Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the James F. Trotter Paper, #930-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Transcribed from original lent by Frank Hopkins of Holly Springs, Miss., December 1944.

Location of Originals

Originals returned to private owner in December 1944.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2010

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Criminal law--Mississippi--History--19th century.
• De Soto County (Miss.)--History.
• Grand jury--Mississippi--History--19th century.
• Judges--Mississippi--History--19th century.
• Mississippi--History.
• Trotter, James F., 1802-1866.

James Fisher Trotter (1802-1866), born in Virginia, served as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, 1827-1829; Mississippi state senator, 1829-1833; judge of the Mississippi Circuit Court, 1833 and 1866, and Supreme Court, 1839-1842; United States senator, 1838; and a professor of law at the University of Mississippi, 1860-1862.

The collection is a typed copy of the last charge made by James F. Trotter, judge and former United States senator, to the De Soto County, Miss., grand jury, reflecting on the Civil War and, extensively, on the revolution in criminal law made by the postwar legislature.