University of Virginia Library

40. XL.

The towns and villages of Mississippi, as in European
states, are located perfectly independent of
each other, isolated among its forests, and often
many leagues apart, leaving in the intervals large
tracts of country covered with plantations, and
claiming no minuter subdivision than that of “county.”
Natchez, for instance, is a corporation one
mile square, but from the boundaries of the city to
Woodville, the next incorporated town south, there
is an interval of thirty-eight miles. It is necessary
for the planters who reside between towns so far
asunder, to have some more particular address, than
the indefinite one arising from their vicinity to one

or other of these towns. Hence has originated the
pleasing custom of naming estates, as in England;
and names so given are always regarded by the
planters themselves, and by the community, as an
inseparable part of their address. These names
are generally selected with taste, such as “Monmouth,”
“Laurel-hill,” “Grange,” “Magnolia grove,”
“The Forest,” “Cottage,” “Briars,” “Father land,”
and “Anchorage”—the last given by a retired navy
officer to his plantation. The name is sometimes
adopted with reference to some characteristic of
the domain, as “The Oaks,” “China grove,” “New
Forest,” &c., but more frequently it is a mere matter
of fancy. Towns in this state have usually
originated from the location of a county seat, after
the formation of a new county. Here the court-house
is placed, and forms the centre of an area
which is soon filled with edifices and inhabitants.
If the county lies on the river, another town may
arise, for a shipping port, but here the accumulation
of towns usually ceases. A county seat, and a
cotton mart, are all that an agricultural country requires.
The towns in this state are thus dispersed
two or three to each county, nor so long as this is a
planting country, will there be any great increase to
their number, although in wealth and importance
they may rival, particularly the shipping ports, the
most populous places in the valley of the west.
In these towns are the banks, the merchants, the
post offices, and the several places of resort for
business or pleasure that draw the planter and his
family from his estate. Each town is the centre of
a circle which extends many miles around it into
the country, and daily attracts all within its influence.
The ladies come in their carriages “to shop,” the
gentlemen, on horseback, to do business with their
commission merchants, visit the banks, hear the
news, dine together at the hotels, and ride back in
the evening. The southern town is properly the
“Exchange” for the neighbouring planters, and the
“Broadway” for their wives and daughters. And
as no plantation is without a private carriage, the
number of these gay vehicles, filling the streets of
the larger towns on pleasant mornings in the winter,
is surprising. I have counted between thirty
and forty private carriages in the streets of Natchez
in one morning. In a small country village, I once
numbered seventeen, standing around a Methodist
chapel. Showy carriages and saddle horses are
the peculiar characteristics of the “moving spectacle”
in the streets of south-western towns.

Every village is a nucleus of southern society,
to which the least portion is generally contributed
by itself. When a public ball is given by the bachelors,
in one of these towns—for private parties
are scarcely known—the tickets of invitation fly
into the retirement of the plantations, within the
prescribed circle, often to the distance of thirty
miles. Thus families, who reside several leagues
apart, on opposite sides of the town, and who might
otherwise never associate, unless on “change,” or
in “shopping,” meet together, like the inhabitants
of one city. This state of things unites, in a social
bond, the intelligent inhabitants of a large extent of

country, who are nearly equally wealthy, and creates
a state of society in the highest degree favourable
to hospitality and social feeling. These social
“circles” often revolve within one another, and
sometimes enlarge, until they embrace several
towns. The Mississippians are remarkable for
their “locomotivity;” an organ which they have
plainly developed, if we reason, as phrenologists
sometimes do, from effect to cause—and whose existence
is manifest from their propensity annually
to depopulate their state, by taking northern tours
during the summer months. During the season of
gayety, in the winter months, the public assemblies
and private coteries of Natchez are unsurpassed by
those of any other city, in the elegance, refinement,
or loveliness of the individuals who compose them.
If you will bear in mind, that the southern females
of wealth are usually educated in the most finished
style, at the first female seminaries in the north, and,
until recently, not seldom in Europe; and recollect
the personal beauty, sprightliness, and extreme refinement
of the southern lady, you will not be surprised
that elegant women grace the private circles, and
shine in the gay assemblies of southern cities.

But fashion and refinement are not confined to
Natchez. In nearly every county reside opulent
planters, whose children enjoy precisely the same
advantages as are afforded in the city. Drawn from
the seclusion of their plantations, their daughters
are sent to the north; whence they return, in the
course of time, with cultivated minds and elegant
manners. Hence every village can draw around it

a polished circle of its own; for refinement and
wealth do not always diminish here, as in New-England,
in the inverse ratio of distance from a
metropolis—and elegant women may often be found
blooming in the depths of forests far in the interior.

