Prominent Mississippian generals during the war included William Barksdale, Carnot Posey, Wirt Adams, Earl Van Dorn, Robert Lowry, and Benjamin G. Humphreys.

For years prior to the American Civil War, slave-holding Mississippi had voted heavily for the Democrats, especially as the Whigs declined in their influence.

During the 1860 presidential election, the state supported Southern Democrat candidate John C. Breckinridge, giving him 40,768 votes (59.0% of the total of 69,095 ballots cast).

[1][2] According to one Mississippian newspaper in the late 1850s: The slavery controversy in the United States presents a case of the most violent antagonism of interests and opinions.

The state then joined the Confederacy less than a month later, issuing a declaration of their reasons for seceding, proclaiming that "[o]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world".

[4] Fulton Anderson, a Mississippian lawyer, delivered a speech to the Virginian secession convention in 1861, in which he declared that "grievances of the Southern people on the slavery question" and their opposition to the Republican Party's goal of "the ultimate extinction of slavery" were the primary catalysts of the state in declaring secession.

[7] According to Mississippian Democrat and future Confederate leader Jefferson Davis, Mississippi joined the Confederacy because it "has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal", a sentiment perceived as being threatening to slavery, and because the "Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races", a position that Davis was opposed to.

[12] As the war progressed, a considerable number of freed or escaped slaves joined the United States Colored Troops and similar black regiments.

Union control of the Mississippi River made its neighbors especially vulnerable, and river-county residents apparently left their communities (and often the Confederacy) rather than face invasion.

During the height of the Civil War on May 17, 1863, Confederate soldiers retreated via a nearby property known as "Askew's Landing" after suffering defeat at the Battle of Champion Hill.

They hastily utilized Askew's Ferry to cross the river, setting it ablaze thereafter to hinder the pursuit of the Union Army.

As recounted by LegendsofAmerica.com, skirmishes broke out at the Bridgepoint Plantation involving parts of Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's 4th Brigade under the command of Colonel Alex W. Reynolds.

[17] One civilian, an elderly man, was killed during the war, when in September 1863, a Union ironclad shelled the town from the river and he promptly died of a heart attack.

According to historian Joyce Broussard, Shields's memoir indicates that Confederate men, absent because of the war, were seen to have failed in their homes and in the wider community, forcing the women to use their class-based femininity and their sexuality to deal with the Union Army.

These elite planters also lacked a strong emotional attachment to the idea of a Southern nation; however, when the war started, many of their sons and nephews joined the Confederate army.

In 1864, the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Natchez, William Henry Elder, refused to obey a Union order to compel his parishioners to pray for the U.S. president.

The Lost Cause enabled women noncombatants to lay a claim to the central event in their redefinition of Southern history.

The area of the Delta surrounding Greenville was considered the "breadbasket" for providing Vicksburg's military with corn, hogs, beef, mules and horses.

Highly successful, Steele's men seized almost 1000 head of livestock (horses, mules, and cattle) and burned 500,000 bushels of corn during their foray.

[25] In addition to the damage done, the Union soldiers also acquired several hundred slaves, who, wishing to escape the bonds of slavery left their plantations and followed the troops from Rolling Fork back to Greenville.

In early May, as retaliation for Confederate artillery firing on shipping on the Mississippi River, Commander Selfridge of the U.S. Navy ordered ashore 67 marines and 30 sailors, landing near Chicot Island.

By the end of the day of May 9, the large and imposing mansions, barns, stables, cotton gins, overseer dwellings and slave quarters of the Blanton and Roach plantations were in ruins.

The destruction of Greenville was completed on May 6 when a number of Union infantrymen slipped ashore from their boats and burned every building in the village but two (a house and a church).

Meridian's strategic position at a major railroad junction made it the home of a Confederate arsenal, military hospital, and prisoner-of-war stockade, as well as the headquarters for a number of state offices.

At various times, the district was commanded by generals Edward Ord, Alvan Cullem Gillem, and Adelbert Ames.