Question:  The film "Tap Roots" is loosely based on the life story of a Southern Unionist that held what position in MIssissippi's Reconstruction government?

Context articles: Tap Roots
The Lotus Eater
Robert K. Byrd
Cushion plant
Alexander Keith McClung
The Other Boleyn Girl
Newton Knight
United National Congress
Sins of Rome
Robert H. Hodsden

Tap Roots is a 1948 Technicolor Western war film set during the American Civil War.
 It is very loosely based on the true life story of Newton Knight, a farm owner who attempted to secede Jones County from Mississippi.
"The Lotus Eater" is a short story written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1935 and loosely based on the life story of John Ellingham Brooks.
 It was included in the 1940 collection of Maugham stories "The Mixture as Before".
Robert King Byrd (November 4, 1823 – May 2, 1885) was an American soldier and politician.
 A Southern Unionist, he commanded the Union Army's First Tennessee Infantry during the Civil War, and saw action at Cumberland Gap, Stones River, and in the Knoxville and Atlanta campaigns.
 He represented his native Roane County at the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention on the eve of the war in 1861, and at the Nashville convention that reorganized the Tennessee state government toward the end of the war in January 1865.
A cushion plant is a compact, low growing, mat forming plant that is found in alpine, subalpine, arctic, or subarctic environments around the world.
 The term "cushion" is usually applied to woody plants that grow as spreading mats, are limited in height above the ground (a few inches at most), have relatively large and deep tap roots, and have life histories adapted to slow growth in a nutrient poor environment with delayed reproductivity and reproductive cycle adaptations.
 The plant form is an example of parallel or convergent evolution with species from many different plant families on different continents converging on the same evolutionary adaptations to endure the harsh environmental conditions.
Alexander Keith McClung (14 June 1811 – 23 March 1855) briefly served as US chargé d'affaires to Bolivia in President Zachary Taylor's administration.
 An "inveterate Southern duelist" nicknamed "The Black Knight of the South", he was also a poet.
 James H. Street used him as the model for the character Keith Alexander in his novel "Tap Roots" (1942).
The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) is an historical novel written by British author Philippa Gregory, loosely based on the life of 16th-century aristocrat Mary Boleyn (the sister of Anne Boleyn) of whom little is known.
 Inspired by Mary's life story, Gregory depicts the annulment of one of the most significant royal marriages in English history (that of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) and conveys the urgency of the need for a male heir to the throne.
 Much of the history is highly distorted in her account.
Newton Knight (November 10, 1829 – February 16, 1922) was an American farmer, soldier and Southern Unionist in Mississippi, best known as the leader of the Knight Company, a band of Confederate army deserters who resisted the Confederacy during the Civil War.
 Local legends tell of Knight and his men forming the "Free State of Jones" in the area in and around Jones County, Mississippi, at the height of the war.
 The nature and extent of the Knight Company's opposition to the Confederate government is disputed among historians.
 After the war, Knight joined the Republican Party and served in Mississippi's Reconstruction government as a deputy US Marshal.
The United National Congress (UNC) is one of the two major political parties in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and one of the main parties in the current opposition.
 It was founded by Basdeo Panday, a lawyer and former trade unionist.
 The UNC was formed as the result of a split in the ruling National Alliance for Reconstruction in 1988.
 After spending six years in opposition, the UNC won control of the government in 1995 (initially in coalition with the National Alliance for Reconstruction and later on its own).
 In the 2000 general elections, the UNC won an absolute majority in the Parliament.
 In 2001, a split in the party caused the UNC to lose its parliamentary majority and control of the government.
 Between 1991 and 1995, and again from 2001 to 2010, the UNC was the Parliamentary Opposition party.
 In May 2010, the UNC returned to government as the majority party in the People's Partnership.
 With this victory, the UNC's political leader Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the first woman to hold this position.
Sins of Rome (Italian: "Spartaco" , also known as "Sins of Rome: Story of Spartacus", "Spartacus" and "Spartacus the Gladiator") is a 1953 Italian epic historical drama film directed by Riccardo Freda and loosely based on the life story of Spartacus.
 The rights of film's negatives and copies were bought by the producers of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus", as to prevent eventual new releases of the film that could have damaged the commercial outcome of Kubrik's film; this resulted in "Sins of Rome"'s withdrawal from market for about thirty years.
Robert Hatton Hodsden (November 23, 1806 – June 18, 1864) was an American physician, planter, and politician who served three terms in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1841–1845, 1861–1862).
 He worked as a government physician on the Cherokee removal ("Trail of Tears") in 1838, and served as president of the East Tennessee Medical Society in the mid-1850s.
 A Southern Unionist during the Civil War, Hodsden represented Sevier County at the East Tennessee Convention in 1861, and was later arrested by Confederate authorities.