James Lusk Alcorn, Waking up from the Nightmare and Preparing for the Dark Days Ahead

This post is number nine in a historical review of Mississippi’s Union Whig/Republican governor and senator during Reconstruction. See my earlier posts, best read in sequence, oldest to most recent, from 17 February, 16 April, 24 March, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, and 23 October 2014.

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One last point regarding Alcorn’s expressed disappointment with what he perceived as Jefferson Davis’ bungling of the slavery issue in the face of international opinion—I’m not clear on what exactly Alcorn would have had him do. The South was facing off against a western world expressing a desire to be rid of the institution. Determined as the South was to preserve it, how could the man have done anything but “bungle” the issue? The Confederacy should have been seeking alliances in places that still respected the institution—Africa for instance.

Okay, I am being facetious. The Confederacy needed money and arms—she needed a European ally and in the end none were forthcoming. I have no doubt the Lincoln administration and his Secretary of State  “Henry” Seward played a significant role in that and the agreement they reached, particularly in the case of Britain, had little to do with any common abhorrence to slavery outside the sphere of abolitionists. It’s my opinion that Alcorn’s expression of disappointment in Davis’ efforts actually represented what we refer to today as  “smoke and mirrors”.

During the spring of 1864 Alcorn made a lengthy visit to General Napoleon Buford (that would be United States Army) in Helena, Arkansas during which he reviewed Negro troops and visited two Negro schools, all of which he described in glowing terms. These visits could possibly be construed as reconnoiters and may represent Alcorn’s tentative acceptance of things to come and prepare him, and with his leadership the state and the South, to deal with emancipation. That’s just a guess on my part, but there can be no doubt he was doing some cogitating on the subjects of slavery and emancipation.

Several months later, during the fall 1864 legislative session, he suggested that the Confederacy submit the slavery question to international appeal during which an international agency would study Southern slavery for twenty years and if not convinced at the end of that period that Southern slavery was not best for all concerned than the South could fight the entire world.

Yeah, the man was up to something. Maybe he was simply providing a smart-ass (excuse my use of the vernacular) response to something someone said that he considered stupid. But trying to prove to the world that Southern slavery was kinder and gentler than anything that had come before was like spitting in to the wind. Personally, I’d say the argument was true, but I’m admittedly prejudice and let’s face it, our institution being kindler and gentler than anything that had come before really isn’t saying a lot. Shoot, I heard it stated a couple of years ago that North Carolina considered its slavery kinder and gentler than that of the Deep South where slaves were worked to death. I wrote a blog on that subject, which I considered both an offense and a monumental joke.

My point is that in a world poisoned on the word “slavery” one is not going to find folks jumping at the opportunity to serve on such a tribunal. The people (read nations) who would have given Negro slavery an honest appraisal were the very ones who brought it to the New World. They’d coined the very euphemisms and arguments used to justify the humaneness of African slavery, then within a couple of centuries had turned those arguments on their head to condemn it. Alcorn was not stupid. He was a slave owner and knew the institution was not the monster abolitionists portrayed it to be, but it definitely had shortcomings, particularly for people determined to convince the rest of the world it believed its own propaganda.

It was also in the fall of 1864 that Alcorn, still registered on the Commissions of State Troops, assumed the rank of colonel and a thirty-day stint, at Governor Charles Clarke’s request, to organize militia troops to prevent the escape of deserters and Negroes in Coahoma, Bolivar, and Washington Counties (all in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta). The fact that a Mississippi legislator, serving as a colonel of militia in the Delta apparently near side by side with a U.S. Army general (Alcorn’s friend Buford from Helena) is testimony to the instability of the area. Apparently by the early winter of 1865, Federal forces had gained the upper hand. Buford was freeing Negroes and promising them justice against their former masters and requiring whites to seek permission before buying supplies and selling their cotton—both of which required a loyalty oath. Alcorn apparently bypassed that loyalty requirement by continuing to sell to smugglers (that was probably more profitable anyway, if riskier). He did have to request Buford’s permission to remain on his land, with the promise that he behave himself. The local Negroes were to report on any misconduct.

