Dates: 1856-1859; 1861; 1865-1922.

Biography:

James Lusk Alcorn

James Lusk Alcorn was born at Lusks Ferry, near Golconda, Illinois, on November 4, 1816. He grew up in Kentucky, the eldest of eight children of James and Louisa Lusk Alcorn. His father was a War of 1812 veteran and a Mississippi River boatman and boat captain. James Alcorn was later sheriff of Pope County, Illinois, and Livingston County, Kentucky.

While attending Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, James Lusk Alcorn became a strong supporter of Henry Clay and the Whig party. After teaching for a short time in Jackson, Arkansas, Alcorn became deputy sheriff of Livingston County, Kentucky, serving from 1839 to 1844. He also studied law, and he became a member of the bar in 1838. That same year, he married Mary Catherine Stewart, daughter of Milton and Narcissus Miles Stewart of Lexington County, Kentucky. The Alcorns had four children, three of whom survived to adulthood: Henry Lusk, Mary Catherine, and Milton Stewart. Alcorn resigned as deputy sheriff in 1843, and he served one term in the Kentucky legislature.

The Alcorn family moved to the Delta in 1844, settling near Friars Point, Coahoma County, Mississippi. James Lusk Alcorn opened a law office and began the operation of Mound Place, a small plantation on the Yazoo Pass. Two years later, having acquired enough land and wealth to provide for his parents and sisters, he brought them from Kentucky to the Delta. Mary Stewart Alcorn died in childbirth in 1849. Alcorn married his second wife, Amelia Walton Glover, in 1850. Born on January 10, 1830, she was the daughter of Williamson and Amelia T. Walton Glover of Alabama. Alcorn had nine more children with his second wife, six of whom survived to adulthood: Angeline, Gertrude, Glover, James, Justina, and Rosebud.

Alcorn was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1846, 1856, and 1865. He also served in the Mississippi Senate from 1848 to 1856, representing Coahoma, Panola, and Tallahatchie counties. Alcorn sponsored legislation to construct levees along the Mississippi River, a system that protected the majority of the upper Delta from flooding. For three years, he was president of the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta Levee Board. As a delegate to the Mississippi convention of 1851, he joined the majority in defeating the secession movement. Alcorn was an elector-at-large for the Winfield Scott ticket in the presidential campaign of 1852. He declined the nomination for Mississippi governor from the Whig and Know-Nothing parties in 1857, but he accepted their nomination for United States congressman. Alcorn lost the election to his Democratic opponent, L. Q. C. Lamar. He returned to his law practice and the extensive plantation holdings that he had acquired before the Civil War.

During the Mississippi secession convention in January of 1861, Alcorn was elected as a brigadier general in the Army of Mississippi. His entire command was spent in various camps, organizing brigades, and waiting for a Confederate army appointment. Alcorn served at Corinth, Mississippi, in July of 1861; at Russellville, Kentucky, in September of 1861; and at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in October of 1861. At Hopkinsville, a measles epidemic affected nearly the entire camp. Alcorn returned to Mound Place on furlough in November of 1861, but he was soon ordered to Grenada, Mississippi, and from there to Columbus, Kentucky, in December of 1861. There his men endured another measles epidemic. Alcorn and his men were next ordered to Camp Beauregard and then to evacuate to Union City, Tennessee.

Without a forthcoming appointment from Richmond, Alcorns term of service ended in January of 1862. He retired from active duty and returned to Mound Place. There he remained until August of 1862, when he and two of his neighbors on the Yazoo Pass were arrested and taken to Helena, Arkansas. When he returned, Alcorn sent his wife and young children to Rosemount, her fathers plantation near Eutaw, Greene County, Alabama. After refusing to sign an oath of allegiance, Alcorn was again arrested that fall, but his rapport with certain high-ranking Union officers helped to ensure that Mound Place was not burned. His plantation was later used by Union troops as a headquarters during their attempts to cross the Yazoo Pass in February of 1863. Alcorn noted the progress of the Union troops in his journal, and he reported this information to Confederate troops in the area. However, Alcorn made choices that were independent of his political views; he refused to burn his cotton, choosing instead to smuggle it out for a considerable profit. This strategy enabled him to save Mound Place and Rosemount, his father-in-laws plantation in Alabama.

