ABSTRACT
Alexander Gallatin McNutt, the eleventh governor of Mississippi, was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the seventh child in a family of thirteen children. His father died when he was ten, and he made his own way in the world thereafter. He taught country school in Virginia and completed his studies at Washington College in 1821. After reading law in Lexington, Virginia, he joined the tide of westward immigration, reaching Jackson, Mississippi, in 1823. He later moved to Vicksburg where in time he developed a lucrative legal practice. In 1835 McNutt was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat, and in 1837 and 1839 he was elected governor of Mississippi. He was a controversial figure in Mississippi politics, championing the poor farmers in the northern part of the state against the bankers and plantation owners in the south.
