James Z. George

Timothy B. Smith

“When the Mississippi school boy is asked who is called the ‘Great Commoner’ of public life in his State,” wrote Mississippi’s premier historian Dunbar Rowland in 1901, “he will unhesitatingly answer James Z. George.” While George’s prominence has decreased through the decades since then, many modern historians still view him as a supremely important Mississippian, with one writing that George (1826–1897) was “Mississippi’s most important Democratic leader in the late nineteenth century.” Certainly, the Mexican War veteran, prominent lawyer and planter, Civil War officer, Reconstruction leader, state Supreme Court chief justice, and Mississippi’s longest serving United States senator in his day deserves a full biography. And, George’s importance was greater than just on the state level as other Southerners copied his tactics to secure white supremacy in their own states. James Z....