Less attention is paid to the mental or personal
cultivation of the male youth of this state, than to
that of the females. Many of them are partially
educated at home; and, by the time they attain the
age at which northern boys enter college, become
assistants on the plantation, which they expect one
day to inherit; or, at the age of nineteen or twenty,
receive from their parents land and negroes, and
commence planting for themselves. At the age of
twenty-one or two they frequently marry. Many
planters are opposed to giving their sons, whom
they destine to succeed them as farmers, a classical
education. A common practical education they
consider sufficient for young gentlemen who are to
bury themselves for life in the retirement of a plantation.
But Mississippi, in this age and at this
juncture, from the peculiar construction of her political
and social laws, demands an educated youth.
—The majority of the planters are able to educate
their children in a superior manner; and if they do
this, they will elevate the rising generation high in
the scale of society, and give Mississippi an honourable
rank among the republics of America.
Although education is not indigenous, and is too
frequently a secondary consideration in the minds
of many, children in the towns are probably as well
educated as they would be at the north, under similar

circumstances, for no village is without private
schools. But the education of young children on
plantations is much neglected. Many boys and
girls, whose parents reside five or ten miles from
any town or academy, and do not employ tutors,
grow up to the age of eight or ten, unable either to
read or write. Some planters, who have but one
or two children, and do not think it worth while to
employ a tutor for so small a number, thoughtless
of the injury their children may sustain, suffer them
to grow up at home, almost ignorant even of the
alphabet, till of an age to be sent away to a boarding-school,
or an academy, where they first learn to
read. In such a state of things, it is not uncommon
to meet with very interesting and intelligent children
wholly ignorant of those childish studies, and
that story-book information, which throw such a
charm over their little society, invigorating the intellectual
faculties, and laying a foundation for a
superstructure of mind. Often several families will
unite and employ a tutor; constructing, for the purpose,
a school-house, in a central position among
their plantations. But those who look forward to
a high rank in American and European society for
their children, employ private tutors in their own
houses, even if they have but one child. Some
gentlemen send their children, when quite young,
to the north, and visit them every summer. Two-thirds
of the planters' children of this state are educated
out of it. There is annually a larger sum
carried out of the state, for the education of children
at the north, and in the expenses of parents
in making them yearly visits there, than would be
sufficient to endow an institution at intervals of four
or five years.

There are three colleges in Mississippi; but Mississippians
have so long been in the habit of sending
their children away, when it was necessary, that
they still adhere to the custom, when there is no farther
occasion for it; and the consequence is, that
their own institutions are neglected, and soon fall
into decay, while the money which they send
for the support of northern colleges, would elevate
their own to high literary distinction and usefulness.

Oakland college, twenty-five miles from Natchez,
near Rodney, is a flourishing institution under Presbyterian
patronage. It is of recent foundation, and
has yet no permanent buildings; but handsome college
edifices are about to be erected for the accommodation
of the students. Its situation is rural and
very healthy. Its funds are respectable, and under
the presidency of the Rev. J. Chamberlin, a
gentleman of learning and piety, it is rapidly rising
into eminence. It already has about one hundred
students, and its professors are men of talent and industry,
one of whom is a son of the late Dr. Payson
of Portland. It is thus that young northerners work
their way to distinction in the south and west.
There is another college at Clinton, of which I have
before spoken, and also an academy at Natchez,
ranking as high as a south-western college, under
the superintendence of J. H. B. Black, Esq. of
New-Jersey. Jefferson college, in the village of
Washington, six miles from Natchez, is the oldest

