Natchez National Historical Park

I’m finding that any National Park unit considered “Historical” and located in the southern U.S. will ultimately have some ties to slavery. Natchez National Historical Park in Natchez, Mississippi is no exception. Calling this a “Park” is a bit of a stretch. To be honest, there really isn’t much here (in terms of buildings and such) except some history of the city.

The park has four separate units – a visitor’s booth inside the City of Natchez Visitor Center, a house in downtown Natchez that remains closed due to some virus, the remnants of a French fort, and another plantation house.

I stopped first at the visitor’s center, where I got some pamphlets about the other units. Fort Rosalie, a block away, overlooks the Mississippi and was built by the French to protect their lands along the river. Most of the fort has washed away as the Mississippi tends to change its course often. What remains simply looks like some hills. A few information plaques line the sidewalk alongside the fort. I chose not to climb up to the top embankments.

I drove by the closed house, owned at one time by a prominent black businessman, and continued to the outskirts of town, to the Melrose plantation. This was just another huge stone house of interesting architecture, owned originally by generally evil people. I took a few photos and headed to the hotel for the night.

Natchez does form the southern terminus for both the Natchez Trace Parkway and Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail, both of which run northeast into southern Tennessee. Both are units of the National Park Service but are slated in my trip plans for visits on a future date.

You may get the impression that I was underwhelmed by this site, and you would be correct. In terms of the National Park components, there really isn’t much. The first few plantations I saw last November along the Atlantic coast were interesting, but ultimately they are the same.

However, I understand why the park service wanted a site here. The history of Natchez is what is interesting. By its location, it became a major slave marketplace. One would think this would be somewhere along the Atlantic coast, and those existed, but in the early 1800s, the U.S. banned the import of people from Africa for sale into slavery. This meant all future “sales” were internal.

At one point, Natchez was considered one of the most prosperous cities in the country, with plenty of rich “businessmen”. Perhaps the most interesting item I read concerned the opinion on succession that was held by most of those businessmen. The image I have of the south when South Carolina and other states seceded to form the Confederate States was one of jubilation and celebration.

However, those businessmen of Natchez generally opposed secession. Their reason? They felt that a new Confederate nation had no chance to win a war against the north, and in losing such a war, the entire culture of the south that the secessionists wanted to preserve would be lost. They may have been engaged in a truly evil business, but they were not stupid. Events played out exactly as they feared, and Natchez (and all of Mississippi) were changed forever. The city is a mere shell of its former self, and the state is one of the nation’s poorest.

Steve