Exhibition Review

Temporary exhibition, May 14, 1998-Nov. 16, 1998. Donna Dye, director; Cavett Taff, curator; John Gardner and Tara Bond, assistant curators; Mary Lohrenz, collection curator; Nicole Maris, registrar.	1
The United States Congress created the Mississippi Territory in 1798. Instead of celebrating Mississippi's bicentennial with an exhibition that spanned its nineteen-year history prior to statehood, the staff of the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Mississippi, chose to highlight one year. Sometimes referred to as the annus mirabilis in the American West, 1811 was marked by the Great Comet, the New Madrid earthquake, and the maiden voyage of the first steamboat on the Mississippi River. The curators decided that a focus on this particular slice of time would be a clever way to make patrons think about the significance of the Mississippi Territory.	2
A massive impressionistic painting of the momentarily ruptured Mississippi River with a primitive steamboat tossed upon its bank in the foreground, a shattered log cabin in the background, and a symbolic comet in the sky called attention to the exhibit opposite the main entrance to the Old Capitol. Above it hung the title banner: 1811—Year of Wonders in the Mississippi Territory. The Great Comet of 1811, the brightest comet to cross the sky in centuries, shone at its most luminous in October. The first of four major tremors of the earthquake that takes its name from New Madrid, Missouri, occurred on December 16; and the steamboat New Orleans docked at Natchez, Mississippi, during its maiden voyage on December 30, 1811. The quake included two of the strongest tremors registered in the United States. It caused the Mississippi River to reverse its flow for a few minutes and rang church bells as far away as Boston. An island to which the New Orleans was moored disappeared overnight.	3
The section entitled "The Territory Takes Shape" traces the growth of the Mississippi Territory from a long strip, situated above the thirty-first parallel, that in 1798 connected the Mississippi River to the Chattahoochee River to the gigantic parcel that includes Mississippi and Alabama today. In 1804 Congress added to the territory the top half of this region, ceded in 1803 by Georgia to the federal government. Finally, in 1811 the territory gained the strip of land below the thirty-first parallel that borders the Gulf of Mexico in present-day Mississippi and Alabama. This land between the Pearl and the Perdido rivers became part of the newly proclaimed Republic of West Florida, whose leaders declared independence from Spain and immediately asked to join the United States, for a month before President James Madison issued a proclamation of annexation. In 1811 Congress attached it to the southern border of the Mississippi Territory. Occupation of Spanish West Florida west of the Perdido marks the only time that the United States has taken land from a foreign power without even the pretext of being officially at war. Unfortunately, curators failed to denote this fact. In 1811 there was an abortive attempt at statehood. The western half of the territory became the state of Mississippi in 1817, the eastern half the territory of Alabama, which became a state in 1819.	4
Appropriately entitled "Westward Ho," the segment on migration traces the movement of pioneer families into the region in 1811, especially along the big bend of the Tennessee River in present-day Alabama. Curators correctly stress the importance of cattle raising to early settlers, an activity virtually ignored by students of southern history until recently. It is true that the Federal Road from Georgia was improved and Gaines Trace was cut to connect the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers in 1811. While migration in the years just before the War of 1812 remained steady, it paled in comparison to the postwar flood of settlers into the territory, a fact not evident here because of the exhibition's theme.	. . .