At the close of the Seven Years' war (1763) France ceded to Great Britain all her territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain. By a royal proclamation (Oct. 7, 1763) these new possessions were divided into East Florida and West Florida, the latter lying south of the parallel and west of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Crown orders of 1764 and 1767 extended the limits N. to a line due E. from the mouth of the Yazoo at about 32° 28' N. latitude. Under British rule there was an extensive immigration into this region from England, Ireland, Georgia, South Carolina and New Jersey. A settlement was made in 1772 by Richard and Samuel Swayze of New Jersey, 18 m. S.E. of Natchez and on the Big Black river 17 m. from its mouth; another in 1774 by Phineas Lyman of Connecticut; while settlements also were made by other "military adventurers," veterans of the Havana campaign of 1762. Spain took military possession in 1781, and in the Treaty of Paris (1783) both of the Floridas were ceded back to her. But Great Britain recognized the claims of the United States to the territory as far S. as the 31st parallel, the line of 1763. Spain adhered to the line of 1764-67, and retained pos session of the territory in dispute. Finally, in the Treaty of San Lorenzo el Real (ratified 1796) she accepted the 1763 (30) boundary, and withdrew her troops in 1798.
Mississippi Territory was then organized, with Winthrop Sar gent as governor. The Territorial limits were extended on the N. to the State of Tennessee in 1804 by the acquisition of the west cessions of South Carolina and Georgia, and on the S. to the Gulf of Mexico by the seizure of West Florida in 1810-13, but were restricted on the E. by the formation of the Territory of Alabama in 1817. The Choctaws ceded their lands to the United States in 182o and 183o, and the Chickasaws ceded theirs in 1832; and both tribes removed to the Indian Territory.
An enabling act was passed on March 1, 1817, and the State was formally admitted into the Union Dec. 1 o. The first State Constitution (1817) provided a high property qualification for governor, senator and representative, and empowered the legisla ture to elect the judges and the more important State officials. In 1822 the capital was removed to Jackson from Columbia, Marion county. The Constitution of 1832 abolished the property quali fication for holding office and provided for the popular election of judges and State officials.
On the death of John C. Calhoun in 185o, the State, under the leadership of Jefferson Davis, began to rival South Carolina as leader of the Southern Constitutionalists in their defence of the rights of the States. There was a brief reaction : Henry Stuart Foote (1800-8o), Unionist, was elected governor in 1851 over Jefferson Davis, the States' rights candidate, and in the same year a convention had declared almost unanimously that "the asserted right of secession . . . is utterly unsanctioned by the Federal Constitution." But the States' rights sentiment continued to grow.
An ordinance of secession was passed on Jan. 9, 1861, and the Constitution was soon amended to conform to the new Constitu tion of the Confederate States. During the Civil War battles were fought at Corinth (1862), Port Gibson (1863), Jackson. (1863) and Vicksburg (1863). In 1865 President Johnson ap pointed as provisional governor William Lewis Sharkey (i 797– 1873), who had been chief justice of the State in 1832-50. A convention which assembled Aug. 14 recognized the "destruction" of slavery and declared the ordinance of secession null and void. The first meeting of the legislature after the war for southern in dependence was held Oct. 16, 1865, and at once enacted laws for the protection of the white people of the State, their homes and social order, laws which the North interpreted as an effort to re store slavery, but which, in fact were for the preservation of civilization. Under the reconstruction act of March 2, 1867, Miss
issippi with Arkansas formed the fourth military district, com manded successively by Generals E. 0. C. Ord (1867), Alvan C. Gillem (1868) and Irvin McDowell (June–July 1868), and by Gillem (1868-69) and Adelbert Ames (1869-7o). Under the lat ter the legally constituted civil officers of the State were ejected from office by military force.
The notorious "Black and Tan Convention" of 1868 adopted a Constitution which conferred suffrage upon the negroes, and by the imposition of test oaths disfranchised the leading whites. It was at first rejected at the polls, but was finally ratified in Nov. 1869 without the disfranchising clauses. The 14th and 15th amend ments to the Federal Constitution were ratified in 187o, and the State was formally readmitted into the Union on Feb. 23 of that year.
From 187o to 1875 the Government was under the control of "carpet-baggers," negroes and the most disreputable element among the native whites. Taxes were increased—expenditure in creased nearly threefold between 1869 and 1871—and there was much official corruption; but the State escaped the heavy burden of debt imposed upon its neighbours, by reason of Constitutional inhibitions. The Democrats carried the legislature in 1875 and preferred impeachment charges against Gov. Adelbert Ames, who had been military governor (see above) and was a native of Maine, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy (1861) and a soldier in the Union Army. The lieutenant governor, A. K. Davis, a negro, was impeached and removed from office; T. W. Cardoza, another negro, superintendent of education under Ames, was im peached on 12 charges of malfeasance, but was permitted to re sign. Gov. Ames, when the impeachment charges against him were dismissed on March 29, 1876, immediately resigned. The whites maintained their supremacy and preserved their social system until the adoption of the Constitution of I890 which disfranchised ignorance, venality and crime. The State has always been Demo cratic in national politics, except in the presidential elections of 1840 (Whig) and 1872 (Republican).
Mississippi has remained mainly agricultural in interest in spite of legislative encouragement to industry. The loss of life and property by successive floods of the Yazoo and the Missis sippi rivers led to the provisions in the Constitution of 1890 estab lishing two great levee districts, the Yazoo-Mississippi delta and the Mississippi. Much had been done toward making the low lands safe, and the disastrous floods of 1935 and 1936 harmed Mississippi hardly at all, proving the effectiveness of the work.
A child labour law was passed in 1912. Under its provisions no child under 12 may be employed in any mill or factory and no child under 16 may be employed for more than eight hours per day. No employee is permitted to work in any mill or factory more than ten hours per day. Mississippi was the first to ratify the 18th amendment but voted against the 19th and 21st. A de cline in cotton prices following 5928 seriously depressed the State's economy and 39,699 farms, comprising 16.2% of the farm lands of the State, were sold for unpaid taxes in 1931. The Legislature that year adopted a law restricting cotton acreage, but this was supplanted, in 1934, by the more effective Federal control, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration until its nullification by the Supreme Court in 1936. The Democrats, under Roosevelt, swept the State as usual in 1932 and 1936. In 1934 Theodore G. Bilbo, an ex-governor was elected U. S. Senator.