Alcorn was elected to the Mississippi legislature, which was then meeting in Columbus, in the fall of 1863. He was given a thirty-day special assignment in the fall of 1864 to round up deserters and runaway slaves in Bolivar, Coahoma, and Washington counties along the Mississippi River. Alcorn resumed his law practice in January of 1865. His plantation home and lands were released by Union troops in the fall of 1865, and his wife and children returned from Alabama. However, the Alcorn family was not untouched by the war. Milton Stewart Alcorn was captured and paroled before attaining the rank of major by the end of the war. Suffering from alcoholism and hearing loss, he later committed suicide. Against his fathers will, Henry Lusk Alcorn enlisted in the Confederate army in January of 1865. Contracting typhoid fever in camp, he was left behind, captured, and escaped, only to die on the way home.

After the war, Alcorn was reelected to the Mississippi legislature. He and William L. Sharkey were chosen as United States senators by that body, but they were not allowed to take their seats in the Senate. However, he encouraged his fellow citizens to comply with military rule and Reconstruction. Alcorn joined the Republican party in an attempt to sway the black vote toward moderate policies beneficial to the state, but he was overruled by carpetbag leaders within the party and denounced by former state leaders. He was a member of the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1868. Alcorn was elected as Republican governor of Mississippi in 1869. He sought to restore the political rights of the white population while complying with federal legislation regarding the black population. One of his policies was to establish more public schools for both white and black students, as required by the 1868 Mississippi constitution. Federal money from the Morrill Land Grant Act enabled Alcorn to acquire the former Oakland College, located near Port Gibson, Claiborne County, as a college for black students in 1871. The school was renamed Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in his honor. Hiram R. Revels, the first black man to occupy a seat in the United States Senate, resigned his seat to accept the presidency of the college. Alcorn then resigned as governor on November 30, 1871, and he succeeded Revels as United States senator.

As a senator, Alcorn resisted all efforts to enforce racial and social equality by federal legislation. He also advocated separate schools for both races. Alcorn and his fellow senator from Mississippi, Adelbert Ames, often clashed over many issues, a conflict that culminated in both men running for Mississippi governor in 1873. Ames appealed to most radical Republican voters and many black voters, and he defeated Alcorn, who remained in the Senate until March 3, 1877. Alcorn then retired to his plantation in Coahoma County. His cotton production by then had increased until he was one of the largest planters in the state. He owned over twelve thousand acres of land with over three thousand in cultivation that produced more than one thousand bales annually. In 1879, Alcorn built another home in Coahoma County, south of Jonestown, which he called Eagles Nest. He was a delegate to the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890, and he supported policies restricting the black vote. Alcorn died at Eagles Nest on December 19, 1894. He is buried in the family cemetery there. Amelia Walton Glover Alcorn died on November 22, 1907.

 
Scope and Content Note:

This collection contains several journals of James Lusk Alcorn and related materials, including a receipt book, photograph, speech, autograph album, petition, obituary, genealogy, newsclippings, and stamp album. The journals describe many daily activities on Alcorns plantations and on neighboring plantations in Coahoma County, but they also touch on his law practice and his political agenda at the state capitol in Jackson. Occasionally, Alcorn reflects on his career, family, and country. Some items are related to the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890: an autograph album, a photograph of Alcorn, and a petition. The stamp album contains a varied collection of canceled stamps, all affixed to the pages of a Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad ledger.

