Town and Country in the Old South : Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi, 1770-1860
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TOWN AND COUNTRY IN THE OLD SOUTH: VICKSBURG AND WARREN COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, 1770-1860 By CHRISTOPHER CHARLES MORRIS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1991 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance and encouragement of a number of people, and to thank them for their kindness. Sam Hill and Helen Hill gave me a place to stay when I made my first visit to Jackson. At Vicksburg the staff at the Old Court House Museum received me with open arms. Gordon Cotton's and Blanche Terry's knowledge of Warren County history and of the local documents proved invaluable. The staff at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History was always helpful. In particular I want to thank Anne Lipscombe. Alison Beck, of the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas, helped me wade through much of the as yet largely uncatalogued Natchez Trace Collection. She brought several important documents to my attention that I never could have found on my own. Several people in Vicksburg and Warren County took an interest in my work and helped me to discover their past. Special thanks go to Dee and John Leigh Hyland for being so forthcoming with their family history. Two other local researchers gave me the benefit of their experience. Clinton Bagley guided me through the records in the Adams County Courthouse in Natchez, and Charles L. Sullivan helped me find my way through the massive Claiborne Collection in the ii Mississippi Department of Archives and history. Several people read and commented on earlier versions of some chapters. In particular I want to thank Cheryll Ann Cody of the University of Houston and Jack S. Blocker, Jr., of Huron College, for their comments on an earlier version of Chapter 8, and Anita H. Rutman for her comments of Chapter 1. Edward Ayres of the University of Virginia and Stephen Ashe of Knoxville, Tennessee, provided valuable comments on an earlier version of Chapter 6, when I presented it at a Southern Historical Association session several years ago. I also benefitted from the comments of Ronald P. Formisano, who made a careful reading of Chapter 9. My fellow graduate students at the University of Florida, whose prodding to "just get done" gave me the energy to get done, heard parts of my dissertation when presented orally in classes and colloquia. They always responded enthusiastically— sometimes too enthusiastically. Jeffrey Adler, Marvin Harris, Murdo MacLeod, Darrett B. Rutman, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown read and commented on every chapter. When I first arrived at the University of Florida Bertram Wyatt-Brown gave me his old typewriter and put me to work. He never let up. Darrett Rutman was just as demanding. If there is something of themselves reflected in my work then I have at least paid a part of the debt I owe for their comments, advice, encouragement and support. iii Funding for researching and writing came from the Department of History at the University of Florida. I also spent the better part of a year living and researching in Mississippi with the support of a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Gordon Cotton, keeper of the oral history of Warren County, gave me a place to stay, showed me around the county, and put me on the path of more fascinating stories than I could find room for in a long manuscript. I am grateful for his friendship and cherish the memories of my days as the scholar-in-residence at Campbell's Swamp. Final thanks go to my parents, who, if not always sure of what I was doing, exactly, kept all doubts to themselves and gave me all the support in the world. And to Stephanie Cole. Her knowledge, insight, and understanding makes living with my sharpest editor and toughest critic an absolute delight. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS H ABSTRACT vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE SOUTHERN COMMUNITY .... 1 Notes 32 CHAPTER 2 PIONEERS OF THE LOOSA CHITTO 40 Notes 78 CHAPTER 3 ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND THE RISE OF THE PLANTERS' WORLD 85 Notes 124 CHAPTER 4 RELATIONS WITHIN HOUSEHOLDS: WHITE FAMILIES 139 f Notes 178 CHAPTER 5 HOUSEHOLDS WITHIN HOUSEHOLDS: MASTERS AND SLAVES 185 Notes 222 CHAPTER 6 BROTHERS AND NEIGHBORS: THE POLITICS OF PATRIARCHY 231 Notes 266 CHAPTER 7 HAMLETS AND TOWNS: THE URBAN PROCESS .... 