Joshua S. Morris (1835 - February 13, 1890) was an American lawyer who served as the first Republican Attorney General of Mississippi from 1870 to 1874. [1] [2]
A letter Morris wrote regarding the 1872 presidential campaign, Letter from J.S. Morris, Esq., Attorney-general of Mississippi, on the Presidential Campaign of 1872, reveals the political divide, not just among the Reconstructionists and military occupation of the former Confederate States, but also within the Republican party during the campaign of Ulysses S. Grant. [3] [4] In this letter, Morris speaks for the continued protection of African Americans in the U.S. south, as well as against excessive taxation of white merchants and labourers. [4] Letters to him from other officials are extant. [5]
Referring to Grant, who was generally despised by whites in Mississippi, as the former Union Army General who defeated the Confederate forces, and due to the U.S. military continued to occupation of the state, Morris addressed Grant's presidential rival Horace Greeley's campaign, Anything to beat Grant. [6] [7] Morris writes:
"Suffice it to say that the motto, 'Anything to beat Grant,' does not meet my approbation. Let it rather be, “Anything to help Mississippi!” We are not in a condition to beat “anybody or anything.” Let us get into the prevailing sentiment of this great nation, make ourselves a part of it, secure its confidence and friendship, obtain a voice in its councils, and assist in guiding it. Then, and not till then, we may talk about “beating” somebody for President." [4]
Grant took the state, winning by 27% of the vote.
He wrote an editorial about the role of militia officers and Mississippi governor Adelbert Ames in the "invasion of Vicksburg" [8] (Vicksburg riots of 1874). [9]
Morris died February 13, 1890, [10] aged 55, [11] at his home in Natchez and was survived by his wife and several children. [12]
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1872. Incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican nominee, defeated Democratic-endorsed Liberal Republican nominee Horace Greeley.
Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat. The population was 21,573 at the 2020 census. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vicksburg was built by French colonists in 1719. The outpost withstood an attack from the native Natchez people. It was incorporated as Vicksburg in 1825 after Methodist missionary Newitt Vick. The area that is now Vicksburg was long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans as part of their historical territory along the Mississippi. The first Europeans who settled the area were French colonists who built Fort Saint Pierre in 1719 on the high bluffs overlooking the Yazoo River at present-day Redwood. They conducted fur trading with the Natchez and others, and started plantations. During the American Civil War, it was a key Confederate river-port, and its July 1863 surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, along with the concurrent Battle of Gettysburg, marked the turning-point of the war.
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, who won by a landslide.
The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. The Radical faction also included, though, very strong currents of Nativism, anti-Catholicism, and in favor of the Prohibition of alcoholic beverages. These policy goals and the rhetoric in their favor often made it extremely difficult for the Republican Party as a whole to avoid alienating large numbers of American voters from Irish Catholic, German, and other White ethnic backgrounds. In fact, even German-American Freethinkers and Forty-Eighters who, like Hermann Raster, otherwise sympathized with the Radical Republicans' aims, fought them tooth and nail over prohibition. They later became known as "Stalwarts".
Edwards Pierrepont was an American attorney, reformer, jurist, traveler, New York U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Minister to England, and orator. Having graduated from Yale in 1837, Pierrepont studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840. During the American Civil War, Pierrepont was a Democrat, although he supported President Abraham Lincoln. Pierrepont initially supported President Andrew Johnson's conservative Reconstruction efforts having opposed the Radical Republicans. In both 1868 and 1872, Pierrepont supported Ulysses S. Grant for president. For his support, President Grant appointed Pierrepont United States Attorney in 1869. In 1871, Pierrepont gained the reputation as a solid reformer, having joined New York's Committee of Seventy that shut down Boss Tweed's corrupt Tammany Hall. In 1872, Pierrepont modified his views on Reconstruction and stated that African American freedman's rights needed to be protected.
Benjamin Gratz Brown was an American politician. He was a U.S. Senator, the 20th Governor of Missouri, and the Liberal Republican and Democratic Party vice presidential candidate in the presidential election of 1872.
The Liberal Republican Party was an American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The party emerged in Missouri under the leadership of Senator Carl Schurz and soon attracted other opponents of Grant; Liberal Republicans decried the scandals of the Grant administration and sought civil service reform. The party opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies, particularly the Enforcement Acts that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan. It lost in a landslide, and disappeared from the national stage after the 1872 election.
Joseph Holt was an American lawyer, soldier, and politician. As a leading member of the Buchanan administration, he succeeded in convincing Buchanan to oppose the secession of the South. He returned to Kentucky and successfully battled the secessionist element thereby helping to keep Kentucky in the Union. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army. He served as Lincoln's chief arbiter and enforcer of military law, and supporter of emancipation. His most famous roles came in the Lincoln assassination trials.
