Mississippi became the 20th U.S. state

On December 10, 1817, President James Monroe signed the resolution that admitted Mississippi as the nation’s twentieth state. The act capped a long territorial journey: the Mississippi Territory had been organized back in 1798, gradually expanding before its eastern half was split off as the Alabama Territory earlier that same year.

Statehood required a constitution, and earlier in 1817 delegates from Mississippi’s counties gathered at the town of Washington, near Natchez, to draft it. The new framework set up the state government and made Natchez the first capital. Territorial governor David Holmes went on to become Mississippi’s first elected governor.

A frontier of cotton and cleared forest became, with one signature, a full member of the young republic.

The new state’s population had already swelled past 200,000 people, a sign of the rapid settlement transforming the Deep South. Mississippi’s borders, fixed in 1817, have remained essentially unchanged ever since.