IT is necessary to a correct understanding of the history
of the period which it is proposed to cover in this chapter
to review briefly the steps leading up to the beginning of
hostilities with the United States.

The perpetuation and extension of the system of negro
slavery, the real cause of the Civil War, was declared by
the Supreme Court of Mississippi in 1837 to be a part of
the public policy of the state. ¹ Three years before this deci-
sion was made, the people of the state repudiated unequivo-
cally the doctrine of nullification and secession. On the
9th of June, 1834, the Democratic state convention, pre-
sided over by General Thomas Hinds, unanimously resolved
that "a constitutional right of secession from the Union,
on the part of a single state as asserted by the nullifying
leaders of South Carolina, is utterly unsanctioned by the
Constitution, which was framed to establish, not to destroy,
the Union." ² Secession in Mississippi was nothing more
than an abstract question until the adoption by Congress of
the policy of excluding slavery from the territories. What
is believed to have been the first organized opposition to this
policy was made by a state convention at Jackson in Octo-
ber, 1849. A number of resolutions was passed by this
body, one of which declared that in certain contingencies
their separate welfare might be consulted by the "formation

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