John Jones Pettus (October 9, 1813 – January 28, 1867) was a United States politician. A member of the Democratic party, he was Governor of the state of Mississippi from January 5, 1854 to January 10, 1854, and later was elected to a full term, from 21 November 1859 - 16 November 1863. On April 4, 1837, he married his cousin, Permelia Virginia Winston, a daughter of William Winston and Mary Cooper, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. He was known as "the Mississippi Fire-eater" because he once said that he would rather eat fire than sit down with Yankees. He was also known for making this famous Quote:
"I am Mississippian to the Core. My ancestors are buried upon her hillsides. I am, and have been and ever expect to be within her borders. Whatever may happen, I am with her Heart and Soul."
After the war, amnesty was refused to him and he became a fugitive; the manhunt for him continued until his death in Pulaski County, Arkansas on January 28, 1867. His original interment was in a private or family graveyard (on the property of a cousin, John Jones), although he was later re-interred at Flat Bayou Burial Ground, Wabbaseka, Arkansas. His wife Permelia died in 1857 and is buried in the Winston Family Cemetery in Gainesville, Sumter County, Alabama.
John Jones Pettus was also a brother of Edmund Winston Pettus (1821–1907) a United States Senator from Alabama and for whom the Pettus Memorial Bridge was named in Selma Alabama.
Famous quotes containing the words john j and/or john:
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one.... The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)