James L. Alcorn

168
James L. Alcorn bigraphy, stories - Confederate Army general

James L. Alcorn : biography

November 4, 1816 – December 19, 1894

James Lusk Alcorn (November 4, 1816December 19, 1894) was a prominent American political figure in Mississippi during the 19th century. He was a leading southern white Republican during Reconstruction in Mississippi, where he served as governor and U.S. Senator. A moderate Republican, he had a bitter rivalry with Radical Republican carpetbagger Adelbert Ames, who defeated him in the 1873 Mississippi gubernatorial race. He briefly served as a brigadier general of Mississippi state troops at times in Confederate States Army service during the early part of the American Civil War. Only James Longstreet had been a higher-ranking Confederate general among those who joined in the post-Civil War Republican Party.

Early life and career

Born near Golconda, Illinois, to a Scots-Irish family, he attended Cumberland College in Kentucky and served as deputy sheriff of Livingston County, Kentucky, from 1839 to 1844. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1843 before moving to Mississippi. In 1844, he set up a law practice in Panola County, Mississippi. As his law practice flourished and his property holdings throughout the Mississippi Delta increased, he became a wealthy man. By 1860, he owned nearly a hundred slaves and held lands valued at a quarter of a million dollars. He was a leader of the Whig Party. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi Senate during the 1840s and 1850s. He ran for Congress in 1856 but was defeated.

As a delegate to the Mississippi convention of 1851, called by Democratic Governor John A. Quitman to build momentum for secession, Alcorn helped defeat that movement. Like many Whig planters, Alcorn initially opposed secession, pleading with the extremists to reflect for a moment on the realities of regional power. He foretold a horrific picture of a beaten South, "when the northern soldier would tread her cotton fields, when the slave should be made free and the proud Southerner stricken to the dust in his presence."James L. Roark, Masters without Slaves 1977, p. 3

Honors

Alcorn County, Mississippi, is named in his honor, as is Alcorn State University, originally set up for African Americans.

Postbellum career

He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865, but, like all Southerners, was not allowed to take a seat as Congress was pondering Reconstruction. He supported suffrage for Freedmen and endorsed the Fourteenth Amendment. Alcorn became the leader of the Scalawags, who comprised about a fourth of the Republican Party officials in the state, in coalition with carpetbaggers, African-Americans who had been free before the outbreak of the civil war and Freedmen. Mississippi had a majority of African-Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom were Freedmen, who at this point had no desire to vote for the Democratic Party which would have not welcomed them anyway, thus the majority of votes for the Republican candidates came from African-Americans even though the majority of Republican office holders were whites. James Alcorn was elected by the Republicans as governor in 1869, serving, as Governor of Mississippi from 1870 to 1871. As a modernizer, he appointed many like-minded former Whigs, even if they were now Democrats. He strongly supported education, including public schools for blacks only, and a new college for them, now known as Alcorn State University. He maneuvered to make his ally, Hiram Revels, its president. Radical Republicans opposed Alcorn, angry at his patronage policy. One complained that Alcorn’s policy was to see "the old civilization of the South modernized" rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution.Quoted in Eric Foner, Reconstruction (1988) p 298

Alcorn resigned the governorship to become a U.S. Senator (1871–1877), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African American senator. Senator Alcorn urged the removal of the political disabilities of white southerners and rejected Radical Republican proposals to enforce social equality by federal legislation;See Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 246–47 he denounced the federal cotton tax as robbery,See Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 2730–33 and defended separate schools for both races in Mississippi. Although a former slaveholder, he characterized slavery as "a cancer upon the body of the Nation" and expressed the gratification which he and many other Southerners felt over its destruction.See Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 3424