During the early years of the U.S. republic, its vital southwestern quadrant - encompassing the modern-day states between South Carolina and Louisiana - experienced nearly unceasing conflict. In The Old Southwest, 1795-1830: Frontiers in Conflict, historians Thomas D. Clark and John D. W. Guice analyze the many disputes that resulted when the United States pushed aside a hundred thousand Indians and overtook the final vestiges of Spanish, French, and British presence in the wilderness. Leaders such as Andrew Jackson, who emerged during the Creek War, introduced new policies of Indian removal and state making, along with a decided willingness to let adventurous settlers open up the new territories as a part of the Manifest Destiny of a growing country.

"In the years between 1795 and 1830, the vital southwestern quadrant of the young republic, encompassing the modern-day states between South Carolina and Louisiana, witnessed nearly unceasing conflict. Many of the disputes resulted from the United States pushing aside a hundred thousand Indians as well as overtaking the final vestiges of Spanish, French, and British presence in a wilderness Americans sought for its abundant pastureland, fertile soil, and forest products. Out of the expansion of the frontier to the Mississippi River emnerged leaders such as Andrew Jackson, policies like Indian Removal, and a willingness to let adventurous settlers open up a new territories as a part of the Manifest Destiny of a growing country. As this volume makes clear, an understanding of the history of the Old Southwest is important because events there foretold the nation's transcontinental expansion"--Bookjacket.

"For more than a quarter-century, despite the admirable excavations that have unearthed such humorists as John Gorman Barr and Marcus Lafayette, the most significant of the humorists from the Old Southwest have remained the same: Crockett, Longstreet, Thompson, Baldwin, Thorpe, Hooper, Robb, Harris, and Lewis. Forming a kind of shadow canon in American literature that led to Mark Twain's early work, from 1834 to 1867 these authors produced a body of writing that continues to reward attentive readers." "James H. Justus's Fetching the Old Southwest examines this writing in the context of other discourses contemporaneous with it: travel books, local histories, memoirs, and sports manuals, as well as unpublished private forms such as personal correspondence, daybooks, and journals. Like most writing, humor is a product of its place and time, and the works studied herein are no exception. The antebellum humorists provide an important look into the social and economic conditions that were prevalent in the southern "new country," a place that would, in time, become the Deep South." "While previous books about Old Southwest humor have focused on individual authors, Justus has produced the first critical study to encompass all of the humor from this time period. Teachers and students of literary history will appreciate the incredible range of documentation, both primary and secondary."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mississippi’s foundational epoch—in which the state literally took shape—has for too long remained overlooked and shrouded in misunderstanding. Yet the years between 1798, when the Mississippi Territory was created, and 1840, when the maturing state came into its own as arguably the heart of the antebellum South, was one of remarkable transformation. Beginning as a Native American homeland subject to contested claims by European colonial powers, the state became a thoroughly American entity in the span of little more than a generation. In Old Southwest to Old South: Mississippi, 1798–1840, authors Mike Bunn and Clay Williams tell the story of Mississippi’s founding era in a sweeping narrative that gives these crucial years the attention they deserve. Several key themes, addressing how and why the state developed as it did, rise to the forefront in the book’s pages. These include a veritable list of the major issues in Mississippi history: a sudden influx of American settlers, the harsh saga of Removal, the pivotal role of the institution of slavery, and the consequences of heavy reliance on cotton production. The book bears witness to Mississippi’s birth as the twentieth state in the Union, and it introduces a cast of colorful characters and events that demand further attention from those interested in the state’s past. A story of relevance to all Mississippians, Old Southwest to Old South explains how Mississippi’s early development shaped the state and continues to define it today.

Originally inhabited by Native American tribes, territorial Mississippi has a complex history rife with fierce contention. Since 1540, when Hernando de Soto of Spain journeyed across the Atlantic and became the first European to stumble across its borders

"While historians have examined the struggles and challenges that confronted the Southern plantation mistress during the American Civil War, until now no one has considered the ways in which the conflict shaped the lives of elite young women, otherwise known as belles. In The Confederate Belle, Giselle Roberts uses diaries, letters, and memoirs to uncover the unique wartime experiences of young ladies in Mississippi and Louisiana. In the plantation culture of the antebellum South, belles enhanced their family's status through their appearance and accomplishments and, later, by marrying well." "During the American Civil War, a new patriotic womanhood superseded the antebellum feminine ideal. It demanded that Confederate women sacrifice everything for their beloved cause, including their men, homes, fine dresses, and social occasions, to ensure the establishment of a new nation and the preservation of elite ideas about race, class, and gender. As menfolk answered the call to arms, southern matrons had to redefine their roles as mistresses and wives. Southern belles faced a different, yet equally daunting task. After being prepared for a delightful "bellehood," young ladies were forced to reassess their traditional rite of passage into womanhood, to compromise their understanding of femininity at a pivotal time in their lives. They found themselves caught between antebellum traditions of honor and of gentility, a binary patriotic feminine ideal and wartime reality."--BOOK JACKET. Book jacket.

Historians have considered slavery and Mississippi together in academic studies, assuming that the two were, and always had been, inextricable linked. Libby attempts to answer the hows and whys of slavery's development during the period when Mississippi was a frontier region. His findings suggest that slavery took many shapes in Mississippi before it became the institution stereotyped in so much scholarship studying the later antebellum period. -- adapted from Introduction.