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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-6953 COICER, William Leon, 1943- COTTON AND FAITH; A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEW OF MISSISSIPPI WARTIME FINANCE, 1861-1865. ITie University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1973 History, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE COTTON AND FAITH; A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEW OF MISSISSIPPI WARTIME FINANCE, 1861-1865 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY WILLIAM LEON COKER Norman, Oklahoma 1973 COTTON AND FAITH; A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEW OF MISSISSIPPI WARTIME FINANCE, 1861-1865 APPROVED BY Mu f . ^ ^ 2 A. 'Tle-nusm Sf. DISSERTATION COMMITTEE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ........................................ iv Chapter I. MISSISSIPPI ON THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR . 1 II. A FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND TO MISSISSIPPI WARTIME FINANCE ........... 39 III. LEGISLATIVE FAILURE .......................... 67 IV. POPULAR REACTION TO INITIAL WARTIME MEASURES. 98 V. LEGISLATIVE SUCCESS .......................... 129 VI. DISLOYALTY, DISRUPTION AND DISSENSION . .158 VII. THE COURSE OF MONETARY ACCEPTANCE.............200 VIII. POLICY CONFLICTS BETWEEN MISSISSIPPI AND CONFEDERATE OFFICIALS ..................... 226 IX. THE ADVENT OF SERIOUS DISILLUSIONMENT .... 251 X. THE DOWNFALL OF A D R E A M ....................... 278 XI. CONCLUSIONS.................................... 317 APPENDIX ................................ 327 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......... 332 111 INTRODUCTION Waging a war against the Northern people from 1861 to 1865 involved a great deal more for Mississippians than raising and equipping volunteer regiments. As a result of the war situation, the destitute became a tremendous burden on state officials as the death of providers, scarcity of necessities, and Federal invasion daily added families to this category. Subsisting the military forces, combined with feeding and clothing the needy, presented Mississippi officials with problems which alone taxed state resources heavily. Yet, these problems, great as they were, proved only a part of the very difficult situation facing Mississippi dur ing the Civil War. The state’s people were by no means united in their views concerning secession and the efficacy of war as a panacea for existing sectional problems. A significant portion of the population firmly believed the Union should be preserved at all costs, and when secession precluded that, remained obstinately aloof from either Con federate or Mississippi officials. Then as Confederate and state policies— particularly those regarding impressment and conscription— unfolded, thousands more in Mississippi iv disavowed any further support for "the cause." Thus, state officials never could depend on anything approaching a uni fied population during the mammoth struggle which ensued. Mississippians traditionally declined to invest excess capital in industry, choosing instead to return any surplus profits gained through agricultural pursuits back into ex panding that system through the acquisition of more land and slaves. Therefore, when war cut off the Western sources of supplies, and the blockade prevented the exportation of cotton, Mississippi officials found themselves forced to create a self-sufficient system. Since no domestic supply of such necessities as salt, grain, and medicines existed in 1861, state authorities were faced with the vast problem of either creating such supplies at home, or finding some way to break through the circle of Northern military forces to tap some source outside the state. To obtain necessary articles, to maintain an army, and to provide for a multitude of destitute within the state, required vast expenditures of money— and in 1861 the state possessed none. Since Mississippi had formerly repudiated its "faith and credit," little remained of either when the war forced the immediate creation of a comprehensive financial structure. Mississippi's record of fiscal irresponsibility precluded any foreign help in absorbing bond or money issues, thus leaving the state's citizens as the only source from which wealth could be obtained to act as a foundation for a workable financial structure. How this was accomplished, V amid a seriously divided people beset by inflation and scarcity, invaded and largely occupied by an enemy force, and dependent upon a distrusted and often despised National Government forms the basis of this study. VI CHAPTER I MISSISSIPPI ON THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR For four decades prior to 1860 constant irritation ex isted between the people residing in the Southern states and those living in the North. Commencing before the South ern political stranglehold on the Federal government ever came under serious challenge with the debate over nullifi cation in 1833, a series of events occurred which taken to gether indicated to both the North and South that geograph ical divisions were also becoming political boundaries. Slavery, by 1820 an almost exclusively Southern institution, had since its gradual evolution in the last half of the Sev enteenth Century, evoked both support and opposition from people residing in all sections of the United States. How ever, beginning with the Missouri controversy in 1820, the debate over slavery assumed a far more menacing dimension. Most of those who attacked slavery after that fateful year haled from the North; while the practitioners and defenders of the institution lived, almost invariably, in the South. Thus, after 1820, the slavery issue became a distinctly geographical one which this issue, combined as it inevitably was with other sectional grievances, produced what appeared 1 2 by 1860 as two manifestly dichotomous societies; one in the North and one in the South.1 Peaceful coexistence between the increasingly divergent social ideologies developing in the North and South would have proven extremely difficult had disparities concerning slavery represented the only major issues. But this was not the case. Adding immense complications was a great re ligious revival in some areas of the northeast, which touched off a whole series of reform movements. While these reform impulses were directed toward correcting a number of soci etal shortcomingsWhat disturbed the South most was that by far the greater part of reformist energy appeared directed toward what became the "sin" of slaveholding. The motivation behind this shifting of the grounds upon which Northern reformers attacked the institution of slavery originated in what was termed perfectionism, which demanded the personal involvement of its adherents in the business of the Lord. Because perfectionism held out the possibility of ultimate salvation to those willing to sacrifice for the cause of humanity, the scattered opposition to slavery was ^Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York, 1966); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970); Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came (New York, 1950); David B. Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, 1969); Stan ley Elkins, Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959). Moore says that there were two societies in America, a Northern and a Southern so ciety. Foner and Stampp describe the Northern mind, and Davis and Elkins demonstrate how these two societies came into conflict. 3 forged into a white-hot, uncompromising

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