James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig (review)

362CIVIL WAR HISTORY by Polk's own continentalism. It was also a problem, Sellers concludes, which Polk "was not remotely equipped to understand." The story of Polk's struggle with the increasingly disruptive agitation over slavery has been reserved to the diird and final volume of Professor Sellers' study. The author's characterization of President Polk is full and finely drawn, lending support to those who have selected Polk as one of America's ten great Presidents. He was cool and deliberate, a man of much nerve and good judgment, always determined to achieve his ends no matter what the risks. His success in playing the dangerous game of "diplomatic bluff" over the Oregon question and his attitude toward relations with Mexico reveal elements in Polk's own character. He was, Sellers adds, a "master at the art of manipulating men," no small factor in his relations with the nation's lawmakers. Under Polk's prodding and close surveillance, the twenty-ninth Congress compiled "die most impressive record of legislative action in the nineteendi century." The high level of research and scholarship established by Professor Sellers in his first volume of Polk's biography has been fully carried out in the second, a recipient of the Bancroft Prize. He has produced a dispassionate , critical and detailed study of a man and a period that have long needed such a full and perceptive treatment. Robert W. Johannsen University of Illinois James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig. By Lillian A. Pereyra. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966. Pp. xv, 237. $7.50.) James Lusk Alcom was described by a contemporary as "... a Whig up to '59, a Union man in '60, a secessionist in '61, a fire-eater in '62, a peace-man in '63, a growler in '64, a rebel in '65, a reconstructionist in '66, a scalawag in '67, a radical in '68, and a bitter ender in '69." Professor Pereyra, examining Alcorn's unorthodox and controversial career, found a continuity of ideas which she interpreted as " . . . basic and consistent Federalist-Whig doctrine. . . ." The audior, through this biography , has brought some order and consistency to a tortuous political life. Alcorn's half-century career in Mississippi spanned the stormiest years in southern history, 1844-1894. His successful financial activities were devoted to building his small acres into Eagle's Nest, a plantation show place on the Mississippi Delta. He began his political career as a Whig member of die state legislature. He opposed the 1850 secession movement , briefly flirted with the Know-Nothing party in mid-decade, and supported die Constitutional Union party in 1860. The "Persistent Whig," elected as a Cooperationist to die 1861 secession convention, at first opposed secession, but finally cast the first vote to take Mississippi out of the Union. He served as a Mississippi general for a few months, but his offer to serve the Confederacy was unanswered by Davis. After retiring BOOK REVIEWS363 from a brief military career he returned to his plantation and mended his financial position by smuggling cotton. He made peace with his state, with ex-Confederates, and with die Union after Appomattox, and moved toward the Republican party. Elected governor on the Republican ticket in 1869, he proceeded to ". . . form die Republican party into a neo-Whig party which would work ... to rebuild die kind of Mississippi in which he believed." Failing to mold Republicanism to old ideas, he accepted a term in the Senate but soon lost control of the state party to Ames, the Radical Republican. As senator, Alcorn supported the Republican party, worked for Federal aid in building levees along the Mississippi, refused to show an interest in the Libéral Republican movement of 1872, and gave his support to Hayes during the disputed election. He retired from public life in 1877, but emerged briefly in die state constitutional convention of 1890 to support old Whig ideas. Professor Pereyra convincingly portrays Alcorn's political decisions in terms of Whig doctrine. Even when Alcorn saw his Whig position as untenable and decided to run widi die "maddened steed" of practical politics , the author manages to find underlying Whig attitudes. Such oversimplification of Alcorn's political decisions m terms...