Pledges of allegiance: State formation in Mississippi between slavery and redemption

The Civil War marks a turning point in both American history and in the development of the American state. Yet, for all that scholars know about the war and the nation-state that emerged in its aftermath, few works have examined how slavery complicated the growth and consolidation of American state power. How did people living in the Cotton South experience this moment of war and state formation? How did former slaveholders and freedpeople "see the state" in the midst of emancipation?;As this project suggests, black and white southerners met this turning point in history by using an older politics of allegiance to make sense of a modern moment of state formation. In the middle of the Civil War, as Union and Confederate armies battled for control of Mississippi, talk of loyalty and allegiance emerged as an important part of the region's political culture. Prior to the war, slaveholding had encouraged a world in which notions of allegiance defined an individual's connection to their local communities, with the authority of impersonal states kept at arm's length. But as war and emancipation, Reconstruction and the formation of two nation-states altered local politics, necessity forced Mississippians to think differently about power and its application. Using older ideas about allegiance as a means to connect themselves to large and growing states, whites and blacks attempted to bend the materials of their prewar politics to suit their changed circumstances.;This project examines the history of allegiance in Mississippi. Using government papers, private letters, diaries and documents gleaned from all levels of local, state and federal governments, this dissertation focuses on allegiance as a political idea used by whites and freedpeople, to make sense of a modern process of state formation. Offering a history of the formation of the modern American state, as seen through the eyes of those who were witness to its development, this project also shows how slavery influenced the consolidation of state power in the post-emancipation United States.