Within the Federal lines, civil courts reopened, and Alcorn started practicing law again. In early February, the Mississippi legislature met in Columbus and sat until March, but Alcorn did not put in an appearance until a month later at which time he made a speech stating that the entire world was against slavery and that the state legislature as well as the Confederate Congress should make an immediate declaration that all slaves would be free after twenty years. Hmmm—guess he’d tabled that “international tribunal” idea.

Yes, I’m sure he’d heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. He had a plan—turned out to be of no value, but there was a method to the man’s madness—but before going there, I want to note that, indirectly, Alcorn gave two sons to the Confederacy. His eldest, Milton, served as a member of a Mississippi unit, which was brought into the regular army. He was captured in 1863, released, and finally mustered out of service at war’s end as a major in Featherston’s Brigade, 1st Mississippi Regiment. He returned home an alcoholic and committed suicide soon after conflict’s end. In January 1865, Henry, Alcorn’s younger son by his first marriage, joined the Confederate Army against his father’s wishes. He no sooner arrived at his first duty station in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, than he contracted typhoid, was left behind by his unit, taken prisoner, escaped from a camp in Ohio and made his way to Richmond where he was taken under the wing of members of the Confederate Congress, which had just adjourned. These folks had him en-route home when he unexpectedly died. 

In his diary, Alcorn indicates shock at Lincoln’s assassination and the fervent hope that the deed was the act of one individual. “I can’t think that any Southerner of character would be willing to turn assassin or become the accomplice of such.” I like the part about “become the accomplice of such.” Prescient or anxious? Either, but more likely there was plenty of speculation early on as to who was behind the murder of Lincoln.

With war’s end, there was naught to do but transfer the struggle back to the political arena. To paraphrase his attitude: We said we were out, they said we were in, and by force they won. Now we must yield and take the oath to support and defend the Constitution and elect our representatives. (Just between you, me, and the fence post the Constitution was going to take a lot of defending, and we lost there, too. The people of the United States lost their republic during Reconstruction.) The “peaceful” means to protect our way of life had been “proven” wrong by force of arms, not by the Constitution.

Governor Clarke called for a meeting of the state legislature in May 1865 in Jackson. It was the governor’s intention to call for a convention to repeal the ordinance of secession and hasten Mississippi’s reentry into the Union. The legislature met, not as a legislature, but in Governor Clarke’s words as a committee of public safety and it did so under the looming shadow of martial law. Having gotten wind of the meeting, President Johnson directed General E. R. Canby, Department of Mississippi, to arrest and imprison any member of the Confederate or state government that attempted to “legislate.” Apparently, the recognition between a legislative body and a committee of public safety was murky—or in the eyes of the beholder. Canby sent his guidance to Brevet Brigadier General E. D. Osband in Jackson, who reported back that the “so-called” legislature met on the 20th of May, the same day he’d received the dispatch from Canby. He’d found the legislature on the brink of adjourning and decided not to interfere since they claimed not to be “legislating.”

Osband reported the group had passed three acts: To call for a convention (I assume to repeal the ordinance of secession), to send three commissioners to Washington to ascertain from President Johnson what Mississippi needed to do to re-enter the Union, and to deplore Lincoln’s assassination. Upon adjournment of the legislature, Osband informed Governor Clarke he could not recognize the civil government of Mississippi, and he took custody of the public books, papers, property, and the executive mansion. Governor Clarke surrendered all under protest, but no force was required. Two days later, Osband arrested Clarke under orders from President Johnson. A witness to the arrest left the following record of Governor Clarke’s reaction [recall that General Clarke had been seriously wounded at both Shilo and Baton Rouge]: “The old soldier, when informed of the purpose of the officer, straightened his mangled limbs as best he could, and with great difficulty mounted his crutches, and with a look of defiance said: ‘General Osband, I denounce before high heaven and the civilized world this unparalleled act of tyranny and usurpation. I am the duly and constitutionally elected governor of the state of Mississippi, and would resist, if in my power, to the last extremity the enforcement of your order. I only yield obedience, as I have no power to resist.’”

