo de Gálvez captured it for Spain in 1779. By the Treaty of Paris of 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, the United States (with English approval) claimed as its southern boundary in the West lat. 31°N. Most of the present-day state of Mississippi was included in the area. Spain denied this claim, and the long, involved West Florida Controversy ensued.

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.

Expansionism and Secession

Land hunger increased as more new settlers arrived, lured by the continuing cotton boom. By a series of treaties (1820, 1830, and 1832), the Native Americans in the state were pushed west across the Mississippi. Mississippians were among the leading Southern expansionists seeking new land for cotton cultivation and the extension of slavery. After 1840 slaves in the state outnumbered nonslaves.

On Jan. 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union. State pride was highly gratified by the choice of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy. Civil War fighting did not reach Mississippi until Apr., 1862, when Union forces were victorious at Corinth and Iuka. Grant's brilliant Vicksburg campaign ended large-scale fighting in the state, but further destruction was caused by the army of Gen. W. T. Sherman in the course of its march from Vicksburg to Meridian. Moreover, cavalry of both the North and South, particularly the Confederate forces of Gen. N. B. Forrest, remained active.

Reconstruction

After the war Mississippi abolished slavery but refused to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and in Mar., 1867, under the Congressional plan of Reconstruction, it was organized with Arkansas into a military district commanded by Gen. E. O. C. Ord. After much agitation, a Republican-sponsored constitution guaranteeing basic rights to blacks was adopted in 1869. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union early in 1870 after ratifying the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and meeting other Congressional requirements.

While Republicans were in power, the state government was composed of new immigrants from the North, blacks, and cooperative white Southerners. A. K. Davis became the state's first African-American lieutenant governor in 1874. The establishment of free public schools was a noteworthy aspect of Republican rule. As former Confederates were permitted to return to politics and former slaves were increasingly intimidated (see Ku Klux Klan), the Democrats regained strength. The Republicans were defeated in the bitter election of 1875. Lucius Q. C. Lamar figured largely in the Democratic triumph and was the state's most prominent national figure for many years.

Disenfranchisement and Sharecropping

In Reconstruction days the Republicans could win only with solid African-American support. After Reconstruction blacks were virtually disenfranchised. White supremacy was bolstered by the Constitution of 1890, later used as a model by other Southern states; under its terms a prospective voter could be required to read and interpret any of the Constitution's provisions. Because at the turn of the century most black Mississippians could not read (neither could many