USA > Alabama > The formative period in Alabama, 1815-1828 > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14
Gc 976.1 A&51p no.6 1737674
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02342 409 3
PUBLICATION OF THE ALABAMA STATE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY A HISTORICAL AND PATRIOTIC SERIES NO. 6
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
1815-1828
BY THOMAS PERKINS ABERNETHY, Ph. D. Professor of History, University of Chattanooga
040
MONTGOMERY. ALA. THE BROWN PRINTING COMPANY
1922
1737674
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-
Chapter Page
Letter of Transmittal 5
Preface
7-8.
.
I. The Mississippi Territory
9-19
II. The New Country
20-23
III. The Immigrants
24-32
IV. The Division of the Territory 33-40 .
V. Alabama Becomes a State
41-49
·
VI. The Public Lands.
50-56
VII. Agriculture
.....
57-72
VIII. Rivers and Roads
73-85
IX. The Commercial Situation.
86-92
X. The Bank Question
93-101
XI. Politics and the Election of 1824
102-109
XII. Politics and Federal Relations, 1824-1828
110-121
XIII. Religion, Education. and the Press 122-130
XIV. Social Conditions and Slavery.
131-138
XV. Conclusion
139-146
,
Bibliography
147-159
Maps and Illustrations. 161-192
-
..
r .:
:/
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Note: Maps, charts, and illustrations, grouped together at the back of this book, are listed below under the chapters which have reference to them.
Plate Page
Chapter I.
1. Indian Cessions in Mississippi Territory 161
Chapter II.
2. Geological Map of Alabama
162
Chapter III.
3. Road Map, 1818
163
4. Origin of Population 164
Chapter V.
5. Vote for Governor, 1819 165
6. Vote to Disapprove Censuring of Jackson, 1819 166
7. Melish Map of Alabama, 1820 167
8. Vote to Reduce Judicial Tenure 168
9. Vote Concerning Establishment of Branch Banks 169
Chapter
VI.
10. Indian Cessions in Alabama
170
11. Value of Lands Sold in Alabama 171
Chapter
VII.
12. Average Yearly Price of Middling Upland Cotton 172
13. Average Valuation of Slaves in Mobile 173
14. Cotton Crop of South Alabama
174
15. Slave Population,
1818
16. Slave Population,
1824
176
17. Slave Population, 1830 177
Chapter VIII.
18. River Map ...... 178
Chapter IX.
19. Imports and Exports at Mobile
179
Chapter XI.
20. Presidential Election of 1824 180
21. Senate Vote on Motion Proposing Jackson for Presidency 181
22. House Vote on Motion Proposing Jackson for Presidency 182
23. Election of U. S. Senator, 1822, (King and Crawford) 183
24. Election of U. S. Senator, 1822, (Kelly and Mckinley) 184
25. Election of U. S.Senator, 1824. 185
Chapter XIT
26. Vote on Bill to Extend Jurisdiction of State Over Creeks 186
27. House Vote in Election of U. S. Senator, 1826 187
28. State House, Tuscaloosa 188
29. Vote on Bill Fixing State Canital at Tuscaloosa
189
30. Vote on Lewis Report Proposing Jackson for Presidency
190
Chapter XIII.
31. University of the State of Alabama
191
Chapter XIV.
32. Vote on Bill to Prohibit Import of Slaves to State
192
175
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
http://www.archive.org/details/formativeperiodi06aber
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.
To His Excellency,
Governor Thomas E. Kilby, Montgomery, Ala.
SIR :
I have the honor to transmit, herewith, recommending that it be published as bulletin No. 6 of the Historical and Patriot- ic Series of the State Department of Archives and History, a manuscript entitled "The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815- 1828." The author, Dr. Thomas Perkins Abernethy, is a na- tive Alabamian, at present, Professor of History at the Uni- versity of Chattanooga. It was upon this thesis that he re- ceived his Ph. D. degree from Harvard University.
In his preface, Dr. Abernethy has set forth the sources from which he derived the information presented in his thesis. It will be seen that exhaustive research has been made.