The Mississippi Plan of 1874–1875 was developed by white Southern Democrats as part of the white insurgency during the Reconstruction era in the Southern United States. It was devised by the Democratic Party in that state to overthrow the Republican Party in Mississippi by means of organized threats of violence and voter suppression against African American citizens and white Republican supporters. Democrats sought to regain political control of the state legislature and governor's office 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.' Their justifications were articulated on a basis of discontent with governor Adelbert Ames' Republican administration, including spurious charges of corruption and high taxes. However, the violence that followed was centred on the desire to return white supremacy to the state. The success of the campaign led to similar plans being adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and other majority-black states across the South.
The history of the state of Mississippi extends back to thousands of years of indigenous peoples. Evidence of their cultures has been found largely through archeological excavations, as well as existing remains of earthwork mounds built thousands of years ago. Native American traditions were kept through oral histories; with Europeans recording the accounts of historic peoples they encountered. Since the late 20th century, there have been increased studies of the Native American tribes and reliance on their oral histories to document their cultures. Their accounts have been correlated with evidence of natural events.
Theodore Fitz Randolph was an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 22nd governor of New Jersey from 1869 to 1872 and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1875 to 1881. He was the son of U.S. Representative James F. Randolph.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
Henry Clay Warmoth was an American attorney and veteran Civil War officer in the Union Army who was elected governor and state representative of Louisiana. A Republican, he was 26 years old when elected as 23rd Governor of Louisiana, one of the youngest governors elected in United States history. He served during the early Reconstruction Era, from 1868 to 1872.
The Government of Mississippi is the government of the U.S. state of Mississippi. Power in Mississippi's government is distributed by the state's Constitution between the executive and legislative branches. The state's current governor is Tate Reeves. The Mississippi Legislature consists of the House of Representatives and Senate. Mississippi is one of only five states that elects its state officials in odd numbered years. Mississippi holds elections for these offices every four years in the years preceding Presidential election years.
The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, when Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as the 18th President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1877. The Reconstruction era took place during Grant's two terms of office. The Ku Klux Klan caused widespread violence throughout the South against African Americans. By 1870, all former Confederate states had been readmitted into the United States and were represented in Congress; however, Democrats and former slave owners refused to accept that freedmen were citizens who were granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment, which prompted Congress to pass three Force Acts to allow the federal government to intervene when states failed to protect former slaves' rights. Following an escalation of Klan violence in the late 1860s, Grant and his attorney general, Amos T. Akerman, head of the newly created Department of Justice, began a crackdown on Klan activity in the South, starting in South Carolina, where Grant sent federal troops to capture Klan members. This led the Klan to demobilize and helped ensure fair elections in 1872. He was succeeded by fellow Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the 1876 presidential election.
The 1872 United States elections were held on November 5, electing the members of the 43rd United States Congress. The election took place during the Third Party System. The election took place during the Reconstruction Era, and many Southerners were barred from voting. Despite a split in the party, the Republicans retained control of the presidency and both houses of Congress.
George Washington Gayles was an American Baptist minister and state legislator in Mississippi. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1872 until 1875 and in the Mississippi Senate from 1878 until 1886. He was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 1892, but received only 6% of the vote due to the voter suppression laws of that period. He was also a noted Baptist minister and was known as the "Father of the Convention" of African American Baptists in Mississippi.
In 1872, Horace Greeley ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States. He served as the candidate of both the Democrats and the Liberal Republicans, in the 1872 election. In the run-up to the 1872 United States presidential election, major changes occurred in the United States. Specifically, the 15th Amendment gave African Americans the right to vote for the first time, while the government cracked down on the Ku Klux Klan. In addition, the economy was still in good shape and President Ulysses S. Grant's corruption scandals for the most part was still not public knowledge. With this background, the incumbent U.S. President was able to decisively defeat Greeley.
John Scurlock, known as Little John Scurlock or L. J. Scurlock, was a Methodist minister, editor and politician in Mississippi, United States. He was reported to be seven feet tall. According to a history written during the nadir of American race relations era, "The negro leader, John Scurlock, was killed one night in Coffeeville by unknown parties. It was supposed that the deed was committed by the Ku Klux Klan, and little effort was made to find the murderers, as the negro was a very bad character." However although he is often classified as a Reconstruction-era murder victim, records of the Methodist Church in the south seem to have Rev. L. J. Scurlock into the 1880s or possibly 1890s. A history published 1895 states "Many who have been in attendance upon the sessions of the General Conference in recent years will remember the tall, courtly figure of a presiding elder from Mississippi, the Rev. L. J. Scurlock. A prominent worker on committees, thoughtful and dignified, he gained immediate attention whenever he obtained the floor in debate. For many years he occupied a leading position among the people of his own State, and in the Conference he exercised a commanding, yet gentle, influence. He has passed from the ranks of the Church militant to his place in the Church triumphant."