Mississippi was now without a state government of any kind. Governor Clarke’s actions and those of the legislators on the surface must appear futile, but their haste to do “something” might well reflect a last desperate attempt to beat the Radicals to the finish line. But alas, Andrew Johnson, for whatever reason, jumped in their way. Alcorn opposed the idea of any sort of convention to bring the state back into alignment with the Union—he wanted Mississippi back in the Union immediately where not only she but also slavery were both protected by the Constitution. Once back in the safety of the fold, Alcorn hoped to use the abolition of slavery within the state to win concessions from the North. That was probably at the root of what, at first blush, appeared to be his delusional recommendations regarding the handling of the slavery issue across the South and his fault-finding with Davis’ handling of international opinion.

Of course, the Republicans realized all this, hence the rabid insistence on the states passing the Thirteenth amendment and eventually the Fourteenth amendment (the latter unconstitutional on every level) before the Southern states were allowed back into the Union—oxymoronic since the War was predicated on the argument the Southern states could not leave the Union to begin with. The North not only shredded the Constitution, they added insult to injury by desecrating it.

I have no way of knowing if Alcorn really believed such a tactic would work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and there wasn’t much else left to venture. Perhaps he thought moderate Republicans would be able to control the Radicals. At the time, the slobbering maddogs had yet to gain control. But it was just that—only a matter of time. All efforts proved worthless.

With the adjournment of the “safety committee,” the legislators took one glimpse at the bayonets outside the statehouse door and quickly disbursed—unlike the governor, they wouldn’t fall under Canby and Osband’s net.

From Jackson, Alcorn traveled east to Eutaw, Alabama and Amelia still ensconced with her family. On July 4, 1865, he returned to Mound Place to begin again. His politics aligned with the pre-Civil War principles of (Southern) Wiggery, which alienated him from the radicals on both sides, but then he’d always been alienated from them—he must, actually, have felt pretty darn lonely. Now he would begin the arduous task of establishing a position from where he could lead a “reconstructed” Mississippi back into the Union. It would prove a long, hard row to hoe.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

 

 

 

James Lusk Alcorn, Out of the Delta and on to the Capital, Wherever That Might Have Been

This post is number eight in a historical review of Mississippi’s Union Whig/Republican governor and senator during Reconstruction. See my earlier posts, best read in sequence from oldest to most recent, from 17 February 2014, 16 April 2014, 24 March 2014, 17 July 2014, 24 July 2014, 18 September 2014, and 9 October.

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During the summer and fall of 1863, there was movement afoot for Mississippi to make a separate peace with the United States Government. Yes, the going had finally gotten real tough. By that time Vicksburg had fallen and Yankees occupied the state capitol at Jackson or what they’d left of it after two successive burnings. Today traces of phosphorus used to carry out the deed can still be found in the city’s soil. And y’all thought the likes of napalm was a twentieth-century atrocity.

Despite the fact that fire-eating secessionist governor John J. Pettus, considered Alcorn persona non grata, Alcorn was not among those supporting the peace party—neither were the majority of people in the state even though many felt Richmond had abandoned them. Alcorn might not care for Jeff Davis and the controlling Democratic Party, but he didn’t believe Mississippi was wrong to have seceded, just foolish in having done so. A fool-hearted endeavor exacerbated by misplaced priorities and Richmond’s prosecution of the war.

The Democrats’ falling out of favor opened the door to ex-Whigs in the state elections scheduled for October. Though not a candidate for the legislature, Alcorn was out and about in Coahoma County that late summer/early fall making speeches and later writing to his wife in Alabama that his speeches had been well received, and he thought he’d receive a number of votes. He even expressed some concern over the possibility of being elected. He was not on the ballot that 5 October, but the people of Coahoma County voted to send him to the capital anyway. (Why don’t we do things like that today?) This was his seventh time to represent his county in the state legislature, then sitting at Columbus in Lowndes County in the eastern part of the state.

