the lands of Mordecai Throckmorton near old Greenville, in Jefferson
county. The Board at its meeting agreed on this site recommended, and
ordered their next meeting to be held at old Greenville, on the 11th of
April following.
At this meeting the resolution proposing a site for the location of the
college was repealed. The next meeting was held at Selsertown. At this
meeting the Board on the 25th of July, 1803, accepted a donation of
lands offered by John and James Foster, and Randall Gibson, adjoining
the town of Washington, and embracing Ellicott's Springs.
The appeal to the public for aid was unproductive; that to Congress was
responded to by a grant of a township of land and some lots of ground
in and adjoining the city of Natchez.
The next meeting of the Board of Trustees was held in Natchez, on the
28th of January, 1804. Colonel Cato West, at that time the acting
governor of the Territory, reported "that the lots in the city of
Natchez, and an out-lot adjoining the same, granted to the college
by Congress, had been only located, and that upon these lots were
several valuable buildings." But a private individual and the city of
Natchez laid claim to these buildings and an act was passed in Congress
regranting them to Natchez.
Appeals were made to the public but were not responded to. A loan from
the Legislature was prayed for but all the efforts on the part of the
trustees amounted to nothing.
The Trustees were reassembled in April, 1810, having had no meeting
since December 21, 1805.
In the meantime the Washington Academy had been established and
conducted by Rev. Jas. Smylie. Subscriptions were raised and frame
buildings erected on the college grounds.
A meeting of the two Boards was held and the building of the Academy
and the subscriptions which had been raised for its support were
transferred to the Board of Trustees of the prospective College.
The Board of the Washington Academy also had lottery tickets on sale,
but found great difficulty in disposing of them.
Few of the tickets were sold, and fortunately for the institution the
tickets calling for the largest prizes remained unsold. There was
nothing gained from this and the next year the Board directed suits
against some of the purchasers of tickets who had failed to pay for
them.
The Academy buildings were placed in order and it was published that
"an academy under the superintendence of Dr. Edwin Reese, assisted by
Mr. Sam'l Graham would open on the first of January."
Nine years after the chartering of Jefferson College, it started as an
academy, and as an academy it continued several years.
Soon afterwards the Trustees resumed their efforts to secure an
endowment for the proposed College. The titles to the lots in Natchez
were examined. In order to adjust the claims between the corporation
of Natchez and Jefferson College, the matter was carried to law. In
1812 commissioners were appointed for the recovery of such escheated
property as belonged to the College, the Legislature having granted
to it all escheated property for ten years. The authority of the
Legislature was questioned in this matter, and it was carried before
Congress. The Legislature was upheld in this and the College realized
five or six thousand dollars, but lost heavily prosecuting their claims.
The Secretary of the Treasury, under the authority of an act of
Congress passed the 20th of February, 1812, located on the 5th of June
the township of land granted in 1803. The land selected was situated on
both sides of the Tombigbee River. But nothing was realized from this
until 1818.
In 1816, six thousand dollars to be paid in annual installments was
granted by the Legislature. This money was for the purpose of hiring an
instructor.
Mr. M'Allister, who was teaching at the time in Kentucky, was employed,
and took charge of the Institution in 1817. In the August following the
contract for the last building was let out.
In 1818, the rapid immigration to Alabama caused an increase in the
value of the Tombigbee lands. An agent was sent to Alabama, who leased
the lands owned by the College for ninety-nine years. About eight
thousand dollars was received as the first payment, and the remaining
installments amounting to more than twenty-five thousand dollars were
to be paid in two, four and six years. With such an improved state
of affairs the Board deemed it wise to borrow money to hasten the
completion of the buildings then in progress. Nine thousand dollars was
obtained from the bank and four thousand from the state.
The trustees were disappointed, however, in the expected revenues from
the Tombigbee lands. The government in 1820 found it necessary to adopt
measures for the reduction of the enormous debts of those who had
contracted for lands in more prosperous times.
