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Life Of Jacob Thompson, Dorothy Zollicoffer Oldham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jacob Thompson moved from North Carolina to northern Mississippi in the mid-1830's where he became a wealthy attorney, landowner and slaveholder. He served as a Mississippi congressman for twelve years, served as President Buchanan's Secretary of the Interior, resigned in January 1861 to serve in the Confederate military, and was appointed by Jefferson Davis to supervise covert activities based out of Canada. Thompson contributed a great deal to Oxford and to the establishment of the new university there. Southern newspapers and histories of the time lauded him as an honorable and accomplished statesman, but Thompson remains a largely neglected figure …