Copies of this bulletin will be placed, with the compliments of this Department, in all public libraries in Alabama and in the college and high school libraries of the State. As long as the issue lasts, it will be subject to call by any student in the State with the hope that a perusal of these pages will inspire in the heart of the reader a love and veneration for our past and a renewed dedication of loyal service to our future.
Very respectfully, MARIE BANKHEAD OWEN, Director.
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 pop- ulation and underwent the formative period of her develop- ment 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 ob- taining 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 which followed the War of 1812, that the present work was undertaken.
A substantial body of material, principally in the Library of Congress, the Public Library of New York City, the Ala- bama 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 col- lected. This is especially the case in connection with the sub- jects of agriculture and slave-management, but, as the dis- covery of local peculiarities was the principal object of the study, it has seemed best not to fill in these blanks from gen- eral 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 polit- ical uncertainty, there are few established lines of policy to guide the student on his way. But, on the other hand, there
8
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
is added interest in discovering from among the various prob- lems which confront the community, the ones which develop sufficient significance to shape the course of events and to be- come 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 align- ments. But, even so, many points upon which we would like to have information are left in comparative and tantalizing ob- scurity. The principal cause for this, as it appears to the writ- er, 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 poli- ticians who grew up with Alabama was William R. King, but, though he later came to be Vice-President of the United States, we have few records to reveal his mind during the in- teresting 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 Fac- ulty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, was prepared under the stimulating direction of Professor Frederick Jackson Turner. The materials collect- ed by the late Dr. Thomas M. Owen, of the Alabama State Department of Archives and History, made the research pos- sible. Each of these men has been of inestimable aid and en- couragement in my work.
I am indebted also to Dr. Dunbar Rowland, of the Missis- sippi 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 U. S. Department of Agriculture, office of Farm Management, kindly read the chapter dealing with agri- culture; and Dr. Roland M. Harper, of the Alabama Geologi- cal Survey, gave me valuable aid in connection with geograph- ical questions, but of course the writer is responsible for the treatment of these subjects given herein.
THOS. P. ABERNETHY.
CHAPTER I.
THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY
When England received West Florida from Spain at the close of the Seven Years' War, its northern boundary was the thirty-first parallel; but England later, for administrative purposes, changed the line so that it ran from the Chatta- hoochee due westward along the parallel of thirty-two de- grees, twenty-eight minutes to the point where the Yazoo flows into the Mississippi. When Spain recovered the Flori- das at the close of the American Revolution, she insisted on the northern boundary as fixed by England, but the United States protested, and finally won the point when the treaty of 1795 fixed the thirty-first parallel as the international boundary.
The disputed territory which extended from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee was finally evacuated by Spain in 1797, and the next year, the United States, with the acquiescence of Georgia, which also laid claim to the land, established a terri- torial form of government for the district.1 This was the original Mississippi Territory. In 1800 an elective assembly was authorized," and in 1802 Georgia relinquished her claim.3 After two more years, the boundary was extended northward to the Tennessee line,+ and thus the Territory came to include all that land which is embraced by the present states of Ala- bama and Mississippi, except such as lies below the thirty-first degree of latitude.
Within this extensive area there were but two white settle- ments : one upon the lower Mississippi, and the other upon the lower Tombigbee River. Those who lived upon the Tom- bigbee had filtered through the Indian country from the time of the Revolution onward; some were Tory refugees, some were patriots who had left their old homes to seek new ones, and some were traders with the Indians. The blood of these men was various: English and Scottish traders mingled with
1 Statutes at Large, II, 229-235.
2 Ibid., II, 455-456.
3 American State Papers. Lands, V, 384-385.
4 Statutes at Large, II, 445-446.
-
·
10
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
Yankee frontiersmen, and many of them had taken native wives. The half-breeds were often men of wealth, and no dis- tinction of race seems to have been made in the rugged life of the frontier.»
