| Historians have often ignored the significance of Natchez, Mississippi, in the history of the American frontier, yet the region became the social and economic capital of the Old Southwest prior to 1830. The rich loess soil adapted to cotton agriculture, the invention of the cotton gin, and the expansion of slavery enabled planters to build fortunes beginning around 1795, the year that Spain agreed to cede Natchez to the United States. Even before the creation of the Mississippi Territory in 1798, Natchez enjoyed economic ties with England and the American Northeast, and cotton production helped to fuel the industrial revolution of the early-nineteenth century. By the time that new Indian lands in Mississippi opened to whites after 1830, the Natchez frontier had been transformed into the most prosperous agricultural region in the United States.; American Natchez possessed a turbulent past beginning with the conflict that erupted between Spain and the United States over the transfer of the region to the United States in 1798. Violence and coercion, caused by the transient nature of many of its inhabitants and the entrenchment of slavery, became significant characteristics of Natchez society. Although other frontier communities experienced problems with violence, Natchez became unique because of its societal structure based on race and class. Unruly boatmen often became dangerous, just as gunfighters did in the Old West, but it was slavery that brought about the most conflict. Whites' fear of blacks manifested itself throughout the era, and threats of slave insurrections and retaliation proved to be very real. By 1830, the largest slave market in the Old Southwest apart from New Orleans operated at Natchez.; The region became a likely place to die for many settlers because of violence and disease epidemics, but those immigrants who made it their home also created an orderly civilization. The establishment of organized religion, education, and social institutions stabilized the frontier. Although early Natchez would never be able to embrace an enlightened civility because of slavery, it did occasionally rise above mediocrity, even to the extent of granting some degree of legal justice to African Americans in local courts. A place of contradiction and irony, by 1830, Natchez rightfully asserted itself as the cornerstone of the cotton kingdom. |
