The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815-1828

The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815–1828

The Library of Alabama Classics, reprint editions of works important to the history, literature, and culture of Alabama, is dedicated to the memory of

Rucker Agee

whose pioneering work in the fields of Alabama history and historical geography continues to be the standard of scholarly achievement.

The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815–1828

Thomas Perkins Abernethy

Introduction by David T. Morgan

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

London

Revised edition copyright © 1965 by The University of Alabama Press

Introduction copyright © 1990 by The University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI A39.48-1984

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abernethy, Thomas Perkins, 1890–

The formative period in Alabama, 1815–1828 / Thomas Perkins Abernethy ; introduction by David T. Morgan.

    p.    cm. — (The Library of Alabama classics)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-8173-0486-X (alk. paper)

1. Alabama—History—To 1819.   2. Alabama—History—1819–1950.   I. Title.   II. Series

F326.A14    1990

976.1′04—dc20

89-20612

CIP

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available

ISBN-13 978-0-8173-8254-4 (electronic)

Contents

List of Maps and Charts

Preface

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction to the Library of Alabama Classics Edition by David T. Morgan

The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815–1828

1. The Mississippi Territory

2. The New Country

3. The Immigrants

4. The Division of the Territory

5. Alabama Becomes a State

6. The Public Lands

7. Agriculture

8. Rivers and Roads

9. The Commercial Situation

10. The Bank Question

11. Politics and the Election of 1824

12. Politics and Federal Relations, 1824–28

13. Religion, Education, and the Press

14. Social Conditions and Slavery

15. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

List of Maps and Charts

1 Indian cessions in the Mississippi Territory

2 Geological map of Alabama

3 Road map, 1818

4 Origin of population

5 Vote on establishment of branch banks

6 Vote for governor, 1819

7 Vote to disapprove censuring of Jackson, 1819

8 Indian cessions in Alabama

9 Value of lands sold in Alabama

10 Slave population, 1818

11 Slave population, 1824

12 Slave population, 1830

13 Average yearly price of middling upland cotton

14 Average valuation of slaves in Mobile

15 Cotton crop of South Alabama

16 River map

17 Imports and exports at Mobile

18 Election of U.S. Senator, 1822

19 Election of U.S. Senator, 1824

20 Election of U.S. Senator, 1822

21 Senate vote on motion proposing Jackson for the presidency

22 House vote on motion proposing Jackson for the presidency

23 Presidential election of 1824

24 Vote on Lewis report proposing Jackson for the presidency

25 Vote on bill fixing state capital at Tuscaloosa

26 House vote in election of U.S. Senator, 1826

27 Vote to reduce judicial tenure

28 Vote on bill to extend jurisdiction of state over Creeks

29 Vote on bill to prohibit importing slaves for sale

Preface

DR. A. C. COLE BEGINS HIS STUDY OF The Whig Party in the South with the year 1830, but necessarily, the basis for the confusing political alignments of the Southern Whigs lay largely in the years that had gone before the actual formation of the party. Alabama received her first great influx of population and underwent the formative period of her development during the apparently quiet administration of Monroe, when party lines were not recognized as existing. The new conditions of the frontier are sure to change old habits and old views, but the absolute lack of avowed partisan division during the period when Alabama was receiving her first wave of population gives us an especially good chance to study a society where men’s political views are almost certain to be based directly on economic interest or individual conviction. With this in mind, it has been with the double purpose of obtaining an understanding of the conditions under which the cotton kingdom was planted on the Gulf Coast, and of trying to discover the process by which fixed party principles were crystallized out of the solution of social and economic elements which existed in Alabama during the period of settlement following the War of 1812, that the present work was undertaken.

Substantial source material, principally in the Library of Congress, the Public Library of New York City, the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the Young Men’s Christian Association Library of Mobile, has been searched, but there are important gaps in the body of information collected. This is especially the case in connection with the subjects of agriculture and slave-management, but, as the discovery of local peculiarities was the principal object of the study, it has seemed best not to fill in these blanks from general accounts. Only such information as deals particularly with Alabama has been used.

