James Lusk Alcorn (1816 - 1894)

Born 4 Nov 1816 in Golconda, Pope, Illinois Territory, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Mary Catherine (Stewart) Alcorn — married 13 Aug 1839 in Coahoma County, Mississippi

Husband of Amelia Walton (Glover) Alcorn — married 19 Dec 1850 in Rosemount plantation, Greene County, Alabama

Descendants

Died 20 Dec 1894 at age 78 in Eagles Nest, Coahoma, Mississippi, United States

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Preceded by 27th Governor Adelbert Ames Preceded by Hiram Rhodes Revels

James L. Alcorn 28th Governor of Mississippi 1870—1871 US Senator (Class 2) from Mississippi 1871—1877

Succeeded by 29th Governor Ridgley C. Powers Succeeded by Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Biography

James L. Alcorn is Notable.

Governor James Lusk Alcorn, born 04 Nov 1816 in Golconda, Illinois, USA; died 20 Dec 1894 in Eagles Nest, Coahoma, Mississippi, USA; married Amelia Glover; born 10 Jan 1830 in Greene, Alabama, USA,; died 22 Nov 1907 in Coahoma, Mississippi, USA.

US Senator, Mississippi Governor, Civil War Confederate Militia Brigadier General. Born near Golconda, Illinois he moved to Mississippi in 1844 to practice law. He served in both the state house of representatives and senate from 1846 to 1854. He founded the Mississippi levee system in 1858. During the Civil War he served as a Mississippi State Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. In 1865 he presented credentials as an elected United States Senator but was barred from taking his seat. He was elected and served as governor from 1870 to 1871 before returning to the United States Senate where he served from 1871 to 1877

James Lusk Alcorn, was born in Illinois, November 4, 1816. He was the descendant of an Alcorn who came from the north of Ireland and settled at Philadelphia, Pa., in 1721. James Alcorn, father of the governor, married Louisa Lusk, a native of South Carolina, removed to Kentucky, was a county sheriff there as he had been in Illinois, operating boats on the Mississippi before the advent of steam power, and was one of the pioneer steamboat captains. He was lieutenant of a boatman's company in the war of 1812, and commanded a company at the battle of New Orleans. About 1846 he made his home in Coahoma county, where he died in 1859. James Lusk Alcorn was reared in Kentucky and educated at Cumberland college. After teaching school in Arkansas he was deputy sheriff of Livingston county five years, and served one term in the legislature, after which he came to Delta, Coahoma county, a town that gave way to the river years ago, and began the practice of law. He became one of the prominent young men of the State. Making Friar's Point his place of residence, he practiced in several adjoining counties. He was a representative in the legislature in 1846 and 1856, and senator in 1852 and 1854; was an elector for the State at large on the Scott ticket in 1852; was nominated for governor by the Whigs in 1857, but declined and accepted nomination for Congress. His joint canvass against L. Q. C. Lamar that year was famous in the political history of the State, Alcorn demonstrating remarkable information and power of original thought, and force as an orator. The Democratic predominance, however, prevented his success. His great work was the founding of the State levee system, which owed its origin mainly to his enterprise and persistence. He was the author of the law and at the head of the superintending board for several years, and through his efforts the Delta was opened to agriculture and the wealth of the State vastly increased before the year 1860. His law business also grew to large importance, and he became one of the greatest cotton planters of the South. In 1851 and 1861 he strongly opposed secession, but as a member of the convention of 1861 signed the ordinance. In the military organization of the State he served as a brigadier-general, rendered important service in the military preparations, and in the latter part of 1861 took a small brigade to Hopkinsville, Ky., most of which with his encouragement enlisted in the service of the Confederate States. (See Army of Mississippi.) He was afterward with General Polk and General Clark, was taken prisoner at Helena, Ark., and paroled there in 1864. At the expiration of his parole he was made colonel of a Mississippi command on special duty along the river. At the beginning of the war, also, he fitted out, from his own means, the company commanded by his son, Capt. Milton Alcorn, who was later promoted to major in Johnston's army. One of his sons died as a prisoner of war.

In 1864, Governor Clark called upon him to return to the military service and take command of the State troops. At the reorganization of the State government he was elected to the legislature and he and William L. Sharkey were elected to the United States senate; but Congress refused to 'admit them.

