James L. Alcorn

James Lusk Alcorn (November 4, 1816December 19, 1894) was a governor, and U.S. senator during the Reconstruction era in Mississippi. A Moderate Republican and Whiggish "scalawag", he engaged in a bitter rivalry with Radical Republican Adelbert Ames, who defeated him in the 1873 gubernatorial race. Alcorn was the first elected Republican governor of Mississippi. Although a Unionist, Alcorn briefly served as a Confederate brigadier-general of militia. Among former Confederates who joined the postbellum Republican Party, only James Longstreet had been of higher rank than Alcorn. Early life and career Alcorn was born near Golconda, Illinois Territory to James Alcorn and Hanna Lusk, a Scots-Irish family. He attended Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, and from 1839 to 1844 served as deputy sheriff of Livingston County, Kentucky. He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1838 and for six years practicing law in Salem, Kentucky. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1843 before moving to Mississippi the following year. Alcorn set up a law office in Coahoma County, Mississippi. As his law practice flourished and his property holdings in the Mississippi Delta increased, he became a wealthy man. In 1850, he built a three-story house at his Mound Place Plantation in Coahoma County, where he resided with his family. By 1860, he enslaved nearly one hundred people and held lands valued at a quarter of a million dollars. Alcorn served in the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi Senate during the 1840s and 1850s being one of the leaders of the then Whigs in the state.