In connection with questions of politics, there also has been difficulty. In a period of settlement and of political uncertainty, there are few established lines of policy to guide the student on his way. But, on the other hand, there is added interest in discovering from among the various problems which confront the community, the ones which develop sufficient significance to shape the course of events and to become solidified into partisan principles. Thus the study of the formative period has afforded an opportunity to find the principal questions upon which the people were divided, and hence to gain some understanding of the basis of later alignments. But, even so, many points upon which we would like to have information are left in comparative and tantalizing obscurity. The principal cause for this, as it appears to the writer, is that the questions which agitated the men of these early years were largely local matters, and the political leaders had not yet gained sufficient importance outside their own state to enable them to make a lasting impression. One of the politicians who grew up with Alabama was William R. King, but, though he was later elected Vice-President of the United States, we have few records to reveal his mind during the interesting time when his career was taking shape. And so it is for most of the others.

This work, submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, was prepared under the stimulating direction of Professor Frederick Jackson Turner. The materials collected by the late Dr. Thomas M. Owen, of the Alabama State Department of Archives and History, made the research possible. Each of these men has been of inestimable aid and encouragement in my work.

I am indebted also to Dr. Dunbar Rowland, of the Mississippi State Department of Archives and History, and to Mr. J. C. Fitzpatrick, of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, for aid in the collection of materials. Professor L. C. Gray, of the United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Farm Management, kindly read the chapter dealing with agriculture; and Dr. Roland M. Harper, of the Alabama Geological Survey, gave me valuable aid in connection with geographical questions, but of course the writer is responsible for the treatment of these subjects given herein.

THOMAS P. ABERNETHY

Preface to the Second Edition

IT IS PLEASANT, AFTER AN INTERVAL OF FORTY-two years, to come again to the modest project which was my first effort to become a historian. I am grateful to Ernest A. Seemann, director of the University of Alabama Press, for proposing to bring out a new and improved edition, and to my wife, Ida Robertson Abernethy, for doing, as always, the lion’s share of the editorial work. It has been our object to amend, rather than to change, the presentation of the subject. Since the treatment of the material was intended to be purely factual, no alteration of interpretation was called for, and since we had no intention of writing a new book, no extensive elaboration seemed desirable. We have tried only to make detailed improvements on the original edition, and in this we hope we have succeeded. Awkward sentences have been made smooth; much unnecessary punctuation has been eliminated; many unnecessary words have been deleted. A little repetitious material has been omitted, and in a few instances the original text has been changed to conform with new findings. The original maps and charts have been redrawn and placed with the chapters to which they apply. We hope this small contribution throws some significant light upon a crucial phase of Alabama’s history.

THOMAS PERKINS ABERNETHY

University of Virginia

September, 1965

Introduction

TO THE LIBRARY OF ALABAMA CLASSICS EDITION

David T. Morgan

The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815–1828 was beautifully crafted by Thomas Perkins Abernethy in 1922. Originally written as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University, under the direction of Frederick Jackson Turner, The Formative Period in Alabama was subsequently published by the Alabama State Department of Archives and History as the sixth volume in its Historical and Patriotic Series. The state’s purpose was that of distributing the work to all public and school libraries throughout Alabama, thus making it subject to call by any student in the State. A noble gesture indeed!

In 1965 The University of Alabama Press published a new edition of Abernethy’s study, making improvements over the original format. Instead of a paperback pamphlet The Formative Period in Alabama became an attractive hardcover book. The illustrations, which had all been placed together as appendixes in the earlier edition, were placed appropriately throughout the text. The result was a more handsome, more durable, and more easily read book.