 
Series Identification:

Series 1: Journals. 1857; 1865; 1869; 1877-1878; 1880; 1882; n.d. 4 folders.
This series consists of seven journals kept by James Lusk Alcorn. The earliest one contains miscellaneous entries, accounts, literary quotations, speeches transcribed from other sources, and newsclippings. The other six are daily journals kept in printed calendar diaries. The daily journals contain brief entries predominantly describing agriculture, family, neighbors, travel, weather, and business at Alcorns law office. There are occasional accounts, notes, and shopping lists in the calendar pages and in the memoranda pages at the back of the journals. In many of the passages describing rainy days, Alcorn sometimes wrote despondently of his life. The 1865 journal has many such entries, along with commentary on the Civil War. The 1869 journal opens with notes and measurements for several suits of mens clothing. One set of entries describes a trip that he and his family made to St. Louis, Missouri, in March of 1869. The 1877 journal has no entries until September, when he took some of his daughters to a convent school in Washington, D.C. The 1878 journal has no entries until June, when his wife, Amelia, traveled to Washington to bring the girls home from school. The memoranda section of this journal contains a contract and notes on homebuilding supplies. The 1880 journal is fairly complete, with several notes on the finishing details of the new plantation house at Eagles Nest and on Alcorns trip to Jackson in March to visit the state capitol. The 1882 journal contains entries until mid-July. Entries in February of 1882 describe Alcorns trip to Jackson to draft and submit a bill to the legislature and his visit with Governor Robert Lowry.

Box 1

Series 2: Receipt Book. 1856-1859; 1861; n.d. 1 folder.
This series consists of one bound volume containing receipts for personal and business transactions, levee board payments, and labor contracts.

Box 1

Series 3: Photograph. 1890. 1 folder.
This series consists of one photograph of James Lusk Alcorn that was taken at the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890.

Box 2

Series 4: Speech. n.d. 1 folder.
This series consists of remarks apparently made at the dedication of a Confederate monument at Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

Box 2

Series 5: Autograph Album. 1890. 1 bound volume.
This series consists of an album containing autographs and remarks of delegates to the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890.

Box 1

Series 6: Petition. July 3, 1890. 1 folder.
This series consists of a petition from citizens of Friars Point to James Lusk Alcorn requesting that he speak at the courthouse in Coahoma County on issues affecting the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890. Forty-three signatures appear on the petition.

Box 2

Series 7: Obituary. 1907. 1 folder.
This series contains an obituary and newsclipping concerning the death of Richard M. Alcorn, near Pendleton, Oregon, in May of 1907. These items are attached to a letter from Martha E. Terney to her aunt, Harriet Wells, in Oconee, Arkansas. The deceased was a first cousin of James Lusk Alcorn. The erroneous reference in the newsclipping to his cousin having been "governor of Georgia" should have read "governor of Mississippi."

Box 2

Series 8: Genealogy. n.d. 2 folders.
This series consists of five pages of a genealogy on the Alcorn, Hain, and Rector families. It also contains an incomplete essay entitled "Recollections of Early Settlers of Southern Illinois" by Mrs. C. P. Boazman, Golconda, Illinois. James Alcorn is the subject of the essay.

Box 2

Series 9: Newsclippings. 1885; 1889; n.d. 1 folder.
This series contains three newspaper articles about James Lusk Alcorn. The earliest is entitled "Justice to Gov. J. L. Alcorn," from the Memphis Appeal, Sunday, May 10, 1885. The next is entitled "The Color Line Drawn," from the Washington Post, April 30, 1889. The last is entitled "Makes a Kind Reference to Ex-Gov. J. L. Alcorn," with no publication information or date.

Box 2

Series 10: Stamp Album. 1867-1922 (scattered). 1 bound volume.
This series consists of a stamp album containing a varied collection of canceled stamps, all affixed to the pages of a Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad ledger. Some stamps are hand-canceled by James Lusk Alcorn. The creator of the stamp album is unknown. According to his granddaughter, Sally Rector Hain, Alcorn had to agree to become a postmaster in order for the railroad to build a spur to his plantation, Eagles Nest. Upon his death, Amelia Walton Glover Alcorn became postmistress. Until her death, the train made daily trips from Jonestown to Eagles Nest to deliver the mail.

Box 3