Historic Washington — Territorial Capital

Aaron Burr was arrested in Washington in 1807 after his western conspiracy collapsed — no breakaway empire, just federal custody six miles from the Mississippi River. This was not incidental geography. Washington served as capital of the Mississippi Territory from 1802 to 1817, the years when Natchez transitioned from a river town with French and Spanish roots into American political fact. The city had been Fort Rosalie in 1716, a French trading post that became the site of the 1729 Natchez Rebellion, when Natchez Indians killed 229 French colonists in the largest such attack in Mississippi's history. By the time Washington became territorial capital, that violence was memory, but the question of who governed the lower Mississippi was not yet settled. Burr's arrest made it clear. Jefferson College, chartered in 1802, was the first educational institution in the Mississippi Territory. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History now operates Historic Washington as a village with restored territorial-era buildings. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm, six miles east of downtown Natchez on US-61. Modest admission. You go to see what a territorial capital looked like before statehood, when the outcome was not guaranteed.