Editing Jackson Purchase (section)

==History==
===Origin===
The land was ceded after prolonged negotiations with the Chickasaw Indians in which the United States was represented by [[Andrew Jackson]] and [[Isaac Shelby]], while the Chickasaws were represented by their chiefs, head men, and warriors including: [[Levi Colbert]], his brother [[George Colbert]], Chinubby, and [[Chief Tishomingo|Tishomingo]].  On October 19, 1818, the two sides agreed to the transfer by signing the [[Treaty of Tuscaloosa]].<ref name="Tenn En" />  The United States agreed to pay the Chickasaw people $300,000, at the rate of $20,000 annually for 15 years, in return for the right to all Chickasaw land east of the Mississippi River and north of the new state of [[Mississippi]] border.<ref name="Tenn En">{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/treaties/| last=Rolater| first=Fred S.| title=Treaties| encyclopedia=Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture| date=March 1, 2018| access-date=November 3, 2023}}</ref><ref name="Gov1">{{cite web| url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwss-ilc.html| title=Indian Land Cessions in the United States 1784-1894 (United States Serial Set, Number 4015)| website=[[Library of Congress]]|  access-date=November 3, 2023}}</ref>

===After statehood===
Although claimed as part of Kentucky at its statehood in 1792, the land did not come under definitive U.S. control until 1818, when General [[Andrew Jackson]] and ex-Kentucky governor [[Isaac Shelby]], representing the United States federal government, purchased it from the [[Chickasaw]] [[Native Americans of the United States|Indians]] through several treaties, including the [[Treaty of Tuscaloosa]].<ref name="Tenn En"/><ref name="Gov1"/>

[[File:TENNESSEE map -Treaty of Tuscaloosa.jpg|upright=1.25|thumb|The [[Western Tennessee]] land acquisitions under President [[James Monroe]] between the [[Chickasaw]] and the U. S. affecting the states of [[Kentucky]] and [[Tennessee]], and the [[Alabama Territory]]:<ref name="Tenn En" /><br /><small>*Pink with red outline  – Treaty of Tuscaloosa (1818)<br>*Yellow – Treaty with Chickasaw (1817)<br>*Gray – Treaty with Chickasaw (1805)</small>]]

Historically, this region has been considered the most "Southern" of Kentucky; having an agricultural economy tied to cotton plantations and the use of enslaved labor before the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], and being settled by people from Eastern and Central Kentucky, and backcountry areas of Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas;  the Purchase in the years after the war voted as the most staunchly Democratic region in Kentucky, owing to heavily pro-Confederate sentiment in the region. For well over a century, it provided such overwhelming margins for Democratic candidates that Kentucky Democrats routinely called it the "Gibraltar of Democracy".  The most widely circulated newspaper and media outlet in the Purchase, ''[[The Paducah Sun]]'', was once named the ''Paducah Sun-Democrat'' (see [[WPSD-TV]]). Due to changing demographics, most counties in the Purchase in the early 21st century have populations that are overwhelmingly white. Many African Americans left the area after the Civil War and in the Great Migration of the 20th century, many of them migrating to cities in the Midwest and West for industrial jobs.{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}

During the Civil War, the Purchase was the area of strongest support for the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] cause within Kentucky. On May 29, 1861, a group of Southern sympathizers from Kentucky and Tennessee met at the [[Graves County, Kentucky|Graves County]] Courthouse in [[Mayfield, Kentucky|Mayfield]] to discuss the possibility of aligning the Purchase with West Tennessee. Most records of the event were lost, possibly in an 1864 fire that destroyed the courthouse.<ref name="Consider"/> After the War the region heightened its sense of being "Southern".<ref>{{cite thesis| first=Patricia| last=Hoskins| title='The Old First is With the South:' The Civil War, Reconstruction, and Memory in the Jackson Purchase Region of Kentucky| degree=PhD| publisher=Auburn University| date=May 9, 2008| publication-date=2009| url=http://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/1685/Dissertation.pdf?sequence=1&ts=1433586080323| pages=296–315}}</ref>

In 1907, [[Fulton County, Kentucky|Fulton County]] judge Herbert Carr declared in a speech that the [[Mayfield Convention]] adopted a resolution for secession, and a historical marker in front of the courthouse also proclaims this as fact. But, the surviving records of the meeting, authored by a Union sympathizer, make no mention of this resolution. Historian Berry Craig states that the convention believed the whole of Kentucky would eventually secede and make unnecessary a separate resolution for the Purchase to break away.{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}

Records do show that the convention adopted resolutions condemning President Abraham Lincoln for "waging a bloody and cruel war" against the South, urging Governor [[Beriah Magoffin]] to resist Union forces and praising him for refusing to answer Lincoln's call for soldiers, and condemning the provision of "Lincoln guns" to Union sympathizers in Kentucky. The convention nominated [[Henry Cornelius Burnett|Henry Burnett]] to represent [[Kentucky's 1st congressional district|Kentucky's First District]] in [[United States Congress|Congress]]. The Mayfield Convention was a precursor to the later [[Russellville, Kentucky|Russellville]] Convention, that formed the provisional [[Confederate government of Kentucky]].<ref name = "Consider">{{cite journal | last=Craig |first=Berry F. |title=The Jackson Purchase Considers Secession: The 1861 Mayfield Convention |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |volume=99 |issue=4 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23384796 |date=Autumn 2001 |pages=339–361|jstor=23384796 }}</ref>
[[File:Kentucky Congressional Districts, 118th Congress.svg|thumb|Kentucky congressional districts as of 2023]]
Since the late 20th century, the Purchase has voted for [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republicans]] in national elections while giving higher percentages to candidates of the [[History of the United States Democratic Party|Democratic Party]] in state and local elections. This trend is similar to realignment among white conservatives in other parts of the South. {{As of|2004}}, however, the region's delegation in the Kentucky General Assembly included both Republican Party and Democratic Party representatives. For the first time in history, the region elected Republicans for both of its two state senators. The Jackson Purchase is within [[Kentucky's 1st congressional district]].