Episode 1 of 8

Mississippi Secedes

When: January 9, 1861
Where: Jackson, Mississippi
Part of: Secession Winter and the Founding of the Confederacy, January–February 1861

Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union on January 9, 1861.

Following South Carolina, Mississippi declared its secession in Jackson. This action was part of the broader cascade of Deep South states passing ordinances to protect their cotton-based economies dependent on enslaved labor.

Sources

Confederate States of America Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-04

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.