Liberal discounts were offered to its debtors, also the privilege of
giving up the lands they had purchased. There was a great depreciation
in the value of the lands at this time, and the purchasers were glad to
surrender them to the government.
The trustees offered an abatement of one-half. But all, with one
exception, gave the land to the government, as the greater portion of
it was found to be of no value. This source of revenue to which the
trustees had looked forward with such sanguine expectations had been
destroyed, heavy debts had been contracted, and there were no means
of discharging them. So the trustees and friends of the Institution
assumed the debts individually.
The college had a difficulty from another source. In 1818 there was an
assembly of the clergy of all denominations in Washington. Some of the
clergy, believing Mr. M'Allister's opinion to be unorthodox, publicly
denounced the Institution.
This did the College an injury that the trustees could not repair. Rev.
R. F. N. Smith, an associate of Mr. M'Allister, was placed at the head
of the Institution, but this helped matters very little.
The source of revenue having been exhausted, Mr. Smith resigned. From
1821, an academy was kept up under various instructors on a small scale.
In 1825, a measure was introduced into the Legislature to institute
suit for the recovery of the money loaned, but the majority voted
against it.
To afford the Legislature an opportunity of placing the institution
more immediately under its control and management and to give to it
that patronage and support to which it would be entitled as a State
Institution, the Trustees voted to give the power of filling vacancies
in their body to the Legislature. The act was passed in January, 1826.
This right was exercised for many years.
In May, 1826, the Trustees were notified that the selectmen of the
city of Natchez were going to make an appeal to the Supreme Court of
the United States in the suit commenced in 1813, for the property given
by Congress and claimed by the city of Natchez. The Trustees not being
able to bear the expenses of a suit appointed a committee to compromise
with the city, which they succeeded in doing.
About this time the Legislature was considering the idea of
establishing a State Institution, and its executive committee at its
session in Feb. 1829, was ordered to appoint three agents to inquire
into all the means and resources in the state applicable to the
purposes of general education; to confer with the Trustees of Jefferson
College and ascertain the condition and prospects of the Institution
and whether it was practicable for the Trustees to surrender the
charter to the State, and on what terms it would be done.
A meeting of the two committees was held on the 27th of October, 1829.
Questions were asked the committee from Jefferson College concerning
the college buildings; the endowment; the number and character of its
Professors; its future prospects; the expediency of surrendering the
charter; and concerning the money loaned to the Institution by the
Legislature.
It was found that the charter could not be surrendered to another
Institution erected in its stead.
This agreement was not made with the Legislature, so it was decided to
put forth greater energies than ever to build up the Institution.
It was decided to adopt a system of Education similar to that of West
Point and a contract was made with E. B. Williston and Major Halbrook.
They assumed all responsibilities, and hired a number of competent
instructors, and depended upon their success to pay the salaries of
each.
The College under this management opened on the first Monday of
December, 1829. This plan was eminently successful and for the first
time since the establishment of the Institution it was a success. A
large number of students was attracted to it and it was viewed with
pride and gratification.
THE RISE AND FALL OF NEGRO RULE IN MISSISSIPPI.
BY DUNBAR ROWLAND, ESQ.
Twenty-three years have passed into history since Adelbert Ames, the
last of the "Carpet Baggers," was driven from his high position as
governor of Mississippi by the representatives of an outraged and
indignant people. A new generation has grown to manhood and womanhood
since those stirring times that led up to and culminated in the
exposure and condemnation of the most reckless and profligate political
combination and blighting curse that has ever burdened a free people.
As we have just passed the twenty-third anniversary of that great
event it is fitting that its memories be revived in the minds of those
who took part in it, that its lessons may be impressed upon those who
are to complete and affirm its results. The uprising of the people
of Mississippi against Negro rule was a most magnificent example of
that spirit of Southern patriotism that animated the hearts; first of
such men as Walthall, Lamar, George, Featherston, Stone, Lowry and
Harris, and then spread to the hearts of every true man in Mississippi.
