January 9:
The Mississippi legislature votes to secede from the Union.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Jefferson Davis, a former senator from Mississippi, was inaugurated the first and only president of the Confederate States of America on February 18, a month prior to Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in Washington, D.C.
February 18:
In front of the state capitol at Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis, one of Mississippi's U.S. senators, took the oath of office as provisional president of the Confederacy.
A moderate secessionist who, Davis anticipates a "long and bloody war."
Mississippi will ratify the Confederate Constitution in March.
April 12:
In South Carolina, Confederate forces fire the opening shots of the Civil War on the Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.
Regiments of volunteers from Mississippi are quickly organized and are dispatched to Pensacola, Virginia, and Tennessee.