appointed once every four years by the governor. The charitable
institutions of the state are supervised by separate boards of trustees
appointed by the governor. The state insane hospital, opened at
Jackson in 1856 (act of 1848), in time became overcrowded and
the East Mississippi insane hospital was opened, 2 m. west of
Meridian in 1885 (act of 1882). The state institution for the
education of the deaf and dumb (1854) and the state institution
for the blind (1848) are at Jackson. State aid is given to the
hospitals at Vicksburg and Natchez.
Education.—Educational interests were almost entirely neglected during the colonial and territorial periods. The first school established in the state was Jefferson College, now Jefferson Military College, near Natchez, Adams county, incorporated in 1802. Charters were granted to schools in Claiborne, Wilkinson and Amite counties in 1809–1815, and to Port Gibson Academy and Mississippi College, at Clinton, in 1826. The public school system, established in 1846, never was universal, because of special legislation for various counties; public education was retarded during the Civil War and the Reconstruction period (when immense sums appropriated for schools were grossly mismanaged), but conditions gradually improved after 1875, especially through the concentration of schools. The sessions are still too short, teachers are poorly paid and attendance is voluntary. The long lack of normal training for white teachers (from 1870 to 1904 there was a normal school for negroes at Holly Springs) lasted until 1890, when a teacher’s training course was introduced into the curriculum of the state university. There are separate schools for whites and blacks, and the equipment and service are approximately equal, although the whites pay about nine-tenths of the school taxes. The schools are subject to the supervision of a state superintendent of public education and of a board of education, composed of the superintendent, the secretary of state, and the attorney-general, and within each county to a county superintendent. The schools are supported by a poll-tax, by general appropriations, by local levies, and by the Chickasaw school fund. An act of Congress of the 3rd of March 1803 reserved from sale section sixteen of the public lands in each township for educational purposes. When the Chickasaws ceded their lands to the national government, in 1830 and in 1832, the state made a claim to the sixteenth sections, and finally in 1856 received 174,550 acres—one thirty-sixth of the total cession of 6,283,804 acres. The revenue derived from the sales and leases of this land constitutes an endowment fund upon which the state as trustee pays 6% interest. It is used for the support of the schools in the old Chickasaw territory in the northern part of the state.
Among the institutions for higher education are the university of Mississippi (chartered 1844; opened 1848), at Oxford, which was opened to women in 1882; the Agricultural and Mechanical College (opened 1880), at Agricultural College, near Starkville, Oktibbeha county; the Industrial Institute and College for Girls (opened 1885), at Columbus; and the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College for negroes (1871; reorganized in 1878), at Westside. In 1819 Congress granted thirty-six sections of public land for the establishment of a university. This land was sold in 1833 for $277,332.52, but the entire sum was lost in the failure of the Planters’ Bank in 1840. In 1880 the state assumed liability for the full amount plus interest, and this balance, $544,061.23, now constitutes an endowment fund, upon which the state pays 6% interest. Congress granted another township (thirty-six sections) for the university in 1892, and its income is supplemented by legislative appropriations for current expenses and special needs. The two agricultural and mechanical colleges were founded by the sale of public lands given by Congress under the Morrill Act of 1862. An agricultural experiment station established in 1887 under the Hatch Act, is at Agricultural College; and there are branch experiment stations at McNeill, Pearl River county (1906), near Holly Springs, and at Stoneville, near Greenville.
