|
|
Article: Mississippi
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
MISSISSIPPI
MISSISSIPPI.
Located in the heart of the South, Mississippi is one of five southern states that border the Gulf of Mexico. Its total area consists of 47,689 square miles, ranking it the second smallest Gulf-South state and the thirty-first in population nationally. Despite its size, the region has been blessed with perhaps the South's most fertile soil, though there are marked contrasts in several infertile belts. Its brown loam soil region in the central interior, its loess soil in the southwestern corridor, and its rich east-central prairie have continued to be productive cotton and grazing lands and, in the early and mid-nineteenth century, were dominant economic centers ...