The young men of the State, the rising generation, have the greatest
reverence and love for the brave men who fought such a gallant fight
for the preservation of white supremacy in Mississippi.
The social, industrial and political conditions existing in Mississippi
two years after the close of the civil war can only be properly
appreciated by taking a backward view of what had gone before. From
1817 to 1860 Mississippi was a garden for the cultivation of all that
was grand in oratory, true in science, and enlightened and profound
in law and statesmanship. Those were years of a golden age, an age of
chivalry in which she vied with her sister States in the lists of that
grand tournament that was to decide the fate of a nation. That period
of the State's history produced a roll too tedious to read of noble
spirits, bright wits, and elegant scholars, whose names and deeds are
preserved in the records of an admiring people. Mississippi takes
special pride in the character of Jefferson Davis, whose name will be
forever enshrined in fame's proudest niche, as the representative of
Southern honor, chivalry and manhood.
"And he will live on history's page,
While cycling years shall onward move,
A victim of a senseless rage,
Now idol of his people's love;
When hate is buried in the dust,
When party strife shall break its spear,
When truth is free and men are just,
Then will his epitaph appear."
Mississippi was enriched by the power and ability of George Poindexter,
her brilliant governor and United States senator; she points with pride
to the executive ability and constructive statesmanship of Robert J.
Walker, Polk's great minister of finance, and author of the Walker
Tariff Bill; she looks back with wondering admiration to that king of
orators and eccentric genius, S. S. Prentiss, who thrilled the American
heart with his god-like eloquence; she holds sacred the memory of the
gifted and peerless Lamar, who stood, unawed and alone, as defender and
protector, in her darkest and most trying hour; and no stone that marks
the last resting place of the great of earth can be worthier of the
Roman legend:
"_Clarus et vir fortissimus._"
The year 1861 brought ruin and desolation upon the State. The signal
gun fired from Fort Sumter was the beginning of a bloody fratricidal
strife, and was the first act in the greatest drama of political and
social revolution known to history. That revolution brought political,
industrial and financial ruin upon Mississippi. When peace came, it
found a race of ignorant slaves, masters of her political destiny.
Then came the days of reconstruction, and of devilish animosity and
hate; days when ignorance and vice reigned supreme, and the law of
brute force was terribly triumphant. During that time a brave people
were condemned to all the suffering and oppression which crime and
corruption could invent, and tyranny inflict.
The political party then in power stands before the bar of an
intelligent public sentiment of today a confessed and convicted author
of the greatest and most criminal mistake of all time. The experiment
of negro suffrage was a most stupendous blunder. Under that vicious
system society was depressed to a greater degree than could be borne.
For ten long years was Mississippi ruled by the adventurer, who filled
the mind of the negroes with a spirit of misrule, prejudice and hatred
against their former masters. He found a people impoverished by the
loss of millions in slave property, and made penniless by a long and
protracted war.
The State was turned over as so much prey to the hungriest and cruelest
flock of human vultures that ever cursed mankind and the pathway
towards better things was stained with the life blood of her best and
noblest. Under such a reign property was insecure. There was open and
notorious plunder without the hope of redress. Ignorance, crime and
hatred had enthralled the white people of the state. No greater burden
has ever been put upon a suffering people, and while it lasted in
Mississippi the state was overwhelmed by a horde of ignorant, immoral
and degraded vagabonds.