Finance.—The chief sources of revenue are taxes on realty, personalty and corporations, a poll-tax, and licences. The more important expenditures are for public schools, state departments, educational and charitable institutions and pensions for Confederate veterans. The early financial history of the state is not very creditable. The Bank of Mississippi, at Natchez, incorporated by the Territorial legislature in 1809, was rechartered by the state in 1818, and was guaranteed a monopoly of the banking business until 1840. In violation of this pledge, and in the hope that a new bank would be more tractable than the Bank of Mississippi, the Planters’ Bank was established at Natchez, in 1830, with a capital of $3,000,000, two-thirds of which was subscribed by the state. During the wild era of speculation which followed (especially in 1832—upon the opening of the Chickasaw Cession to settlement) a large number of banks and railroad corporations with banking privileges were chartered. The climax was reached in 1838 with the incorporation of the Union Bank. This, the most pretentious of all the state banks of the period, was capitalized at $15,500,000. The state subscribed $5,000,000, which was raised on bonds sold to Nicholas Biddle, president of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. As the Union Bank was founded in the midst of a financial panic and was mismanaged, its failure was a foregone conclusion. Agitation for repudiation was begun by Governor A. G. McNutt (1801–1848), and that question became the chief issue in the gubernatorial campaign of 1841, Tilghman M. Tucker (1802–1859), the Democratic candidate, representing the repudiators and David O. Shattuck, Whig, representing the anti-repudiators. The Democrats were successful, and the bonds were formally repudiated in 1842. In 1853 the High Court of Appeals and Errors of the state in the case of Mississippi v. Hezion Johnson (35 Miss. Reports, 625) decided unanimously that nothing could absolve the state from its obligation. The decision was disregarded, however, and in the same year the Planters’ Bank bonds were also repudiated by popular vote. These acts of repudiation were sanctioned by the constitution of 1890. The $7,000,000 saved in this manner has doubtless been more than offset by the additional interest charges on subsequent loans, due to the loss of public confidence. Mississippi suffered less than most of the other Southern states during the Reconstruction period; but expenditures rose from $463,219.71 in 1869 to $1,729,046.34 in 1871. At the close of the Republican régime in 1876 its total indebtedness was $2,631,704.24, of which $814,743 belonged to the Chickasaw fund (see above) and $718,946.22 to the general school fund. As the principal of these funds is never to be paid, the real debt was slightly over $1,000,000. On the 1st of October 1907 the payable debt was $1,253,029.07, the non-payable $2,336,197.58,[1] a total of $3,589,226.65. Since the Civil War the banking laws have become more stringent and the national banks have exercised a wholesome influence. There were, in 1906, 24 national banks and 269 state banks, but no trust companies, private banks or savings banks.
History.—At the beginning of the 16th century the territory included in the present state of Mississippi was inhabited by three powerful native tribes: the Natchez in the south-west, the Choctaws in the south-east and centre, and the Chickasaws in the north. In addition, there were the Yazoos in the Yazoo valley, the Pascagoulas, the Biloxis, and a few weaker tribes on the borders of the Mississippi Sound. The history of Mississippi may be divided into the period of exploration (1540–1699), the period of French rule (1699–1763), the period of English rule (1763–1781), the period of Spanish rule (1781–1798), the territorial period (1798–1817), and the period of statehood (1817 seq.).
Hernando de Soto (q.v.) and a body of Spanish adventurers crossed the Tombigbee river, in December 1540, near the present city of Columbus, marched through the north part of the state, and reached the Mississippi river near Memphis in 1541. In 1673 a French expedition organized in Canada under Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, and nine years later (1682) René Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, reached the mouth of the river, took formal possession of the country which it drains, and named it Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV. The first European settlement in Mississippi was founded in 1699 by Pierre Lemoyne, better known as Iberville, at Fort Maurepas (Old Biloxi) on the north side of Biloxi Bay, in what is now Harrison county. The site proving unfavourable, the colony was transferred to Twenty-seven Mile Bluff, on the Mobile River, in 1702, and later to Mobile (1710). The oldest permanent settlements in the state are. (New) Biloxi (c. 1712), situated across the bay from Old Biloxi and nearer to the Gulf, and Natchez or Fort Rosalie (1716). During the next few years Fort St Peter and a small adjoining colony were established on the Yazoo River in Warren county, and some attempts at settlement were made on Bay St Louis and Pascagoula Bay. The efforts (1712–1721) to foster colonization and commerce through trading corporations established by Antoine Crozat and John Law failed, and the colony soon came again under the direct control of the king. It grew very slowly, partly because of the hostility of the Indians and partly because of the incapacity of the French as, colonizers. In 1729–1730 the Natchez tribe destroyed Fort St Peter, and some of the small outposts, and almost destroyed the Fort Rosalie (Natchez) settlement.
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 S. of the 31st parallel and W. of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Crown orders of 1764 and 1767 extended the limits N. to
- ↑ The increase is due mainly to the assumption of the university obligations in 1880.
