Alabama

“ Thought having once inundated the passion-played Southern public mind, an awakening is begun, and, aroused to an appreciation of affairs as they exist, the rank and file of the people of Alabama are in an astounding state of agitation. ”

“ It is important to the State that you of the majority should be right, and that I should be wrong. However much personal gratification I might feel hereafter in finding that I was right on this great question and that you were wrong, that gratification would, indeed, be to me a poor consolation in the midst of a ruined and desolated country. Therefore, as the passage of the ordinance of secession is the act by which the destiny of Alabama is to be controlled, I trust that you are right and that I am wrong. ”

“ There was a pathetic touch in the life of a man who would labor on his little farm, cleared by his own hands, in the wilds of south Alabama, and who, at night, when the labor of the day was over, would sprawl himself in his little yard before his blazing pine-knot fire, and study his plain English Bible—the only book in his library. ”

“ And all this while every mile of latitude of the last importance, as the Alabama groped her way slowly to the southward and eastward in search of the little island at which she was to take in her supplies, and which she might at any moment run past in the darkness altogether! Trying work, indeed, for the patience of men cooped up in their narrow floating prison, and longing to be at work again. ”

“ The stations filled by him with ability so signal, and extending through so many years, attest his usefulness as a valuable citizen of Alabama. As a lawyer of distinction, a soldier as courageous as any son of Alabama, a delegate in molding the fundamental law of the commonwealth, a statesman whose qualities were signally demonstrated in the halls of congress, and in the gubernatorial chair, there is due him the worthiest praise. ”

“ In the gage and stress of conflict his thought flowed without the least break in its coherency and without the slightest disconcertedness. His equable temper never forsook him. To each contest he would bring the same tranquil poise and it was maintained throughout. Without hesitation he would face unblinking the severe ordeals to which he was subjected in the stormy legislative days when he moved a giant among the giants of Alabama. To be a legislator in those days meant much, for the people filled the seats of legislation with their choicest spirits. ”

“ Those old heroes, often trudging weary and footsore over mountain paths or threading their way along the Indian trails winding through the forests, visiting the primitive settlements of Alabama, and dispensing the truths which make men better, are too often neglected in recounting the elements which entered into the formation of a great state. ”

“ Alabama, where our people, encompassed and blockaded by the Federal forces, were most sadly straitened and distressed. It is of the exigencies of that stormy day, as hydra-headed they rose to view, that I have to write; of the many expedients to which we were reduced on our ever-narrowing territory, daily growing not only smaller, but less and less adequate for the sustenance of ourselves, our soldiers, and the Northern prisoners who were cast upon us by the fortunes of war. ”

“ He was Alabama’s first church historian, and rendered a lasting service to the state by his preserved record of the early churches of Alabama.
While statesmen and publicists were laying the foundation stones of a great political commonwealth, the pioneer missionary, especially of the Baptist and Methodist denominations, was abroad with his wholesome influence, checking vice, inculcating virtue, and seeking to bring the lives of men into practical conformity to those principles which make alike for the present, and the life which is to come. ”

“ It may be said that the original stock of Alabama settlers was generally of the best type of Anglo-Saxon manhood and womanhood. Inherently, they had no superiors on the continent. They are not to be thought of as adventurers, restlessly migrating to a new region with a dissatisfaction which sought relief in the mere act of moving, for adventurers would never have undergone that which was experienced by these fathers, in pitching their homes in a wilderness infested by savages and wild beasts. ”

“ So comprehensive was the work, so minute in detail, and so careful were the citations that on its appearance it was greeted with great favor not alone in Alabama, but elsewhere. Had the conditions of authorship been as favorable as they now are, the work would doubtless have been more happily arranged, but as it is, it is a monument of labor, skill, industry and fidelity. It was an unusual occurrence that the history should have been favorably mentioned in a message to the legislature by Governor Collier and with such favor. ”

“ North Alabama was not so strongly opposed [Pg 114] to secession as was east Tennessee, [245] nor were the Alabama “unionists” or “loyalists,” as they called themselves, “tories” as other people called them, of as good character as the “loyalists” of Tennessee.
The Alabama tory was, as a rule, of the lowest class of the population, chiefly the “mountain whites” and the “sand-mountain” people, who were shut off from the world, a century behind the times, and who knew scarcely anything of the Union or of the questions at issue. ”

“ Back of their migration from Virginia and the Carolinas, from which most of the original settlers of Alabama came, lay a fact which largely influenced their removal. The new republic was still in course of construction. The revolution had left a chaotic condition in the older colonies, and men of sturdiness conceived the idea of going far westward, where they could create new conditions, and build for the future. ”

“ No man of more exalted personal character ever entered public life in Alabama than Governor John Gill Shorter. He had all the virtues of a Christian statesman. Gentle, refined, highly cultured, modest, he was yet a firm and faithful official. His presence produced an atmosphere of purity and awoke the profoundest respect.
A graduate from the University of Georgia in the class of ’37, for Georgia was his native state, he removed with his father, General Reuben C. Shorter, to Eufaula, then called Irwinton, and after a course of study entered on the practice of the law. ”

“ Over the greater part of Alabama there were no class distinctions before 1860; the state was too young. In the wilderness classes had fused and the successful men were often those never heard of in the [Pg 7] older states. A candidate of “the plain people” was always elected, because all were frontier people. This does not mean that in Huntsville, Montgomery, Greensboro, and Mobile there were not the beginnings of an aristocracy based on education, wealth, and family descent. But these were very small spots on the map of Alabama, and there were no heartburnings over social inequalities. ”