At the time of the quarrel between Congress and President Johnson he cautioned the people of Mississippi to stand neutral. In a public letter on the subject of the Philadelphia convention, he said, " Make no alliances. Stand aloof from all entanglements of party." His advice was not heeded, of which he said afterward, in the vehemence of political debate, that "The Jackson clique flung the State, in the teeth of my admonition, into the arms of a foregone failure. In this I arraign the clique of a brainlessness which has been visited upon us in all the severity of the terms of Congressional reconstruction." As defiance on the part of the State was followed by additional requirements, he wrote his Hernando letter of 1867, pleading that a hopeless contest should not continue. He said "The colored man comes, as well as the white man, within the scope of my proposed negotiation. . . I propose to vote with him' to discuss political affairs with him, and from a platform acceptable alike to him, to me, and to you, to pluck our common liberty and our common prosperity out of the jaws of inevitable ruin." Consequently he took part in the organization of the Republican party and was nominated for governor in 1869 and elected.

This open bid for negro support made Alcorn very unpopular with Democrats and Whigs alike and caused them to oppose him as an enemy to good government. He really thought that he could control and direct the Negroes and make them good citizens, but he soon learned that they were controlled by the leaders who bribed them with promises of public plunder. Alcorn soon saw the terrible menace of negro suffrage, and, in the Constitutional Convention of 1890 was an advocate of disfranchisement.

He wrote to a friend a few years before his death: "To me there is a regret that will go with me to the grave that I could not have served the people of Mississippi and of the South more profitably than I did. I had studied the question of reconstruction. I had studied the temper of the Northern people and I had determined to yield to the inevitable. I bore with great patience the complaints and abuse of the people who criticized my course. It was but natural. Their words were but the language of my own heart when I gave way to my passions. . . If I had been elected to the office of governor in 1873 I would have vindicated myself in the judgment of all thinking men." (Letter to F. A. Montgomery, 1891). His later purpose doubtless included a realization that extraneous influence had begun to relax in 1873. But, as he said to friends in the campaign of 1873, he could not make public the reasons why he should be given another opportunity as governor.

Henry S. Foote wrote of him as possessing a "natural vigor of intellect, remarkable industry and thorough knowledge of law. . . . His active and successful career as a politician brought him prominently before the public, and his genial temper and fascinating manners surrounded him with numerous admiring friends. He was, of course, bitterly opposed in reconstruction times, but he was actuated by the highest motives, and as his policy was not given a fair trial, it cannot be said to have lacked promise, or to have failed. In later years J. F. H. Claiborne wrote of him: " He is now generally appreciated as a man of unquailing[sic] courage and indomitable enterprise; a patriot without stain, a statesman of extraordinary sagacity, called to the helm at the most trying period, to confront a disorganized and morbid public sentiment, to crush out old creeds, ideals and predilections; to guide by persuasion or force a proud, intelligent, yet distrustful people into new grooves of thought and action. The last remnant of bitterness against Governor Alcorn was buried during the constitutional convention of 1890, in which his course was so broad and liberal and patriotic as to open the eyes of the people to the true greatness of his character." His later years were passed, except for this service, in retirement, at Eagle's Nest, his plantation home in Coahoma, where he died December 20, 1894.^[1]

He got his first taste of statewide politics while serving in the Kentucky state House of Representatives in 1843. Seeking his fortune, in 1844 he packed up his young family and headed south. They settled in Coahoma County, Mississippi, where he set up his law practice and began accumulating property. Before he was finished, he owned twenty thousand acres of land. His wife Mary died in childbirth in 1849. The following year he married Amelia Walton Glover. 2 sons and 4 daughters resulted from that union.

The owner of dozens of slaves, J. L. Alcorn served as a Confederate Militia Brigadier General for 18 months during the U.S. Civil War, but reportedly hated military life and returned to his plantation. During the war, his son Henry Lusk Alcorn died while returning home, en route from Richmond, of complications from typhoid fever. His son Milton Stewart Alcorn was also a Civil War veteran, and returned from the war with a permanent hearing injury. Following the war, Milton took to drinking heavily, and later committed suicide.

Legacy

Alcorn State University was founded on the site originally occupied by Oakland College, a school for whites established by the Presbyterian Church.

Oakland College closed its doors at the beginning of the Civil War so that its students could answer the call to arms. Upon failing to reopen at the end of the war, the property was sold to the state of Mississippi and renamed Alcorn University in honor of James L. Alcorn in 1871, then governor of the state of Mississippi.

In 1878, the name Alcorn University was changed to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1974 Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College became Alcorn State University. ^[2] Alcorn County, Mississippi is named in his honor.^[3]

Slaves

See Slaves of Gov. James Lusk Alcorn, Mississippi for a complete accounting of all of those he held in slavery.

Sources

1. ↑ Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, by Dunbar Rowland.
2. ↑ Alcorn State University website
3. ↑ Wikipedia: James L. Alcorn

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