A Respectable Minority

The purpose of this paper is to present a neglected slice of Mississippi Civil War history, namely that not all Mississippians welcomed secession and the rebellion. A respectable minority, a limited and varied group objected from the outset. There was no referendum in the state to determine the popular vote (the convention voted down a motion to submit the decision to the voters), but the Secession Convention initially voted eighty-four to fifteen to secede. Before the final vote, when a show of unanimity was requested and expected, a minimum of fifteen percent of the delegates opposed the action. In Mississippi, as in the other seceding states, many individuals changed their position and supported secession after the initial objections. The votes in the convention to wait until other states joined in and to submit to a referendum were closer to twenty and thirty percent, but these motions merely delayed the actions of the majority. Opposition varied by region with more opposed in the northeastern hill counties, the counties along the Mississippi River, the gulf coast, and a few isolated counties, such as Jones.

Opposition was not conditioned on income or position; wealthy planters in Adams County and the delta area along with yeoman farmers in Tishomingo and Jones County joined in opposition. Editors, ministers, and lawyers were divided, but few remained loyal to the Union. A Union editor in Columbus, Mississippi, Levi J. Gallaway, fled in early 1861 to Pensacola where he raised two US cavalry regiments. [1] A reference included later tells of the editor of the Natchez Courier who switched positions as the war progressed; most editors, of necessity, were in sympathy with their readers and their Confederate views.

As the fortunes of the Confederate states spiraled downward during the war, disaffection for the cause grew among the populace as did desertion from the army. Civil War figures are often not reliable, but the best estimate of the number of Mississippi troops who deserted is 11,000 or fourteen percent of the 78,000 who served from the state. This is not to detract from the sacrifices of the 27,000 Mississippi soldiers who lost their life from wounds or diseases, nor from the wounds and serious illnesses of soldiers who barely survived, nor from the suffering and losses of almost every family. Almost all southerners of long standing have stories of deprivation, poverty, and loss of family members; stories that no other part of this country can match in depth of pain.

Life for the vast majority of the people of the state prior to the conflict was not a “Gone with the Wind” life of extravaganza; conversely, life for most people was yet primitive and in the aftermath of the conflict many were destitute. Prior to and even during the war the people were not united in many respects: in economic, social, geographic, and cultural ways. The trauma of defeat, the resulting poverty, the loss of family members and friends, and the universal suffering weighed heavily on each family and helped to meld a different environment after the conflict; the exceptions were the Scalawags. The imprisonment of Jefferson Davis as a common criminal at Fortress Monroe led to more reverence toward him by many southerners than had been exhibited as the war progressed, another focus of diverse interests into a vision remembered differently. [2] Anne Sarah Rubin in her book, “A Shattered Nation” has a chapter titled, “Nursing the Embers”; how appropriate to describe the southern view in the period subsequent to the conflict. Much of the South of legend grew out of the Reconstruction era.

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[1] Baggett, James Alex, “Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction”,  p.67

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