Early Life and Career
Born near Golconda, Illinois, to a Scots-Irish family, he attended Cumberland College in Kentucky and served as deputy sheriff of Livingston County, Kentucky, from 1839 to 1844. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1843 before moving to Mississippi. In 1844, he set up a law practice in Panola County, Mississippi. As his law practice flourished and his property holdings throughout the Mississippi Delta increased, he became a wealthy man. By 1860, he owned nearly a hundred slaves and held lands valued at a quarter of a million dollars. He was a leader of the Whig Party. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi Senate during the 1840s and 1850s. He ran for Congress in 1856 but was defeated.
As a delegate to the Mississippi convention of 1851, called by Democratic Governor John A. Quitman to build momentum for secession, Alcorn helped defeat that movement. Like many Whig planters, Alcorn initially opposed secession, pleading with the extremists to reflect for a moment on the realities of regional power. He foretold a horrific picture of a beaten South, "when the northern soldier would tread her cotton fields, when the slave should be made free and the proud Southerner stricken to the dust in his presence."
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