The blighting curse of negro rule was patiently borne by the people
of Mississippi until 1875, when a halt was called, and every white
man in the State took a solemn oath before high heaven that he would
free himself and his posterity from such a disgrace, or die in the
attempt. That idea was the battle-cry under which the campaign of 1875
was fought. That campaign was the supreme effort of a brave people to
save themselves and their posterity from the blighting ruin of black
supremacy. It was the most remarkable demonstration of courage ever
shown to an admiring world; it was the courage that dared death and
defied the world in its struggle against infamy and dishonor. The
struggle was begun by a well attended mass-meeting of leading men
from every county in the State. Lawyers left their books, doctors
their patients, preachers their sermons, merchants their stores, and
farmers their fields, and formed themselves into a mighty force for
the overthrow of misrule. These brave and determined men met together
at the State capitol in Jackson, Jan. 4th, 1875, and organized what
is known to history as the Taxpayers' Convention of Mississippi. The
convention was called to order by Hon. W. L. Nugent, one of the great
lawyers of the Jackson bar. Gen. W. S. Featherston, of Holly Springs,
was called to preside over the deliberations of the meeting, and his
pure patriotism and great influence gave force to a gathering that was
prepared to call the people of the State to arms if need be, in defense
of their rights and liberties. To Gen. Featherston and Judge Wiley P.
Harris all honor is due for the brave stand they took at that time.
They were both remarkable men of fearless courage and sound judgement.
The labors of the convention resulted in a petition being drawn up
for presentation to the legislature setting forth the desperate
condition of the State, demanding reform and economy, and appealing to
the people to rise up in their might and overthrow their oppressors.
An extraordinary increase in taxation was shown to be almost equal
to confiscation. The convention of taxpayers claimed and showed
conclusively that in 1869 the State levy was 10 cents on the dollar of
the assessed value of lands. For the year 1871 it was four times as
great and for 1874 fourteen times as great. Such a condition of affairs
could only result in general ruin and bankruptcy. After the adjournment
of the taxpayers' convention the delegates returned to their homes and
organized local taxpayers' leagues in every county in the State. The
property-holders determined to reduce taxation or refuse to pay their
assessments, and, if necessary, to resist the collection of all taxes
for the support of the State government.
A new legislature was to be elected in November, 1875, and the only
hope of property holders to save their lands from confiscation was
to elect a legislature composed of white men pledged to economy. The
Democratic State Convention met in Jackson on August 3d, 1875, and was
made up of the best men in every walk of life. Gen. Charles Clark was
made chairman. He was an ex-governor of the State and was reverenced
and loved for his patriotic devotion to his adopted State. Hon. L. Q.
C. Lamar was a delegate to the convention from Lafayette county, and
was the leader in every movement. He made the greatest speech of his
life on the floor of the convention, and it served as a bugle call to
action to the white people to throw off the ruin and dishonor that
threatened them. The campaign was placed under the guidance of Gen. J.
Z. George, as chairman of the Democratic State Executive Committee,
and such men as Lamar, Walthall, Barksdale, Lowry, Money, Featherston,
Singleton and Chalmers took the stump and aroused the people to action.
The people laid aside their business for three months and worked
for the protection of their homes and for the preservation of free
institutions. The popular heart was fired with enthusiasm as never
before. Public feeling found utterance in the following resolution that
became the slogan of the campaign, and was passed by the people of
every county in the State:
"_Resolved_, That without equivocation and without mutual reservation,
we intend to carry out the principles enunciated in the platform of the
Democratic party at Jackson, on the 3d day of August, 1875, and to this
we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor."
The State executive committee met in Jackson, August 15, and organized
for the campaign, and its first act was to issue the ablest and most
stirring address that ever came from such a body. The address was
prepared by Gen. George, the chairman of the committee, and is a
masterpiece of political literature, and closes with this appeal: "In
this contest Mississippi expects each of her sons to do his duty; brace
up old age to one more effort, nerve, manhood, to put forth all its
strength, and invite youth to its noblest enthusiasm."
In the very beginning of the campaign it became evident to Governor
Ames and the Republican boodlers that the election would result in
their defeat. Ames, in his desperation over impending disaster, applied
to the Federal government at Washington for United States troops to be
used in terrorizing the people on election day. He boldly declared that
the death of a few thousand negroes would make sure the success of the
Republican party, and did everything in his power to bring about an
armed conflict between the two races. Bloody riots occurred at Clinton,
Yazoo City and Vicksburg, in which hundreds of negroes were killed.
