John Jones Pettus was born on October 9, 1813 in Wilson County, Tennessee, to John Jones Pettus, a farmer, and his wife Alice Taylor Pettus. He was the brother of Edmund Pettus. He was raised in Limestone County, Alabama, after his father moved the family to Tennessee. Only nine when his father died, Pettus helped out with chores and was educated at home by his mother. Pettus settled in Mississippi in 1835. After a brief stay in Sumter County, Alabama, where he studied law, he opened a law practice in Scooba, Mississippi, where in the 1840s he married a cousin, Permelia Winston. He became a successful farmer and by 1850 owned and 24 slaves.
Political career
In 1844, Pettus represented Kemper County in the Mississippi House of Representatives. In 1848, he was elected to the Mississippi Senate. In 1853, while Governor Henry S. Foote was waiting for the January 11 inauguration of John J. McRae, Foote grew bitter and angry, addressing the legislative session by announcing that he had considered resigning in protest once the election results came in. At noon at January 5, 1854, Foote's resignation was received by the state senate. The Mississippi Constitution of 1832 had abolished the office of lieutenant governor. Pettus, as President of the Mississippi Senate, was next in seniority and sworn at noon on January 7, 1854. He held the governorship until McRae was sworn in on January 10, 1854. His only recorded act during these 120 hours was to order a special session in Noxubee County to fill the office of a deceased state representative, Francis Irby. On January 11, McRae was inaugurated as Governor and Pettus returned as senate president. During the 1850s, he became identified as "the Mississippi Fire-eater," a term referring to Southerners supporting secession. In 1859, he was elected Governor. In his inaugural address, he said that the south's only way to maintain slavery was secession and called for the establishment of a southern confederacy. Following President Abraham Lincoln's election, on November 26, 1860, Pettus called for a Special Session of the Legislature and urged the Legislature to call for a convention to withdraw Mississippi from the Union. The Legislature called for a Secession Convention which convened in Jackson on January 7, 1861. Two days later, Mississippi officially seceded from the Union. On February 4, 1861, along with five other slave states, the Confederate States of America was established at Montgomery, Alabama. Pettus was re-elected in the fall of 1861. Pettus was succeeded by Charles Clark.
