THOMPSON, Jacob, cabinet officer, born in Caswell county, North Carolina, 15 May, 1810; died in Memphis, Tennessee, 24 March, 1885. He was graduated at the University of North Carolina in 1831, admitted to the bar in 1834, and settled in the Chickasaw country, Mississippi, where he practised law with success. In 1838 he was chosen to congress as a Democrat, and he served by continued re-election from 1839 till 1857, advocating the repudiation by Mississippi of part of the state bonds and opposing the compromise measures of 1850, on the ground that they were not favorable enough to the south. While he was in congress he held for some time the chairmanship of the committee on Indian affairs, and in 1845 he refused an appointment that was tendered him by the governor of Mississippi to a vacancy in the United States senate. President Buchanan made him secretary of the interior in 1857, and he held that office till 8 January, 1861, when he resigned, giving as his reason that troops had been ordered to re-enforce Fort Sumter contrary to an agreement that this should not be done without the consent of the cabinet. In acknowledging his letter the president reminded him that the matter had been decided in a cabinet meeting six days before. In December, 1860, while still in office, he had been appointed by the legislature of Mississippi a commissioner to urge on North Carolina the adoption of an ordinance of secession. In 1862-'4 he was governor of Mississippi, and afterward he served as aide-de-camp to General Beauregard. In the summer of 1864 he was sent as a Confederate commissioner to Canada, where he promoted the plan to release the prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, near Chicago, and to seize that city. He has also been charged with instigating plots to burn northern cities and commit other outrages. After the war he returned to the United States. At his death an order of See Lucius Q. C. Lamar to fly the National flag at half-mast over the buildings of the interior department caused much excitement at the north.