Elza Jeffords

Elza Jeffords (May 23, 1826 – March 19, 1885) was a Republican lawyer, jurist, and politician who represented Mississippi’s 3rd congressional district in the Forty-eighth Congress. His election was historically notable in that no other Republican would represent Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives for eighty years after his term.

Jeffords was born near Ironton in Lawrence County, Ohio, on May 23, 1826. He spent his youth in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he attended the local public schools. After completing his basic education, he entered a law office in Portsmouth as a clerk, following the then-common practice of “reading law” under the supervision of established attorneys rather than attending a formal law school. Through this apprenticeship he acquired his legal training and was admitted to the bar in 1847. Upon admission to the legal profession he commenced practice in Portsmouth, building his early career as an attorney in his home state.

During the American Civil War, Jeffords entered federal service with the Union Army. From June 1862 to December 1863 he served as a clerk in the Quartermaster’s Department of the Army of the Tennessee, a major Union field army operating in the Western Theater. In this capacity he was involved in the administrative and logistical work that supported military operations, experience that later informed his public service in the Reconstruction era.

Following the Civil War, Jeffords relocated to the South, moving to Mayersville in Issaquena County, Mississippi. As Mississippi and other former Confederate states underwent Reconstruction, he became involved in the reorganization of the state’s civil and judicial institutions under federal authority. On February 25, 1868, General Alvan Cullem Gillem, the military commander overseeing a region that included Mississippi during Reconstruction, appointed Jeffords to the Mississippi Supreme Court, along with Thomas Shackelford and Ephraim G. Peyton. His service on the state’s highest court placed him at the center of efforts to reestablish civil government and adjudicate legal questions arising from the postwar transition. In national politics, Jeffords aligned with the Republican Party and was a delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention, which renominated President Ulysses S. Grant.

Jeffords’s judicial and party work in Mississippi led to his election to Congress. Running as a Republican, he was elected to the Forty-eighth United States Congress from Mississippi’s 3rd congressional district, carrying nearly 70 percent of the vote. He served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1885. His tenure occurred during a period when Republican influence in Mississippi was waning amid the end of Reconstruction and the resurgence of Democratic control in the state. Jeffords sought reelection in 1884 but was unsuccessful, and his defeat marked the close of an era: eighty years passed before another Republican, Prentiss Walker of Mize in Smith County, would represent Mississippi in the U.S. House. Walker served one term from 1965 to 1967 as the representative of the 4th district before forfeiting the seat to make an unsuccessful race against U.S. Senator James O. Eastland.

After leaving Congress, Jeffords remained in Mississippi. He died on March 19, 1885, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, only a short time after the end of his congressional service. He was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery near Vicksburg.