St. Stephens, a struggling village of log cabins, was the principal settlement in the Tombigbee region, and here the Government established a post for trading with the Choctaw Indians, and, as soon as Georgia gave up her claim to the soil, a land office. The act arranging for the disposal of the pub- lic domain was passed in 1803." It provided for the valid- ation of claims under the British and Spanish grants ; quieted claims under the act of Georgia establishing Bourbon County in 1785;7 granted tracts of 640 acres to actual settlers at the time of the Spanish evacuation in 1797; and gave preemption rights to settlers occupying land at the time the act was pass- ed. Settling on public lands was forbidden, but squatters continued to come in and an act of 1807 extended preemption rights to those who had already come in, but once more pro- hibited entries upon government lands for the future. Lands not otherwise appropriated were to be surveyed and put on sale at public auction according to the provisions which had already been adopted for the Northwest Territory. Accord- ingly in 1807 the first sales took place at St. Stephens."
In 1806 the Government acquired from the Indians a small triangle of land lying between the Tennessee border and the great bend in the Tennessee River. In 1809 this tract, the original Madison County, was offered for sale and readily taken up by cotton planters from Georgia. Here Huntsville was built about a great spring, and soon came to be the com- mercial center of the new region."
Cotton was raised in the Alabama-Tombigbee region as early as 1772;10 the manufacture of cotton cloth was begun by the Cherokees in 1796-97;11 and Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, who was for many years agent for the Creeks, states in his Sketch of the Creek Country for 1798 and 1799 that a Scottish trader, who had made his home among the Indians and had taken a native woman for his wife, first raised a quantity of
5 Pickett, History of Alabama, Chap. XXXI.
6 Statutes at Large, II, 229-235.
F.C. Burnett in American Historical Review, XV, 66-111, 297-353.
8 American State Papers, Misc., II, 417.
9 Betts, History of Huntsville, 23-24.
10 Pickett, History of Alabama, 326.
11 Morse, Report an Indian Affairs, 167.
11
THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY
green seed cotton for the market, but, finding it more profit- able to manufacture his own staple, employed eleven hands, besides his own family, in the industry.12 In 1802 the first cotton gins were introduced into the Alabama country, two of the three of them being set up among the Indians.13 By 1808 , the staple had come to be the leading agricultural product of the region.1+
From the very first its culture among the whites seems to have been associated with negro labor, for in 1810 slaves made up nearly forty per cent. of the population upon the low- er Tombigbee; and ten years later, after the cotton regime was well begun, the proportion of slaves in this early-settled region remained abnormally high. The men who entered Madison County in 1809 were largely Georgia planters of con- siderable means. They came especially for the purpose of rais- ing cotton, and their slaves were numerous. Their entrance into Mississippi Territory at this time indicates that the cot- ton regime might have begun earlier than it did had not the War of 1812 intervened to delay it.
But the culture of cotton was still in its infancy in 1812. Scrawny hogs, whose ancestors are supposed to have been left by DeSoto, and whose descendants are said to be the modern razor-back, roamed the woods; and in the cane-break region near the Gulf, large herds of cattle, sometimes numbering many hundreds, found their own forage summer and winter alike.
. Aside from the fur trade with the natives and the growing cotton industry, there seems to have been little commerce car - ried on during these years in the Alabama country, and the reason is not far to seek. Mobile, the only accessible outlet, was in the hands of the Spanish, and the duties which they charged were almost prohibitive. In order to avoid the pay- ment of them, Gaines, the agent at St. Stephens for the Choc- taws, brought his supplies down the Tennessee River to Col- bert's Ferry, above Muscle Shoals, carried them over a port- age, which came to be known as Gaines' Trace, to the head of navigation on the Tombigbee at Cotton Gin Port; and thence floated them down to St. Stephens.15 This was the route by which a number of the early Tombigbee settlers reached their
12 Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, 44, 55.
13 Pickett, History of Alabama, 469-470.
14 Jack, "Sectionalism and Party Politics in Alabama, T.
15 Pickett, History of Alabama, 506.
1
12
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
destination,16 and it long remained an important route of trav- el for the pioneer.
