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| Affiliation | Republican |
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| Name | James L. Alcorn |
| Address |
Friars Point, Mississippi , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
November 04, 1816
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| Died | December 19, 1894
(78 years)
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Aug 24, 2015 04:11pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Born in Illinois but raised in Kentucky, James L. Alcorn (1816-1894) became Mississippi's first Reconstruction governor, and perhaps the era's most prominent "scalawag," or Southern white Republican.
Alcorn in 1844 moved to Mississippi, where he married a planter's daughter, and became one of the largest landowners in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.
In 1860, he strongly opposed secession. After serving briefly in the Confederate Army, Alcorn retired to his plantation.
At the end of the Civil War, Alcorn broke with his state's political leadership by advocating limited black suffrage and supporting the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1867, he joined the Republican party, insisting that only if men like himself took the lead in Reconstruction could a "harnessed revolution" take place. Blacks' rights would be respected, but political power would remain in white hands.
Elected governor in 1869, Alcorn appointed many white Democrats to office and opposed civil rights legislation. Black leaders and "carpetbaggers" became disaffected from his administration. Alcorn resigned in 1871 to take a seat in the U. S. Senate.
Two years later, alarmed by blacks' increasing political assertiveness, he ran again for governor, this time with Democratic support. He was defeated by Adelbert Ames.
After Blanche K. Bruce, who had served as sergeant of arms of the Mississippi State Senate and a county sheriff and tax collector, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874, Alcorn, then the state’s senior senator, refused to escort Bruce to his swearing-in. Roscoe Conkling, a New York senator, took Bruce to the ceremony.
ALCORN, James Lusk, a Senator from Mississippi; born near Golconda, Ill., November 4, 1816; attended the public schools of Livingston County, Ky., and was graduated from Cumberland College, Ky.; deputy sheriff of Livingston County 1839-1844; member of the Kentucky house of representatives in 1843; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1844 and commenced practice in Delta, Panola County, Miss.; member of the Mississippi house of representatives 1846, 1856, and 1857; served in the State senate 1848-1854; unsuccessful candidate for election to the Thirty-fifth Congress in 1856; declined the nomination for Governor of Mississippi in 1857; founder of the Mississippi levee system and was made president of the levee board of the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta in 1858; served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War as a brigadier general; presented credentials as a United States Senator-elect in 1865 but was not permitted to take his seat; elected Governor of Mississippi in 1869 and served from March 1870, until his resignation on November 30, 1871, having previously been elected Senator; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate on January 18, 1870, for the term beginning March 4, 1871, but did not assume these duties until December 1, 1871, preferring to continue as Governor; served as Senator from December 1, 1871, to March 3, 1877; unsuccessful candidate for Governor in 1873; resumed the practice of law in Friar Point; died at his plantation home, “Eagles Nest,” in Coahoma County, Miss., December 19, 1894; interment in the family cemetery on his estate.
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