James Lusk Alcorn was born at Lusk’s Ferry, near Golconda, Illinois, on November 4, 1816. He grew up in Kentucky, the eldest of eight children of James and Louisa Lusk Alcorn. The elder James Alcorn was a veteran of the War of 1812, a Mississippi River boatman and boat captain, and eventually 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 Friar’s 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.

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, Alcorn’s 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 by federal troops and taken to Helena, Arkansas. When he returned, Alcorn sent his wife and young children to Rosemount, her father’s 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-law’s 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 father’s 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 Eagle’s Nest. He was a delegate to the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890, and he supported policies restricting the black vote. Alcorn died at Eagle’s Nest on December 19, 1894. He is buried in the family cemetery there. Amelia Walton Glover Alcorn died on November 22, 1907.

This collection consists of a photocopy of a letter written by James Lusk Alcorn, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to his second wife, Amelia Walton Glover Alcorn, on October 5, 1861. Alcorn was temporarily stationed in Kentucky with provisional Confederate troops while awaiting a full-time appointment as a brigadier general in the Confederate army. He describes the triumphal entry of the troops into Hopkinsville and their enthusiastic reception by the citizens of the town. Alcorn also discusses his hopes for a permanent military appointment, and he expresses his views on the officers under his command. He encourages his wife with the hope that she and the children will soon join him in Kentucky. Alcorn signs the letter as "Indian," a nickname he used when writing to his wife.

1. Letter. 1861. 1 folder.