and best endowed institution in the state. It was
founded by private subscription in 1802, and subsequently
received a grant of a township of unsaleable
land from Congress, exchanged two years since
for a more eligible tract, which sold for a very large
sum. The income of the college is now about
eight thousand dollars, arising from a fund of more
than one hundred and fifty thousand. The building
is a large, three-story brick edifice, handsomely
finished, and capable of containing one hundred
students. The location is highly beautiful, in a
grove of majestic oaks, and at the head of a fine
green parade, which lies, with a magnificent oak in
its centre, between it and the village. A primary
department is connected with it; and a pleasant
brick building, half surrounded with galleries, on the
opposite side of the “green,” is appropriated to this
branch of the institution. The primary department,
which includes a moiety of the students, is under
the able superintendence of professor Crane, a native
of New-Jersey, and recently from West Point.
The history of this institution will confirm what I
have stated in my remarks upon education. Since
its organization until very recently, it has laboured
under pecuniary difficulties, with which it was unable
to contend; for a great part of the time it has
been without pupils or teachers; and its halls have
occasionally been used for private schools. It obtained
no celebrity as a college until 1829-30, when
Mr. Williston, the author of “Eloquence in the
United States,” and “Williston's Tacitus,” was
chosen its president, and the institution was placed
under military organization, after the plan adopted
by capt. Alden Partridge. The novelty of this
mode drew a great number of pupils within its
walls. The following year ill health compelled
president Williston to resign, and he was succeeded
by major Holbrook, formerly principal of the seminary
in Georgetown, D. C. During his presidency
there were above one hundred and fifty cadets connected
with the institution, and it was more flourishing
in every respect than any other in the south-west.
But the new president, seized with the mania
for cotton-planting, which infects all who reside
here for any length of time, devoted a portion of his
attention to agricultural pursuits, and the patrons
of the college, perhaps regarding this additional vocation
as incompatible with that of instructing, withdrew
their sons, one after another, the novelty of
a military education having worn off, and fell into
the old mode of keeping them at home on their
plantations, or sending them to Kentucky, the great
academy for Mississippi youth, to complete their
education. During the summer the president died,
and the institution again became disorganized. In
1833, capt. Alden Partridge was invited by the
board of trustees to assume the presidency, but after
remaining a few months, returned to the north,
unable to restore it to its former flourishing condition.
The college halls became again, and for the
sixth time since their foundation, nearly deserted.
In the spring of 1834, the board invited two professors
to take charge of the college until they could
decide upon the choice of a president. The present
year, C. B. Dubuisson, Esq. of Philadelphia,
one of these professors, was unanimously elected
president, and was inaugurated on the 6th of July,
1835. Under the new president, who is a finished
scholar and a very amiable and energetic man, the
college has become very flourishing, and is rapidly
advancing to permanent literary distinction. Professor
Symmes, a graduate of the University of Virginia,
and an able scholar, is professor of mathematics.
Under these two gentlemen, and the professor
in the primary department, planters may now
have their sons as well educated as at the north.
They are beginning to think so. But if they would
more generally adopt the opinion, that their sons
can be educated at the south by northern professors
as well as at the north, the literary institutions of this
country would not have to struggle for existence,
scarcely able to rise above the rank of an academy.
In connexion with the disinclination which southerners
have to educating their sons at home, and
their disposition to depreciate their native institutions,
there exists another cause, with a direct
tendency to check their advancement. It is the
system of education pursued in their colleges, which,
in a great degree, is the result of necessity. Until
within a few years, there have been no good preparatory
schools in this state, where youth could fit
themselves for admission into college. Now, to
form the lowest class in a college, it is necessary
that those who are to compose it—however large
or small their number—should have gone through
a prescribed series of preparatory studies. But
where there has been no opportunity for pursuing
this preparatory course, as here in the south-west,
the college must open its doors to unprepared youth,
to the great injury of its classes, or, in the absence
of other means, provide measures for fitting them
for admission. These measures all colleges here
are at present taking, by the establishment of primary
departments; until the pupils of these departments
are qualified for promotion, the college
classes remain vacant; and thus, though nominally
a college, the institution is, for the time being, an
academy, or preparatory school for itself. This is
the present state of the colleges here, and none of
them have advanced so far as to open the junior
class. Jefferson College indeed has been, with the
exception of its condition under military discipline
a few years since, no more than a preparatory department
since its organization. It is now rising
into the dignity of a college, although the quadrennial
course, which in our notions is inseparable from
a collegiate education, is not intended by the board
to form a part of their system. The method adopted
in the University of Virginia, in relation to the routine
of studies and succession of classes, will be
partially pursued. In the present state of things,
this is no doubt the preferable course to follow;
but it is to be feared that the college will never be
eminent or very permanent, until established on
the good old basis of our northern institutions. If
this system were adopted, and a professor appointed
to fill the chair in each department of science, whether
there were students or not—and the freshman
class opened, even by the admission of a single
scholar—the institution, with its immense fund,
would stand upon an immovable foundation. The
classes would increase every year in size, and at the
end of the fifth series, or in twenty years, a class of
seniors would receive their degrees, whom even
aristocratic Harvard would not disdain to acknowledge
as her foster children.