Jackson Free Press

A new polling analysis published by examiner.com indicates something about Mississippi that has been in the works for a while: Based on recent elections, our state is trending blue.

Based on polling data on a Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump showdown in 2016, Mississippi is one of the few Deep South states that would go for Clinton in that matchup.

This analysis might surprise many who think that Mississippi is the reddest state of the red (especially based on our statewide cavemen, er, elected officials). But several facts make it much more complicated than at first glance:

1. State Democrats have provided very few even-marginally-progressive options historically, giving younger and less-conservative choices to vote for, creating voter lethargy among those who might turn out and vote "blue" otherwise. That fact is actually changing this year, with several openly progressive (and female) Democrats getting at least some party support, instead of the pseudo-Republicans the party has tended to put up in the last 20 years.

2. More young people of all races are staying in Mississippi, and many of them are voting Democratic, and have since 2004.

3. Demographics, demographics, demographics. The irony of Mississippi being the state with the highest percentage of enslaved people in 1860 is that our state still has the highest percentage of African Americans and is more likely than much of Dixie to go blue first. Put simply, African Americans tend to vote Democratic, ever since the Republican Party embrace of Dixiecrats back in the late 1960s after national Dems supported civil-rights laws, and we have the highest percentage of black residents in the country.

4. And, let's be honest, even many Republicans don't want bat-shit-crazy Trump running this country.

5. Finally, to be honest again, a lot of white people like Clinton better than Obama (even if I'm not one of them).

So, there are no surprises here: Mississippi has been steadily trending blue for a while now. The question, as always, is: Will the people who can flip the state into the blue column turn out both this November (to save public-education funding and turn out a governor who makes us look like the most stuck-in-the-past state) and next November?

Time, and voter registration, will tell. Progressive (which is easy to be here by rejecting the radical right) Mississippians must find the will to stop giving up our power to sellouts to bigotry and backward ideas (and ideologues) to lift our state up. I've watched this will grow since we started this paper in 2002—and saw serious evidence of it when we turned back Personhood, shocking the nation—and I believe in upcoming elections we may well surprise the world once again. I've believed this was coming for nearly 15 years now.

Stay tuned and register to vote.

UPDAT Aug. 24, 2016: The examiner.com link above is broken, but here is an article and another about …

Here's an interesting factoid for those of you discussing the Civil War and slavery about Hinds County, which contains Jackson, the capital, of course. It's from this link, where you can also link to a number of other Mississippi counties and see the numbers of slaves that some of the larger slave holders of the time owned. This was the scenario when "firewater" Gov. John Pettus led the secession of Mississippi from here in Jackson over slavery:

According to U.S. Census data, the 1860 Hinds County population included 8,940 whites, 36 "free colored" and 22,363 slaves. By the 1870 census, the white population had increased 10% to 9,829, and the "colored" population had dropped about 8% to 20,659. (As a side note, by 1960, 100 years later, the County was listed as having 112,205 whites, more than a twelve fold increase, but the 1960 total of 94,750 "Negroes"was only about four times what the colored population had been 100 years before.)

It's tough history, but important.

Here's a list of resources to help research who owned slaves, how many, etc.

In an occasional blog series I'm inaugurating here, I'd like to pull forward some debate that's happening in the comments and examine a variety of the myths and legends that surround the South's participation in the civil war.

From the comments section came this one from Claude Shannon:

The war was fought over money and power. In 1860, 80% of all federal taxes were paid for by the south. 95% of that money was spent on improving the north.

Now I'm not a history scholar, but I do get curious when things just kinda sound wrong.

First... even if we assume that's true (which, as you'll see later, I can't) I think the construct is disingenuous, as it suggests that "the South" had very little say in the matter and no recourse but secession given the rapacious chokehold that the North apparently had on the South in terms of political power and usurious taxation.

It's a dramatic picture, but there are a few caveats:

1.) Democrats (the party that included most all Southern politicians) controlled Congress leading up to the Civil War (they lost the House in 1859) and had a Democratic president in the "doughface" Buchanan. (The term being one that suggests a Northern with Southern sympathies.)

2.) The Tariff of 1857 was authored and supported by Southern legislators (the primary author was Virginia Senator Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, who would later be pictured on the Confederate $10 bill) and it lowered tariffs to a level they hadn't hit in 50 years.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/10/22076/

Remember that through most of 1800-1860 there was no income tax on individuals and businesses or other taxes (sales, property) as we define them today -- Federal taxes were almost exclusively tariffs on imports. (The Nullification Crisis had come when tariffs were considerably higher in order to pay down debts from the War of 1812.)

So, "taxes" were considerably lower leading up to the war.

But then... if there's evidence that "The South" paid "80 percent" of those tariffs they'd managed to lower, I can't find it.

As noted here, about 63% of Federal revenue was collected as tariffs on shipments that went through just the Port of New York alone. And those tariffs were collected from the merchants who imported them.

Aside from New York, there were certainly other ports in the North; so an argument that "The South" paid 80% of tariffs -- e.g. that 80% of imported and taxed goods went through Southern ports where the taxes were paid by Southern importers -- isn't correct.

(The tariffs were also protectionist in nature, and likely benefitted both the North and South as they made locally produced goods more attractive.)

If there's a more esoteric argument that says somehow the South ultimately bought 80% of those goods and therefore experienced the markup that came from them being taxes, I haven't seen it, but it would be interesting to read and parse.

One other point to make on tariffs -- the Southern states …