This was the legislature that saw the inauguration of former Confederate general Charles Clark as governor. Politically a long-time Whig and adherent to Henry Clay, Clark became a Democrat in 1860. Despite his Whig background, Clark had no dreams for a Reconstructed Union much less anything positive to say about the concept, nor did other ex-Whigs now finding favor, including Alcorn. All proved determined to carry on the fight. This legislature did manage to unseat Democrat James Phelan as senator to the Confederate Congress and replace him with J. W. C. Watson, a Whig.

Alcorn was a candidate for speaker, but though he failed to get the necessary votes he was appointed to several committees, the most important being ‘ways and means.’ It’s a stretch in my opinion, but one might say that for the first time in Mississippi history the Whigs had come to power, albeit, as an unorganized party.

In November, Alcorn was invited to address the legislature on the state of the country. What he had to say was well received—but remember, he was speaking to a different audience, at least in part, than the one he’d addressed in 1862 (see my 18 September post below); and in December he served in the absent speaker’s stead during a short-term session.

The legislature would not meet again till the late summer of 1864 at which time he would again address the body, this time expressing the folly of the South’s making the war over slavery and emphasizing Lincoln’s having “out generaled” Jeff Davis in the field of diplomacy. Well, up North there were plenty of folks—not Copperheads, either—whose feathers had been ruffled by Lincoln’s “having made the war  about slavery” with the Emancipation Proclamation.

All my life I’ve heard it said the war was about slavery, the century and a half-old argument that what the North did was for the common good and for a higher purpose—to free the slaves and to hold the nation together, because without the United States, united and free and set upon a course of  “democracy” for all mankind, the world would have sunk into a dark abyss from which it apparently would have never pulled itself out. Personally, I don’t even think that a separate United States and Confederacy either one would have sunk into an abyss, much less taken the rest of the enlightened world with it, but that’s neither here nor there. We’ll never know what might have been. Certainly with the outcome, the South sank and vis-à-vis the surge of northern industry has remained mired. So, I can’t help but question the argument that the South’s decision to secede was to protect slavery. Oh yes, I agree that slavery was integral to what the South was protecting, which translates into its very role within the nation.
 

Slavery in the South, at least in 1860, was still safe. The slavery issue dealt less with the threat of forced abolition than with the extension of slavery. The North’s determination that slavery not be extended into the territories, and thereby any future states, had nothing to do with freeing a people already enslaved and everything to do with ensuring there’d be no additional slave-state votes in Congress to thwart whatever big-government initiative the North concocted. As more and more free states were added to the equation, Southern influence would dwindle—ain’t no getting around it, folks; that’s what was happening, by design, and both sections knew it. The potential for sectional strife was obvious as early as the ratification of the Constitution (and even before), but was blatant by 1820 and the Missouri Compromise. That is when—and I know it’s 20/20 hindsight—the South should have told Henry Clay to go smoke his hemp, then left the Union. The South’s economy, rightly or wrongly, was dependent on slavery and had been for a century and a half before the Revolution. It came with the nation and everyone agreed to it, otherwise the South could have gone its own way from the beginning. Does anyone ever question why the North agreed to it? There had to have been a reason, but I’ll save my opinions on that for another post.

Along with slavery came state rights and the 10th Amendment. Jump forward to 1820, 1830, 1850, and consider that to prohibit Southerners access, with their property, into the new territories, which they too shed their blood to acquire for the United States, was not in keeping with the spirit of the pact. Yes, I know there were compromises during those years and promises made that were not kept, but my point is, why were compromises needed to begin with? I am also aware of the argument that the Founders believed from the git-go that slavery would fade away, because in a short space of time there would be no reason for it. The attempts I’ve seen to substantiate they actually believed that are shoddy and pertain more to the “Northern” Founders than “Southern” ones. Then came the cotton gin and King Cotton and that “belief” was forgotten. Tell me, what was supposed to happen? Northern industry and manufacturing was going to grow behind the largess of Southern agriculture, and when the time was right, the South would industrialize and become like the North? Oh goody. Sounds more like a weak attempt to vindicate both the Founders and Lincoln’s War of Aggression, and that is exactly what it is. Then there was that other fly in the ointment—the South didn’t want to be like the North.

