Natchez Historic District

A city so wealthy from cotton and slavery that it once claimed more millionaires per capita than anywhere in America, Natchez survived the Civil War almost untouched, leaving one of the largest concentrations of antebellum mansions in the South standing beside the site of one of its largest slave markets.

French colonists established Fort Rosalie at Natchez in 1716 on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, and the settlement passed through British and Spanish control before becoming part of the United States in 1798, when it was named capital of the newly organized Mississippi Territory. Its location on the river made it an ideal hub for the cotton trade that would come to define the region.

By the mid-19th century, cotton wealth had made Natchez one of the richest cities in America, reportedly home to more millionaires per capita than almost anywhere else in the country, wealth generated entirely through the forced labor of enslaved people. The city was also the site of Forks of the Road, the second-largest slave market in the Deep South after New Orleans, where thousands of enslaved people were bought and sold.

When Union forces approached in 1863, Natchez surrendered without a fight, sparing its mansions from the destruction that leveled much of the rest of the Confederacy. That accident of history left the city with one of the largest concentrations of antebellum architecture in the South, including the unfinished octagonal mansion Longwood and Stanton Hall, standing today alongside a preserved Forks of the Road site interpreted since 1988 as part of Natchez National Historical Park.