270 Notes 289 CHAPTER 8 A PLACE APART FROM THE COUNTRYSIDE: THE CITY OF VICKSBURG 295 Notes CHAPTER 9 ORGANIZING A COUNTY COMMUNITY: NEIGHBORHOODS, PARTIES AND THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT 3 35 V Notes 383 CONCLUSION 392 APPENDIX A THE STUDY DATA 405 APPENDIX B LOCAL EXCHANGE PATTERNS 409 APPENDIX C CATTLE, SLAVES AND COTTON 410 APPENDIX D HOUSEHOLDS 414 APPENDIX E MORTALITY AND FERTILITY 419 APPENDIX F SLAVE HIRING 421 APPENDIX G CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 428 APPENDIX H ELECTIONS AND OFFICE HOLDING 431 BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 466 vi Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy TOWN AND COUNTRY IN THE OLD SOUTH: VICKSBURG AND WARREN COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, 1770-1860 By Christopher Charles Morris August, 1991 Chairperson: Bertram Wyatt-Brown Major Department: History This is a study of the formation of southern society in Warren County, Mississippi. Originally settled in the last quarter of the eighteenth century by pioneer hog drovers from North and South this place resembled more the nation's other western regions, such as Illinois and Ohio, than the older plantation districts of Virginia and the Carolinas. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, however, the region around present-day Vicksburg developed into a slave and cotton plantation society. Three distinct stages marked Warren County's economic and social development. From the mid-1770s to 1790 homesteaders lived by extensive exploitation of local resources, practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, and participated only minimally in a national or international market. During the last decade of the century some vii homesteaders began to raise large herds of cattle for sale in a regional market. After 1810 or so those who had raised cattle began to acquire slaves and plant cotton. Significantly, farmers with small or no cattle herds did not choose to plant cotton until population growth, the disappearance of wildlife, and the rolling back of the forests brought about the demise of the pioneer economy and thus forced them eventually to take up cotton planting. Changing material conditions and economic development stimulated changes in the character of social relations. Growing reliance on the market drew households out of their neighborhoods and away from each other. Local patterns of cooperation broke down, while struggles for increasingly scarce resources frequently turned violent. Individuals came to depend on extended kin-networks to marshall collective resources, which placed tremendous power in older men with legal control over family property, and provided the basis for southern patriarchy. Changes in material conditions altered relations between men and women, masters and slaves, slaveholders and nonslaveholders. This study is based on data gleaned from public records and assembled in the form of more than 6,000 cases. Traditional qualitative sources are also used where they offer insight into the perceptions and meanings Warren County residents gave to behavior observable through quantitative analysis. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE SOUTHERN COMMUNITY The messenger found him in his rose garden, or so the story is told. With characteristic stoicism Jefferson Davis accepted the news of his selection as President of the new Confederate States of America. The next morning he bade farewell to family and neighbors, to the people who had kept his home for much of his adult life, and then, nearly missing the steamer to Vicksburg, began a roundabout journey to Montgomery. It probably did not occur to Davis that he might never live in Warren County again. No doubt more urgent matters occupied his thoughts. But if it did, as he rode upriver he may have surveyed the countryside one last time, forming a mental picture to last through the trying years ahead, a picture of the community that was the South he knew best, the South that he would lead through four years of war. Hurricane plantation, the home of his older brother Joseph, sat just beyond the bank on the right as the "Natchez" paddled upstream. Still probably the finest mansion around, there were now rivals to its magnificence where only a short 1 2 while ago had stood crude log dwellings, or else nothing at all. Cotton fields, protected behind a new system of levees that bordered the river, spread out over land that had once been flood plain and cypress swamp. Past Hurricane and around a sharp bend, Davis next would have spied a plantation that once belonged to former Governor John A. Quitman, whose father-in-law had acguired the land in a series of purchases from several homesteading families from New England. About ten miles beyond the Quitman place sat Warrenton, a village that years ago had been the county seat and center of local trade. Now, most steamboats, including the "Natchez", passed it by. Another ten miles brought the riverboat to the public wharf at Vicksburg. Here the president-elect disembarked and walked along Jackson Street up the steep hill to the courthouse. Built by slaves, with its great columns on four sides, perched high on a hill at the top of a bluff overlooking miles of river and Louisiana lowlands, the Warren County courthouse symbolized, as it does today, the civilization that was the Old South.