Not the book’s appearance, however, but its contents make Abernethy’s work a classic. The book is based on impressive research. The author used numerous manuscript collections, all available public records, and a long list of other contemporary sources, including the newspapers of the time. He also drew upon most secondary sources that had been published up to 1922. His exhaustive research and his appealing literary style enabled Abernethy to produce a masterpiece that provides especially insightful coverage of Alabama’s economic and political development during the thirteen-year period, 1815–1828. Other aspects of Alabama’s growth and development during those years are also covered, most of them adequately. Although many years have passed since the initial publication of this book, the story it tells cannot be found in any other single work to this day. In fewer than 150 pages The Formative Period in Alabama shows how Alabama evolved as a state from the Mississippi Territory, discusses the economic and political development of the state during the years just before and just after statehood, and even gives some attention to society and culture in early Alabama.

When Abernethy’s story begins, Alabama existed only as the eastern part of the Mississippi Territory. The presence there of Indians who meant to hold on to the land made it a relatively unattractive place for settlement in the eyes of the white men who lived in surrounding states. To be sure, some whites were willing to migrate and take the risk of settling an area occupied by hostile red men, but white settlement long remained sparse. General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee changed all that by defeating the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814 and then forcing them to cede their lands west of the Coosa River. Again in 1816, when serving as the federal government’s commissioner to negotiate with the Indians, Jackson secured from the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes title to other parts of the territory that would soon become the state of Alabama. Thus did Alabama fall under the control of the white man, except for a few small sections that the Indians continued to hold. Since there was no longer cause to fear the Indians and because there was plenty of fertile land in the Mississippi Territory, migration, which had been a trickle before the War of 1812, suddenly became a steady stream. The majority of those who migrated were, of course, interested primarily in farming, and agriculture became the backbone of Alabama’s economy.

From an agricultural point of view Alabama divided into three main regions—the Tennessee Valley in the north, the Alabama-Tombigbee basin in the south, and the central hilly region separating the two. In describing the state’s physical features Abernethy takes careful note of different kinds of soil, trees, and vegetation, pointing out that the sticky, calcareous clay of the prairies, or Black Belt, and the sandy loam of the Chunnennuggee Ridge just south of the Black Belt are above the average in fertility, and that they became choice cotton producing areas after 1830. Until that time planters were primarily interested in securing river bottom land upon which to raise their cotton. Much of Alabama was well-suited for producing short staple cotton, and a thriving market for that commodity was all that was needed to attract settlers. Hence, when English millowners began to offer good prices for American cotton, following the War of 1812, the relatively vacant lands of the Mississippi Territory beckoned to enterprising farmers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia to come and make their fortunes.

With the Indian title to the lands in the eastern part of the territory cleared by the military and diplomatic efforts of Andrew Jackson, and with piedmont planters in Georgia and South Carolina concluding that their soil was less fertile than land which could now be acquired in Alabama, population flowed rapidly from the older states into the new territory. Those who migrated with their slaves came primarily from the piedmont; few planters came from the old tidewater areas. For the most part, small farmers on the make, not established planters with wealth, led the way. They started to pour in during 1815. So great did the influx become in 1816 and 1817 that corn, much in demand from the Indians and earlier white settlers, climbed to four dollars per bushel along the main road from Huntsville to Tuscaloosa. Several routes were available to those who came. Settlers coming out of the Georgia piedmont could follow either the Federal Road from Athens into the Alabama-Tombigbee basin, or the northerly route through present-day Chattanooga and Nashville and thence southward into the Tennessee Valley region of Madison County. Similar routes were available to new settlers coming from South Carolina. Besides Georgians and South Carolinians, North Carolinians, Tennesseans, and Virginians came. The Carolinians—North and South—as well as the Virginians, tended to favor the central and southern parts of the new territory, while most of the Tennesseans stopped just south of their state’s border to claim some of the rich bottom lands in the Tennessee River Valley. Who came, whence they came, and where they ultimately settled are adequately sketched by Abernethy.

