ABSTRACT
Mississippi has been called a peculiarly typical state in which to study Reconstruction. But this should be modified. In direct contrast to South Carolina, Mississippi was the place where first and last Negroes were largely deprived of any opportunity for land ownership. In this state there were, in 1860, 353,899 white people and 437,404 Negroes, of whom less than 1,000 were free. The population had only been a few thousand at the beginning of the century and small in 1820. The legislature then proceeded to adopt the celebrated Black Code of 1865, and completed the set of laws by reenacting all the penal and criminal laws applying to slaves, "except so far as the mode and manner and trial of punishment has been ordained by law." The legislature stubbornly refused to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring that they had already abolished slavery and that they would not consent to the second section, which gave Congress the right to enforce freedom.