Until 1806, rivers and Indian trails were the only means of communication in the Alabama region, but in that year Con- gress provided for the construction of the first two roads.17 One was to connect Nashville, Tennessee, with Natchez upon the Mississippi, crossing the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. It was known as the "Natchez Trace" and came to be a highway of no little importance in the western country. The other was to follow the route from Athens, Georgia, to New Orleans, passing through the settlement on the Tom- bigbee. It came to be known as the "Federal Road" and along it thousands of settlers later found their way to Ala- bama.
Such were the slender bands of communication which tied the frontier settlements of eastern Mississippi Territory to the world from which they were separated by hundreds of miles of Indian wilderness. Between the Tombigbee clear- ings and the settled part of Georgia lay the confederacy of the Creeks extending its boundaries northward well toward the Tennessee line. Adjoining the Creeks on the north lay the territory of the Cherokees, extending eastward into Geor- gia and northward into Tennessee. Between the Tombigbee and the settlements upon the lower Mississippi lay the lands of the Choctaws, and northward of them the country of the Chickasaws took in the northwestern corner of the future Alabama and extended across western Tennessee.
These Indian tribes of the South were further advanced toward civilization than were most of their North American kinsmen, and, though the westward migration of the whites was still in its infancy, they saw clearly the problem which confronted them. They had two alternatives compatible with peace,-to perfect themselves in the arts of civilization, so as to compete with the new-comers, or to be driven off the land which had been theirs from generation to generation. There was but one other possibility,-to fight.
Already game had become too scarce to be relied upon as the only source of food supply, 1s and all the Southern Indians engaged in a crude method of agriculture. They dwelt in villages with fields adjacent, and maize, beans, and melons
16 Ibid., 466-469.
17 Statutes at Large, II, 397.
18 Indian Office files, P. J. Meigs to Geo. Graham, May 6, 1817.
13
THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY
were the principal crops which they cultivated. Their meth- ods of culture were primitive and they rarely produced more than sufficed for their own needs.13
The more the natives resorted to agriculture, the less ground they needed for the purpose of hunting. This consideration may partly account for the interest which the Government of the United States took in the civilization of the Red Man, but such interest was good policy on general principles, for a civ- ilized Indian afforded a Jess pressing problem than did one in his native simplicity,
During Washington's administration the system of appoint- ing an agent to each of the different tribes was adopted. The agent acted as intermediary between the Government and the Indians; attempted to protect them from corruption by super- vising their relations with the whites; and tried to promote their civilization by instructing them in agriculture and crafts- manship. The Indians were not allowed to buy whisky from the whites and the whites were not allowed to live among them except by permission from the agents. Such permits were granted to blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, and other craftsmen who were needed, but natives were instructed in the crafts and sometimes were able to supply a large part of the demand for skilled workmen.20
The Indians were encouraged by the agents to keep domes- ticated animals and a few of them came to own large herds. They were also instructed in the use of the plow and furn- ished with seed for planting. The culture of cotton was in- troduced among them, and they were taught the use of the spinning wheel and the loom. Indeed, some of the native craftsmen learned to make the wheels and looms and turned them out in large numbers.
Of all the Indians, the Cherokees most readily took to the ways of civilization. Realizing the uselessness of resistance, they wished to adjust themselves to the inevitable, and through education and industry to fit themselves for citizenship. They took up agriculture so seriously that some of them quit their villages for the purpose of living upon their farms. They kept large numbers of domesticated animals, and learned to spin and weave. They built roads and erected saw mills and
19 Good accounts are given in Hawkins. Sketch of the Creek Country; and Morse, Report an Indian Affairs, 167 et seq.
20 Indian Office files. R J. Meigs to Sect'y of War, Nov. 4, 1816; Silas Dinsmore to Jno. McKee. Oct. 28, 1815.
14
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
ccc
1
-----
1
CHIEF OF THE CREEK NATION AND A GEORGIA SQUATTER From Camera Lucida by Capt. Basil Hall, R. N., 1828.