The question of dividing the Mississippi Territory into several parts had arisen as early as 1803, but for years the Mississippi territorial delegate to Congress worked to have the entire territory admitted as one state. Over the years the question of statehood became entangled in the complex web of land claims arising from the infamous Yazoo Land Scandal, plus conflicting British and Spanish land grants left over from an earlier period. In spite of conflicts promised by previous claims and grants, a bill providing for the admission of the Mississippi Territory as a single state passed the United States House of Representatives in 1812. In the Senate, however, a committee recommended dividing the territory along the Tombigbee River. At this point the movement for statehood was interrupted by the War of 1812. When the matter was brought up again, following the war, a variety of viewpoints regarding division and statehood emerged and provoked considerable controversy. An important point that would not go away was that southerners, ever concerned about sectional politics, desired the admission to the Union of as many slave states as possible. Consequently, the western part of the Mississippi Territory became the state of Mississippi in 1817, and the eastern part became the Alabama Territory. William Wyatt Bibb, once an influential political figure who had fallen from favor in Georgia, became governor of the Alabama Territory. His appointment apparently was secured through the influence of United States Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford, long a dominant man in Georgia and national politics. Bibb and the Alabama territorial legislature set up a government at St. Stephens on the Tombigbee, as immigrants continued moving into the territory in substantial numbers. Even a group of French settlers, supporters of the fallen Emperor Napoleon, moved in and attempted unsuccessfully to establish a settlement around the site which would later become the town of Demopolis. Abernethy clearly and succinctly analyzes the struggle over territorial division and the political motives that complicated it.

Rapid population growth in 1817 and 1818 promoted a quick transition from territory to statehood in Alabama. Men like Governor Bibb and John W. Walker, a popular political figure in the Tennessee Valley around Huntsville, maneuvered to make Alabama a state and secure important political offices for themselves and their friends. As they did so, the north-south sectionalism, which would long plague Alabama state politics, emerged over the question of where the capital would be located. Taking personal charge of this matter, Bibb, who lived in the southern part of the state, decided that the capital would be established where the Cahawba and Alabama rivers flowed together. Although the site was not convenient for elected officials from northern Alabama, representatives from the northern counties acquiesced when it was agreed that Huntsville would serve as the capital until the town of Cahawba could be built. Thus a convention met at Huntsville on July 5, 1819, and drafted a proposed state constitution which can best be called liberal, but not democratic. The document was not submitted to the people for approval, and by its provisions state legislators, once elected, could wield enormous power. When Alabama, with this document as its constitution, was admitted to statehood, there ensued a struggle for seats in the United States Senate and on the federal bench. A Georgian, William H. Crawford, was centrally involved in the struggle on behalf of his numerous Alabama cronies. The Georgia faction in Alabama, loyal to Crawford, came to be resented bitterly, and this created a political situation which cast a long shadow down the early history of Alabama. Another outside political figure who loomed large in Alabama’s early history was General Andrew Jackson, who appeared in Huntsville during 1819 to race some of his horses. A few Alabama politicians dared criticize The General for his aggressive actions against Spain in the Seminole War. James G. Birney, who later gained fame as an anti-slavery advocate, did so, thus committing political suicide in Alabama, but he was not alone in opposing Jackson. In private correspondence Governor Bibb went so far as to state that The General should have been arrested for disregarding the American Constitution. John W. Walker chose the more prudent course of keeping his opinions about Jackson to himself. Regrettably, Abernethy’s treatment of Alabama’s successful quest for statehood is somewhat sketchy. He offers no discussion of how the Alabama Constitution was received in Congress, and his analysis of that document is adequate at best. Not until the 1950s would another historian close this gap in Abernethy’s pioneer work.

Alabama moved from territory to statehood quickly because of its rapid growth, and that occurred because British millowners were willing to pay high prices for cotton. Interest in Alabama cotton lands had reached fever pitch a year before statehood, when cotton climbed to the unprecedented price of thirty-four cents a pound. As the value of virgin western lands reached new heights, speculation began to run rampant. The binge in land speculation was given tremendous impetus by bank notes