The social, industrial and political conditions existing in Mississippi two years after the close of the civil war can only be properly appreciated by taking a backward view of what had gone before. From 1817 to 1860 Mississippi was a garden for the cultivation of all that was grand in oratory, true in science, and enlightened and profound in law and statesmanship. Those were years of a golden age, an age of chivalry in which she vied with her sister States in the lists of that grand tournament that was to decide the fate of a nation. That period of the State's history produced a roll too tedious to read of noble spirits, bright wits, and elegant scholars, whose names and deeds are preserved in the records of an admiring people. Mississippi takes special pride in the character of Jefferson Davis, whose name will be forever enshrined in fame's proudest niche, as the representative of Southern honor, chivalry and manhood. "And he will live on history's page, While cycling years shall onward move, A victim of a senseless rage, Now idol of his people's love; When hate is buried in the dust, When party strife shall break its spear, When truth is free and men are just, Then will his epitaph appear." Mississippi was enriched by the power and ability of George Poindexter, her brilliant governor and United States senator; she points with pride to the executive ability and constructive statesmanship of Robert J. Walker, Polk's great minister of finance, and author of the Walker Tariff Bill; she looks back with wondering admiration to that king of orators and eccentric genius, S. S. Prentiss, who thrilled the American heart with his god-like eloquence; she holds sacred the memory of the gifted and peerless Lamar, who stood, unawed and alone, as defender and protector, in her darkest and most trying hour; and no stone that marks the last resting place of the great of earth can be worthier of the Roman legend: "_Clarus et vir fortissimus._" The year 1861 brought ruin and desolation upon the State. The signal gun fired from Fort Sumter was the beginning of a bloody fratricidal strife, and was the first act in the greatest drama of political and social revolution known to history. That revolution brought political, industrial and financial ruin upon Mississippi. When peace came, it found a race of ignorant slaves, masters of her political destiny. Then came the days of reconstruction, and of devilish animosity and hate; days when ignorance and vice reigned supreme, and the law of brute force was terribly triumphant. During that time a brave people were condemned to all the suffering and oppression which crime and corruption could invent, and tyranny inflict.