The World Remade, 1866–1902
In July 1894, Governor John Marshall Stone, who was inaugurated as governor on three separate occasions, and served as governor longer than any other man in Mississippi history, was arrested by Secret Service agents for counterfeiting the currency of the United States. The accusation of counterfeiting resulted from the fact that the state of Mississippi had issued a special state warrant that was similar in color, size, shape, and appearance to United States currency.
When Colonel Ridgley C. Powers was discharged from the United States Army in December 1865, he decided to remain in Mississippi rather than return to his native state of Ohio. He purchased some land in Noxubee County near Shuqualak and soon became a successful planter. In 1868, he was appointed sheriff of Noxubee County by the military governor of Mississippi.
James L. Alcorn was Mississippi’s first elected Republican governor. Alcorn had previously served in the state legislature of Kentucky and Mississippi, and had risen to the rank of general in the Confederate military service during the Civil War.
When Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys was removed from office June 15, 1868, President Andrew Johnson appointed Adelbert Ames provisional governor of Mississippi. At the time of his appointment, Ames was also the military governor of the fourth military district which had been established under federal Reconstruction policy and included Arkansas and Mississippi. Ames continued as both military and provisional governor until the reestablishment of civil authority on March 10, 1870.
For five years after the Civil War, both martial law and civil authority existed concurrently in Mississippi. That phenomenon created a constitutional entanglement that scholars have yet to unravel. Governor Benjamin Grubb Humphreys had the misfortune of being caught in that tangle of conflicting and often competing authority. When Governor Humphreys was inaugurated October 16, 1865, he shared power with a provisional governor and was eventually removed by a military governor, whose authority he challenged and whose orders he countermanded. (See William Sharkey and Adelbert Ames.)
Governor Charles Clark has the distinction of being one of the three governors of Mississippi to be arrested and imprisoned. The other two are John Quitman and Theodore Bilbo. When the Civil War ended, Governor Clark was arrested by Union authorities and incarcerated briefly at Fort Pulaski in Savannah, Georgia. A witness described the arrest of the former Confederate general, who had twice been wounded, first at Shiloh and then at Baton Rouge:
The six southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida met February 4, 1861, in convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and established the Confederate States of America.
They were soon joined by Texas, and after the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, they were joined by Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky were prevented from seceding by the presence of federal troops, but both states sent unofficial representatives to the Confederate Congress and both supplied troops to the Confederate Army.
Emblems, banners, standards, and flags are an ancient tradition that date from the early Roman Empire.
Flags are powerful symbols that signify dominion and sovereignty and express personal and political allegiance to a state or nation. Mississippi did not officially adopt a state flag until 1861, when it seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. Prior to that time, several flags had flown over the territory that would become the state of Mississippi on December 10, 1817.1
Reconstruction in Mississippi ended in 1875, and many White Mississippians were determined to remove Black Mississippians from politics. In the summer of 1890, specially elected delegates to a constitutional convention gathered in Jackson in today's Old Capitol. All but one of the delegates were White.
By 1868, momentous changes had occurred in Mississippi since the Constitution of 1832 was written. Slavery had grown enormously in Mississippi before the Civil War. By 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, enslaved Black Mississippians outnumbered White Mississippians. The sale of Native American lands had created a great boom in cotton agriculture.