I just reviewed Mississippi's Articles of Secession, and my interpretation remains the same as it did the last several times I’ve read it: In the North’s zeal to neutralize slave power, Northern threats led to Southern secession. It was the secession that led to a war of aggression that accomplished in a much shorter time span (and at the cost of over, now I believe the estimate is in excess of 800,000 men, not counting the loss of thousands of Southern civilians of both races and sexes), what a Northern-controlled Congress would have eventually taken a few more decades to accomplish—nullification of the Southern vote. That was the true objective.

I’d like to draw your attention to articles 12 and 13 against the Federal Union:  

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better. 

I plan to elaborate more on the lofty “stated” Reconstruction goals of the radical Republicans such as William D. Kelly in future blogs, but they tie right into making the South like the North, under Northern “entrepreneurship,” of course. 

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives. 

This, of course, is a reference to John Brown. Yes, the political leadership gave lip service to condemning the raid, but the North made a hero of that psychopath (If you’re not already aware, check Brown’s record in Kansas). And what of the men who financed him? Ah, that’s an interesting shadow group. What was their fate? What role did they play during and after the war, because they certainly played a role in starting it? A case can be made for saying the first shot of the Civil War was not fired at Fort Sumter in April of 1861, but at Harper’s Ferry in October of 1859.

A person blinded with self-righteous prejudice might be seeing the love of perpetual slavery when reading Mississippi’s Articles of Secession, but that’s not what the document is. It is a list of grievances against the Federal Union that had threatened the Southern way of life since the birth of the nation: 

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system. 

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause. 

Indeed, there was no end in sight—not within the Union. So I do not agree with Alcorn’s statement that the South “made” the war about slavery, though by drawing a parallel between his statement and the Articles of Secession, I’m probably taking him out of context. I imagine his faulting Davis was more in frustration with how Davis handled international opinion on slavery contrasted with how Lincoln exploited it. Alcorn continued by saying the higher purpose of the war was state rights, which I believe is clear in the Articles of Secession and there’s no shortage of contemporary Southern writings that support that. Certainly the Scots-Irish author of the lyrics to The Bonnie Blue Flag saw it that way. Harry Macarthy’s focus wasn’t African slavery, but the slavery of the South to tyranny. Eighty years before, the Scots-Irish played an important role in winning American independence from such a tyrant. In 1861, the Southern ones hadn’t forgotten what that meant.

 Meanwhile, Lincoln and his cabinet, along with their Congress—with men dying, hate rampant, the opposition muzzled, and the job market soaring—have the North committed to righteous conquest. Now they can publicly state with little fallout that emancipation serves a higher purpose...than what? State rights? No, indeed. Rather, they elevated it higher than the Constitution itself—the very soul of the Republic. Maybe they should have founded a church. But, alas, a church was not what they wanted. What they wanted was unencumbered, free-sway for an industrialized nation. All they had to do was destroy the encumbrance.

Supposedly, Alcorn argues, Lincoln’s “smoke and mirror” tactic regarding the ending of slavery in the United States convinced Britain and France not to support the South. Actually, both those nations, not needing more problems, prudently sat back and waited to see how things went. Once the North opted for war (which was a forgone conclusion), time was not on the South’s side.

I believe, with the end in sight, Alcorn is paving the way for some ancillary use of slavery, but I’ll have more on that in my next post. Climbing up on my soapbox has drawn this post out. Look for another article on Alcorn shortly and thanks for reading. 

Charlsie

By That, He Meant Brazil, Right?

      I fear not. I think he really was making a perfidious reference to the Deep South of the Southern United States. That would include my Mississippi, folks, and I’m not taking it lying down. 

