ANNUAL MESSAGE OF GOV. JAS. L. ALCORN TO THE MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE, SESSION OF 1871. PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE

Original printed pale green wrappers [lightly spotted]. Stitched. 67, [1 blank] pp. Clean text. Very Good plus. Contemporary ownership inscription in pencil, "W.H. Bullard." Alcorn [1816-1894], born in Illinois Territory, was Governor of Mississippi from March 1870 through November 1871. He was active in Mississippi politics from about 1845. During the Civil War he served as a Confederate. After the War, as a "Scalawag," he supported the 14th Amendment and votes for freedmen. Nevertheless, he clashed with his new Republican friends by opposing federal intervention against the Klan and federal laws abolishing segregation in public facilities. Alcorn addresses "what remains to be done of the work of reconstruction," thus focusing on "the restoration of our social and material ruin." With tables and data, he demonstrates the disastrous economic effects of the War. But his data also give "encouragement to the practicability of educating the great body of our labor to the moral level of freedom." Marriage licenses are up; extreme "sexual license" is down. Preachers, teachers, schools, property ownership, and trades for the freedmen are all on the increase. Denouncing vigilantism, he says that "A class of lawless violence the most cruel and cowardly, proceeds in a few quarters, in the person of the masked assassin; and so far has succeeded in evading punishment if not detection." OCLC 28758840 [3- Columbia, Yale, LSU] as of June 2024. Not at online AAS.…