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Mississippi was the second southern U.S. state to declare its secession from the Union on January 9, 1861. With its Secession Ordinance, Mississippi joined with six other southern slave-holding states to form the Confederacy a month later, on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and cities. Mississippian troops fought in every major theater of the American Civil War, although most were concentrated in the Western Theater. The only Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, though born in Kentucky, spent his formative years in Mississippi. Prominent Mississippian generals during the war included William Barksdale, Carnot Posey, Wirt Adams, Earl Van Dorn, Robert Lowry and Benjamin G. Humphreys. ==Secession and Mississippian politics== For years prior to the American Civil War, 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). John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, came in a distant second with 25,045 votes (36.25% of the total), with Stephen A. Douglas, a northern Democrat, receiving 3,282 votes (4.75%). Abraham Lincoln, who won the national election, was not on the ballot in Mississippi.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=American President:Abraham Lincoln:Campaigns and Elections )〕 According to one Mississippian newspaper: Long a hotbed of secessionist sentiment, support for slavery, and southern states' rights, Mississippi declared its secession from the United States on January 9, 1861, and joined the Confederacy less than a month later. The state issued a declaration of their reasons for seceding, proclaiming that "()ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world". 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. Mississippian judge Alexander Hamilton Handy also shared this view, opining of the "black" Republican Party that: Along with South Carolina, Mississippi was one of only two states in the Union in 1860 in which the majority of the state's population were slaves.〔(University of Virginia Library Historical Census Browser )〕 According to Mississippian Democrat 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 slavery, and because the "Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races". Although there were small pockets of citizens who remained sympathetic to the Union, the vast majority of free Mississippians embraced the Confederate cause, and thousands flocked to the military. Around 80,000 white men from Mississippi fought in the Confederate army; some 500 white Mississippians fought for the Union. As the war progressed, a considerable number of freed or escaped slaves joined the United States Colored Troops and similar black regiments. More than 17,000 black Mississippi slaves and freedmen fought for the Union.〔(Mississippi Soldiers in the Civil War )〕 Portions of northwestern Mississippi were under Union occupation on January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. All of Mississippi had been declared "in rebellion" in the Proclamation, and Union forces accordingly began to free slaves in the occupied areas of Mississippi at once.〔Ira Berlin et al., eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 260〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mississippi in the American Civil War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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