I recently visited North Carolina, a state with which I have ancestral ties that go back so far as to exist only by word of mouth, that being the existence of a redheaded, blue-eyed Scotsman (that would be the Russell side) who came from the “Carolinas.” Ever so often he returns, my daddy told me as I was growing up. My grandmother Russell had two redheaded sons (my father wasn’t one of them) and I, too, gave birth to him twice, but my sons don’t bear the surname Russell; that’s my maiden name. Though I’d always suspected the “Carolinas” in this case referred to North Carolina, tentative research strongly indicates the family did indeed travel from North Carolina into Tennessee, then Georgia, briefly Alabama, and my branch has been in Mississippi for four generations now—six if I count my non-Russell offspring and their offspring. 

But, let me get back on point. My visit was to Buncombe County in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Ashville specifically, a lovely, quaint little city favored by artists and flocked to by tourists and historically by those in need of the healthful mountain air to relieve whatever ailed them. I went with my daughter’s mother-in-law to visit old friends she wanted to see there, and they, knowing my interest in history, made a point of taking us to some of the local historical sites. What provided fodder for this particular blog were comments made by a tour guide at the birthplace of Zebulon Baird Vance, 37th and 43rd governor of North Carolina. His first term was during the War for Southern Independence, and he is beloved by the people of North Carolina for being “War Governor of the South.” 

Zebulon Vance was the second son of David Vance, a veteran of the Continental Army that sent the Loyalists packing at King’s Mountain. The elder Vance either built or bought the house in 1795. The family ran a wealthy, slave-owning farm. Here is what got my goat. This young man, our guide, went off on a brief tangent highlighting how slavery was different in North Carolina, where more valuable skilled slaves were the norm vice the less valuable field laborers from the more southern states, where labor was cheap and the slaves were “worked to death” then replaced. He threw his hands out in front of him and said, “No big deal.”  

I beg your pardon? Where did this double-standard, hypocritical, hogwash come from? Quentin Tarantino? Perhaps it was Harriet Beecher Stowe, but to believe the latter, I would have to credit the young man with having made some effort to research the history of slavery. I, in fact, use those same words—“worked to death”—referring to slaves, in my most recent novel Camellia Creek, spoken from the mouth of a hate-filled, bigoted abolitionist witch who didn’t know what she was talking about. There were plenty of skilled Negro slaves in the Deep South, and all slaves, skilled or not, certainly were costly, considering the slave-trade ended in 1808. Even assuming we in the Deep South were sub-human and cared nothing for human life, working slaves to death would have been economic suicide. I’m not saying such never happened, but it was not the norm and would have been as likely to happen in North Carolina as Mississippi. 

I was hoping the thoughts espoused by the tour guide were his own, but subsequent discussion with my host indicates this “slavery in North Carolina was kinder, gentler” has become a common thread among those who wish to apologize for slavery’s existence in that state. Of course, I don’t know that those North Carolinians, whose roots go back to the beginning, really swallow that “bunk”, pun intended. I hope not. My host, who is not a Southerner, snickered when he gave me that “kinder and gentler” line. I can only surmise that such tripe handed out during tours is the result of federal funding or is an effort by the politically correct crowd to whitewash something it appears to be ashamed of. To those individuals I say whitewash it if you feel a need, but do it without defaming your sister states, whose ancestors were sure the devil no worse than yours, no matter where they hailed from.  

Better yet, I would argue that when giving a tour of Governor Vance’s birthplace, place emphasis on the man himself and the time he lived, rather than gloss over it. He was a man who believed a state was sovereign, vis-à-vis a central government, in all things except those limited areas where said central government held precedent (a prominent characteristic of a number of North Carolina statesmen going back long before the War). Something all state governors should remember now, something governors in the North should have remembered then and the dark years following the War--something they all should have remembered in the 1960s. That belief is what the people of North Carolina fought for (in numbers that exceeded all others, I should add, all the while resisting Confederate conscription policies in the name of those same rights), not slavery. That autonomy as well as the inviolability of the Constitution are what were lost with the South’s defeat, and as regards the health of the Republic, those two things alone eclipse the radical and irresponsible dissolution of an institution doomed to extinction within a relatively short period of time. For all the right reasons, the South was right, something Southerners should remember and be proud of instead of hanging their heads in shame and prevaricating in the face of liberal propaganda and federal extortion.