JACKSON - Could Gov. Haley Barbour launch a campaign to rename this state capital city LeFleur's Bluff - as it was originally called - in memory of a long-deceased relative?
Not likely, but there's more substance to the idea than most Mississippians realize.
What even State Archivist Elbert Hilliard didn't know, was that the state's new governor can claim that he is a direct descendant of the storied 18th century French-Canadian adventurer Louis LeFleur, whose reputed trading post on the Pearl River is the site of the state capital.
Barbour in a pre-inauguration Humanities Commission lecture at the Old State Capitol simply dropped the historic bombshell that LeFleur was "my maternal great-great-great-grandfather."
"LeFleur's Bluff," reputed to have been a LeFleur trading post near the Natchez Trace overlooking the Pearl River, was selected by a commission in 1821 to become the site of the state capital.
Although some historical documents on the state capital origins refer to "LeFleur's Bluff" as the site, later research raised questions as to how it came to be named for Louis LeFleur, or if it actually was one of his several trading posts.
Nonetheless, the LeFleur's Bluff legend endures, as do several others surrounding the redoubtable LeFleur. By a part Choctaw wife, Rebecca Cravet, he sired Greenwood Leflore (note the name change), who would become principal chief of the Choctaws and a man of wealth and a political figure.
A romanticized version of early state history even says that the spot where the Old Capitol is located in Jackson was Leflore's birthplace.
Interestingly, the maiden name of Governor Barbour's late mother was Leflore Johnson, a descendent of Greenwood Leflore's brother. However, the governor in his remarks at the Humanities lecture didn't dwell on the Greenwood Leflore connection.
It would have been a remarkable historical coincidence that Mississippi's 63rd governor would relate his fascinating family heritage in that same spot.
The historical record left by Greenwood Leflore is far better documented than the hazy legends that surround LeFluer, his father. And from documented state history of the early and mid-19th century, it is obvious Greenwood Leflore ranked among the most colorful and prominent figures of that era.
Leflore made his mark all the way from being a chief negotiator for the Choctaw Nation in the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830 (and matching wits with Andrew Jackson) to later amassing a vast cotton plantation with the elegant mansion, Malmaison, and becoming a prominent politician.
Much of Leflore's wealth crumbled with the outbreak of the Civil War. As history records, he opposed secession and remained loyal to the Union until his death in 1865. One historian notes that at his request, Leflore's body was wrapped in the Union flag.
While Haley Barbour's career has been far less colorful than Greenwood Leflore's, in his own right, Barbour's rise to the very top elective office in Mississippi is a testament to his masterful development of political organizational skills.
Clarke Reed of Greenville, Barbour's 75-year-old political mentor and longtime state GOP chairman and party patriarch, calls Barbour the "most organized guy I have ever seen."
In 1970, while Haley was still a student at Ole Miss, Reed put him to work in a part-time job assisting the director of the Mississippi Republican Party.
"I could see from the start that Haley was a natural administrator," Reed says. As soon as Barbour received his law degree at Ole Miss in 1973, Reed made him the party's state director. Four years in the job, Barbour shaped the Mississippi Republican Party into a potent political force.
Although not the first choice of some state Republican leaders (among them then U.S. Rep. Trent Lott), Barbour in 1982 was picked to tackle venerable Democratic U.S. Sen. John Stennis. Although he was soundly defeated, Barbour gained valuable statewide campaign experience he would use 21 years later in his bid for governor.
As a sort of consolation prize for Barbour's defeat by Stennis, Reed and other top state Republicans got President Reagan to pull Barbour up to Washington in 1984 as an adviser and congressional liaison to the White House.
Meantime, Barbour became Mississippi's Republican National Committeeman, giving him the chance to take his next step up the political ladder: being elected in 1993 (notably defeating now Attorney General John Ashcroft) as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Barbour in four years as RNC chairman demonstrated his organizing skills by master-minding the 1994 Republican sweep of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
Reed says it was while Barbour was at RNC that Haley made up his mind that becoming the state's governor was his ultimate goal. He waited to see how ex-Rep. Mike Parker would fare, and when Parker bombed in 1999, Barbour knew what he would do in 2003.
Meanwhile, after leaving the RNC, Barbour made a personal fortune as the top lobbyist in the nation's capital, cashing in on ties to big corporations and special interests he had developed while party chairman.
Once it was certain that Barbour would come back to run for governor, it was clear to me that with an unlimited war chest and his ability to fine tune the most massive campaign this state had ever seen, Barbour would be extremely hard to stop.
From the start, Barbour adopted the strategy of keeping Gov. Ronnie Musgrove from playing to the strengths of his administration: monumental strides in education funding and landing Nissan, the state's biggest industrial prize ever.
To divert attention from Musgrove's assets, Barbour successfully pictured Mississippi as having become the Jobless Capital of America, when in actual numbers this state had lost far fewer manufacturing jobs than comparable Southern states such as South Carolina.
Then to nail down his victory margin, Barbour tapped into the reservoir of Mississippi's latent Confederates by raising the Rebel-tinged state flag issue.
Isn't it ironic that Barbour's noted ancestor, Greenwood Leflore, strongly believed exactly the opposite on the matter of the Confederate flag?
