1861

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.