President Grant refused to send Federal troops into Mississippi, and
his refusal was based on the report of Mr. C. K. Chase, an agent
of the attorney-general of the United States, who had been sent to
report on the application of Gov. Ames for troops, his report being
that there was no legal excuse for the presence of armed men. The
Democratic orators, on every stump in the State, declared that the
negro had proven himself unworthy of the right of suffrage, and should
be deprived of it. They showed that wherever the negro controlled,
depression and ruin were evident on every side. They proclaimed aloud
that the honest, intelligent and decent white people should and would
control the State. Negro suffrage had been tried for ten years with
terrible results. They pointed to the ominous fact that the Southern
States were behind in the road for progress, just in proportion to the
number of negro voters in each. The right of manhood suffrage was daily
denounced as a doctrine that was ruining the State by making it a prey
to the worst and most depraved elements of society. Bitter experience
had taught that freedom could not, in a moment, transform an ignorant
slave into a good citizen. The most dangerous experiment in modern
times in government had proved to be a most colossal blunder. The negro
had slavishly surrendered his vote to the dictation of a band of petty
thieves and plunderers, who were interested in nothing but gain. Where
was the State, under such control, that showed even a trace of honest,
intelligent government? The appeals to the people were effective.
After the most remarkable of political campaigns a legislature, with
an overwhelming Democratic majority, was elected. The legislature met
in Jackson, January 4, 1876, and organized by the election of Hon.
H. M. Street, of Prentiss county, speaker, and Hon. George M. Govan,
clerk. It had among its members, such men as W. S. Featherston, W. A.
Percy, H. L. Muldrow, W. F. Tucker, W. R. Barksdale, I. T. Blount, J.
S. Bailey, J. G. Hall, G. B. Huddleston, G. D. Shands, George H. Lester
and Thomas Spight, in the house; and J. M. Stone, R. O. Reynolds, John
W. Fewell, R. H. Thompson and T. C. Catchings, in the senate.
At the time the legislature assembled, the executive and judicial
departments of the government were under the control of the Radical
party, made up of and dominated by negroes, disreputable adventurers
and carpet baggers. Adelbert Ames was seated in the executive chair. At
the close of the war he was in Mississippi as a colonel in the Federal
army, and after the State government set up by the white people was
overthrown by Federal bayonets he was made military governor. After a
new constitution was adopted and Mississippi was re-admitted to the
Union, Ames was elected by the legislature to represent the State in
the United States Senate. James L. Alcorn was his colleague, and fierce
conflict arose between the two over the control of the Republican
party in the State. Alcorn was a man of admitted ability. He had been
a lifelong Whig before the war, but became a moderate Republican after
its close. When the constitution of 1868 was adopted the military
government of Ames gave way and was succeeded by Alcorn as the first
governor elected by the people after the new organic law went into
force. Gov. Alcorn was a large property holder and really desired
the peace and prosperity of the State. His plan was to unite the old
followers of the Whig party for the control of the negro element,
and save the white people from the ruin that would result from negro
control. The new governor was soon found to be in the way of the
negroes and carpet baggers, and he was sent to Washington as a senator
of the United States.
Ex-Gov. Robert Lowry thus writes of Alcorn and Ames as Senators from
Mississippi, in his history of the State:
"Governors Alcorn and Ames were occupying their seats in the
United States Senate. The former, a man of high bearing,
wealthy, full of courage, proud and imperious, had a supreme
contempt for the pretensions of the latter, and asserted in
substance, on the floor, of the Senate, that Ames was a fraud,
that his poverty of intellect was only equalled by his arrogant
assumption of unauthorized powers; that he was not, and never
had been a citizen of Mississippi."
Ames made the best reply he could, but he was no match in debate for
his opponent. The estrangement and breach between them culminated in
both declaring themselves candidates for governor of the State. Ames
gained the negro support and was elected, and ruled the State with
all the autocratic power of a czar. The public scandals of the Ames
administration soon became notorious throughout the State, and the
legislature stood pledged to a full investigation of all executive acts.