“ Indeed, it is my impression that no petitions or letters have ever been addressed by any lady in the State of Alabama to either house of congress upon this question. It may be that that peculiar type of civilization which drives women from their homes to the ballot-box to seek redress and protection against their husbands has never yet reached the State of Alabama, and I shall not be disagreeably disappointed if it should never come upon our people, for they have lived in harmony and in prosperity now for many years. ”

“ Alabama was the only State that you could absolutely depend on. It seems that years ago Alabama sent a Delegation to some Convention instructed for a Candidate and that when they got there they sold out and voted for another. So they have passed a Law that any time they send a troup [Pg 289] away again that they were going to vote for the man they told them to until the Candidate’s body had been duly pronounced dead by the Home Coroner. Well, that knocked any chance of profit out of this trip as far as Alabama was concerned. ”

“ Lands were of fabulous fertility; population was pouring southward; the advocacy of slavery had been hushed by the prospective productiveness of southern lands, and Alabama was destined to become the center of an expansive region for the production of cotton. ”

“ The distinction achieved by these eminent citizens in various orbits are worthy of perpetual record, and their respective deeds and accomplishments deserve more than a bare reference in the current chronicles of the state. Along the successive eras through which Alabama has passed, first as a territory, then as a state, for a period exceeding a hundred years, each of these worthies made a contribution to the construction of a mighty commonwealth, and sheer justice requires that the specific task so worthily wrought by each should be a matter of permanent record. ”

“ Mobile, the only seaport of the state, has a channel 30 ft. deep, on which the national government spends large sums of money; yet an increasing amount of Alabama cotton is sent to New Orleans for shipment, and Pensacola, Florida, receives much of the lumber.
Population.—In 1880 the inhabitants of Alabama numbered 1,262,505; in 1890, 1,513,017, an increase of 17%; in 1900, 1,828,697, a further increase of 20%. This population is notable for its large proportion of negroes (45·23%) , its insignificant foreign element (·08%) , and the small percentage of urban inhabitants (10%) . ”

“ The climate is very healthy, and has been found highly beneficial to invalids. The vegetable productions of the State are of similar character to those of Georgia, but their amount is not large.
In the Indian tongue, Alabama signifies "Here we rest." The traveler who rests in the State of that name, finds an excellent agricultural region. He finds that cotton is king with the Alabamians, and that the State has fifteen hundred miles of navigable rivers and a good railway system. He finds that Alabama suffered less by the visits of our armies than either Georgia or South Carolina. ”

“ Prior to the coming of the white man, and for generations, the region on the east side of the Alabama river embracing the capital city, was inhabited by an Indian tribe, known as the Alabamas or Alibamons. ”

“ The rich alluvial lands of Alabama, recently belonging to the Indian reserves, and now on sale by government or through land-speculators, are attracting thousands of families from the washed-out and impoverished soil of the older Southern States; and, during this and the preceding season, the numbers moving along this and the other great lines towards the South-west are incredible, when viewed in reference to the amount of population given to the countries whence the emigrants are chiefly derived. ”

“ His birthplace was Huntsville, where he was born in 1817. In his boyhood years he would learn much of the struggles through which the people of the state were passing in a transition from pioneer conditions to those of real life, and thus manhood unfolded contemporaneously with the development of his native state. His first knowledge of Alabama was derived at a time when conditions were rude and crude and during his career of more than three-score years he saw it expand through successive periods, his sentiments keeping pace with its development. ”

“ The Alabama flows through the richest cotton country in the world. It winds about as if it had taken a contract to water as much of the state as possible, and give a good steamboat landing to every plantation. Our general course, from Mobile to Montgomery, was north-east, but we were often steaming for hours south-west, and in every other direction. The distance, as the crow flies, is a hundred and sixty miles: by the river it is little less than four hundred. ”

“ To present the merited claims of a typical southern planter of the olden days is the purpose of this sketch. Than these princely planters of the old South in the golden age of cotton, no more honorable, cultured, dignified, or hospitable class ever existed. None is more worthy to represent the great planting class of the South, and especially of Alabama, than Joel Early Matthews, who died at Selma, May 11, 1874. ”

“ The city of Mobile was the most important in Alabama, and had been at the beginning of the conflict put in a state of defense. Three strong lines of works surrounded the city, and so well planned were the fortifications that it was one of the best fortified cities of the South, and was the last to fall into the hands of the enemy. ”

“ Mobile Temper and Trade—Inducements of Alabama to Emigrants. Between Meridian and Mobile, the railroad passes only very small tracts of land that appear at all inviting to Northern eyes. Much of the country is grown up in pine. Possibly lumbermen might find it a good location, but planters are likely to keep away from it.
All in all, however, Alabama offers better inducements to the Northern emigrant than almost any of the other Southern States. The feeling against Northerners is not so bitter as through most of the South. ”

“ Each autumn saw thousands of masters with their families and slaves take up the march over the up-country road through Danville, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, to Georgia and Alabama, or over the mountains to the valley of Virginia, whence they followed the great highland trough southwestward to the Tennessee and Tombigbee Valleys. The population of Alabama alone increased from 300,000 in 1830 to 600,000 ten years later. Unimproved lands in the cotton country sold at prices ranging from $2 to $100 per acre, and plantations spread rapidly over the better parts of the lower South. ”

“ P. A. Hague’s “Blockaded Family” is the best account of life in Alabama during the war. Mrs. Clayton’s “White and Black under the Old Régime” is very good, but brief. “Our Women in the War” is a valuable collection of articles by a number of women. Nearly all the incidents mentioned I have heard related by relatives and friends. “John Holden, Unionist,” by T. C. De Leon, gives a good account of life in the hill country. Mary A. H. Gay’s “Life in Dixie during the War” and Miller’s “History of Alabama” give information based on personal experiences. ”