15
THE MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY
cotton gins. Sequoya, a native Cherokee, invented an alpha- bet for the use of his people and they set about diligently to learn to read and write. They even drew up a constitution and instituted a representative government.21 A census of 1825 shows them, with a population of fifteen thousand, to have possessed thirteen hundred slaves, twenty-two thousand cattle, over seven hundred looms, more than two thousand spinning wheels, nearly three thousand plows, ten saw mills, thirty-one grist mills, eight cotton gins, eighteen ferries, and eighteen schools.22
The Chickasaws and Choctaws, though somewhat less ad- vanced than the Cherokees, followed their policy of absorbing what civilization they could, and of remaining friendly with the whites. The Creeks, on the contrary, were warlike and not inclined to adapt themselves to the new situation. The strength of their confederacy and the fact that their lands . bordered upon Spanish Florida may help to explain their rel- atively independent attitude.
Just before the War of 1812 broke out, and Tecumseh un- dertook to unite all the western Indians against the United States, he visited the Creeks at one of their great councils, and the younger warriors were incited to hostility against the whites. Though the older chiefs remained peaceful, the war or red stick party was powerful and presently took matters in- to its own hands.23
Florida was still legally in the possession of Spain, but the Napoleonic wars had so shaken the position of the ancient kingdom that her government had fallen prey to French and British armies. The future possession and control of the province became doubtful and Madison, fearful for our south- ern frontier, issued a proclamation in 1810 calling for the oc- cupation of West Florida. It was at that time, however, tak- en over only as far as Pearl River. Three years later Mobile was occupied, but Pensacola remained in Spanish hands. Thither a band of the hostile Creeks repaired in 1813 for the purpose of securing munitions of war. The settlers upon the Tombigbee, learning of the expedition, mustered their mili- tary strength and marched to meet the Indians as they return- ed. In the battle of Burnt Corn which followed, the whites
21 Nineteenth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Part I, 104-113.
22 Southern Advocate, April 21, 1826.
"McMaster, History of the United States, III, 535-6.
i
1
16
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD IN ALABAMA
drove the Indians from the field, but while the victors collect- ed the booty, the Indians rallied, set upon them, and routed their little band.24
The isolated Tombigbee settlers recognized this skirmish as the prelude to a bloody Indian war. Seeing no prospect of adequate military assistance, they hurriedly gathered at con- venient houses, surrounded them with stockades, and anxious- ly awaited the movements of the savage warriors. Several hundred men and women were gathered at the home of a half- breed named Mims. A stockade was constructed and the place came to be known as Fort Mims, but of military dis- cipline there was little or none. Warned of the presence of In- dians, they took no heed, and when the savages attacked, were utterly unprepared. The defense was desperate but hopeless ; and when the day was over, there remained but the smolder- ing ruins and the bodies of the dead. Of all that had been gathered in the fort, only a handful escaped.
Appeals for aid were quickly sent to Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee; and Andrew Jackson, Major-General of the Tennessee militia, collected a force for an expedition. March- ing through Huntsville, and crossing the Tennessee River where he established Fort Deposit, he entered the country of the Creeks and established Fort Strother upon the upper waters of the Coosa. Often forced to the last extremity by the difficulty of getting supplies and by the restiveness of mi- litia enlisted for short terms of service, Jackson nevertheless cut a road through the wilderness, fought several minor en- gagements with the savages, and finally reached their prin- cipal stronghold at Horseshoe Bend, in the Tallapoosa River. Here the Indians had erected a breastwork across the neck of the peninsula formed by the bend of the river. Jackson at- tacked this work in front while his lieutenant, General Coffee, approached the bend from the other side of the stream. Here the Indians had collected a large number of canoes in which to make their escape if it should become necessary ; but taking these, Coffee crossed the river and attacked the defenders from the rear. Thus trapped, the stubborn resistance of the natives was ineffectual. Some escaped across the river, others were drowned while attempting to get away; and several hundred were left dead upon the field.25
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.