But it is not her public or professional men alone, who have made the Historic Adams County of the past. "Her merchants were princes," in the olden time, when ships from the ocean were moored at the wharves of Natchez, bringing and taking in exchange the treasures of the old world and the new. Here one of the first cotton compresses was established. The old Mississippi Railroad, built in 1836, but completed only as far as Hamburg, was the earliest in the South and one of the oldest in the Union. Its old road-bed and massive embankments still remain,—monuments of the enterprise of our forefathers.
Thus, even after her political supremacy had departed, Natchez still remained the financial and commercial centre of this State. But the great financial panic of 1836 and 1837 came, and like a cyclone swept our prosperity away. This was followed by the terrible tornado of May 7th, 1840, which laid our city in ruins, and numbered its victims by the hundred, and which is even yet recalled with dread upon each recurrence of its anniversary.
I have thus endeavored to present, in epitome, an outline of the history of Adams County, from its earliest settlement to within times too recent to require research by the historian. I have endeavored likewise to indicate a few of the most interesting spots which may be visited by the student of history coming into our midst.
THE HISTORICAL OPPORTUNITY OF MISSISSIPPI
BY R. W. JONES, LL. D.
A writer truly and forcibly says that Americans have been much readier to do great deeds than to record them—to make those signal achievements that are worthy of remembrance than to be troubled with the tediousness of writing them. If this is true anywhere, it has in the past been unquestionably true of Southern people and Mississippians.
In a recent number of the American Historical Review, Albert Bushnell Hart discussed the "Historical Opportunity of America;" and this led me to think of the Historical Opportunity of Mississippi.
If anything great and systematic in the line of historical research and production is to be done in Mississippi we must have organization. The State Historical Society must have local co-operation; this can be best effected by Auxiliary Historical Societies co-operating with the Central Organization.[152] The local Society is the natural centre of historical activity. We are highly gratified to report a decided revival of interest in history-writing since the organization of our State Society; at least there has been a revival as far as the production of monographs and brief biographies.
The following suggestions are presented with a hope that they will promote still further the historical work in the State: