SouthTalks: “When the South Was West: The Mississippi and the Founding of the Nation”

“When the South Was West: The Mississippi and the Founding of the Nation”

presented by Susan Gaunt Stearns

In 1789, three weeks after George Washington took office, twenty-two-year-old Andrew Jackson stood along the banks of the Mississippi River at Natchez and swore his allegiance to Spain. Washington’s oath is celebrated by American historians and laypeople alike, but understanding why Jackson, future president of the United States, would vow to be a loyal Spanish citizen requires rethinking what we know about the founding of the United States and the origins of the Deep South.

In the decades following the American Revolution, western expansion hinged upon American settlers gaining access to the trade of the Mississippi River, but in 1784 Spain closed the Mississippi to American trade, an event that nearly severed the nascent ties between the Euro-American communities of the Mississippi River Valley and the nation taking form as the United States. For two decades, Americans schemed, negotiated, and fought for control over the Mississippi and, with it, sovereignty over the vast continental interior. In this SouthTalk, Stearns explains why understanding the controversy over the Mississippi—why it mattered and how its meaning changed over time—is a necessary precursor to understanding the place of the future Deep South within the American republic.

Susan Gaunt Stearns is an associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi. Originally from New York City, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale and her PhD from the University of Chicago. Susan’s work focuses on the relationship between economic life and political ideology in early America, especially on western expansion’s role in defining the American republic. Her first book, Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2024.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public.