John J. Pettus

John Jones Pettus was an American politician, lawyer, and slave owner who served as the 23rd Governor of Mississippi, from 1859 to 1863. Before being elected in his own right to full gubernatorial terms in 1859 and 1861, he served as acting governor from January 5 to 10, 1854, following the resignation of Henry S. Foote. A member of the Democratic Party, Pettus had previously been a Mississippi state representative, and a member and president of the Mississippi State Senate. He strongly supported Mississippi's secession from the United States and brought his state along as a founding member of the Confederate States of America in 1861. Pettus's term of office came to an end in 1863, the same year that saw much of Mississippi overrun by Union forces. At the close of the war he fled to Arkansas to avoid prosecution and died there in 1867.