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www.visitmississippi.org

www.state.ms.us

 

 

#    Entered Union       Year Settled

20^th            Dec. 10, 1817       1699

 

Nickname

Magnolia State

 

Rank   Population

31^st            2,938,618

 

Rank   Square Miles

32^nd           48,430

 

State Bird

Northern Mockingbird

Wood duck (state waterfowl)

 

State Flower

Magnolia

Tickseed (state wildflower)

 

State Tree

Southern Magnolia

 

State Motto

Virtute et armis    By valor and arms

 

Spelling the name of this state out loud is a catchy way to remember it, and a way to make sure you spell it correctly. The name "Mississippi" comes from an Indian word meaning "great waters" or "father of waters." Mississippi entered the Union as the 20th state in 1817. Considered part of the Deep South, Mississippi, with its rich soil and many rivers, is an agricultural state. The capital is Jackson.

 

Jefferson Davis Elected President of the Confederate States of America

Who was president during the Civil War? If you were from a Northern state, you answered Abraham Lincoln. If you were from a Southern state, you may have answered Jefferson Davis.

 

On November 6, 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected president, not of the United States of America but of the Confederate States of America. He ran unopposed and was elected to serve for a six-year term. Davis had already been serving as the temporary president for almost a year.

 

How do you think President Lincoln, who had earlier been elected president of the United States, reacted to the Southern election?

 

As a U.S. senator from Mississippi, Davis had tried to keep the Union together. When Mississippi seceded from the Union, however, Davis became a Confederate man.

After his inauguration as provisional, or temporary, president in February 1861, Davis sent a peace commission to Washington. Lincoln, committed to preserving the Union, refused to see the ambassadors from the South.

 

With war threatening, Lincoln sent armed ships to resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Davis responded by ordering the bombing of the fort on April 12, 1861. The attack marked the beginning of the Civil War.

 

Mississippi's Rock of Gibraltar

Do you know about the Rock of Gibraltar at the southern tip of Spain? The Greeks believed that Gibraltar was one of the Pillars of Hercules and no one dared sail beyond it. Later, when it came under British control, it became known as a symbol of British naval strength and was known as "the Rock." During the Civil War, a city in Mississippi was called "The Gibraltar of the Confederacy;" do you know which one it was?

 

The mighty Mississippi River flows past the historic city of Vicksburg. Built on a strategic location halfway between Memphis and New Orleans, Vicksburg became an important stronghold during the Civil War. It was known as "The Gibraltar of the Confederacy" because the Battle of Vicksburg was one of the Civil War's longest and most important campaigns. The city's eventual surrender in 1863 gave Union forces control of the Mississippi River and divided the South.

 

The Mississippi River has played a large part in the development of Vicksburg. In an 1873 flood, the river changed course and destroyed what was left of the city after the Civil War. The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 also had devastating effects on the city. After both of these natural disasters, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided assistance to Vicksburg by building canals, levees and other structures to protect this river city.

 

Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival

Think about all the emotions expressed in the music you listen to: joy, happiness, loneliness, nervousness, and, of course, sadness. Music with sad themes is often called the "blues."

 

Blues music developed in the United States among Southern blacks after the Civil War. When slaves were brought to America from Africa, they brought their musical traditions with them. Blended with folk and popular music of whites, these African musical traditions developed into the blues.

 

The blues is believed to have originated in the Mississippi Delta, a wedge-shaped region in northern Mississippi between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. This is a rural area where the poorest and most disadvantaged black people lived -- this lifestyle created a need for the expression of sadness that is so often sung in the blues. The conditions in this area -- poverty, racism, and inhumane working situations -- led many blacks to go north, to cities such as Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit.

 

The blues did not vanish from the Mississippi countryside, however, and in 1978, the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival was founded to celebrate and promote the blues and the culture of the Mississippi Delta people. What started out on the back of a flatbed truck is now the oldest and largest blues festival in the South, with 20,000 visitors and performances on three festival stages.