1860

A resident of Holly Springs, J.W. Clapp was a railroad attorney and sometime politician. In a travel memoir, he describes an excursion of southerners through the northern states during the tumultuous 1860 presidential campaign:

On reaching Chicago there was a jubilation & love feast & of course, speech making. Under the mellowing influence of the fluids which were lavishly supplied, enthusiastic encomiums of the Union & vows of fidelity to it were indulged in by both northern and southern gentlemen amongst whom Col Walter was conspicuous. Regarding its dissolution as imminent & contingent upon Lincoln’s election, & remembering my position as an Elector with a stormy canvass before me, I resisted all efforts to draw me out, & persistently but courteously declined to speak or express an opinion as to the future of the Country.

A Mississippi member of the Electoral College, Clapp had pledged to cast his ballot for the Democratic ticket of Breckinridge & Lane.

University of Mississippi student Will Nelson wrote to his mother on November 4th describing the minutia of daily life and inserting a brief discussion of more national scope: “In two short days the great contest will be decided and the country will either breathe freer or give one convulsive gasp and perish. For it is my firm belief that in the event of Lincoln’s election there will be a dissolution of the Union.”

J.W. Clapp would serve as a delegate to the Mississippi Secession Convention and as a Representative in the first Confederate Congress. Young Will Nelson enlisted in the Marshall County Home Guards and served most of the war in the Third Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.