History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume II, Part 82

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 724

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On January 23 another ordinance was adopted for the purpose of annulling the old organization of the State militia in order to clear the ground for a new establishment which should be wholly separate from, and subordinate to, the regular and volunteer service provided for by previous ordinances. The result of the two ordinances was the cre- ation of two quartermaster generals; one ap- pointed by the governor for service with the volunteer forces in the event of war with the United States; the other elected by the legis-

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lature and a continuation of that office in the militia, whose services were limited to du- ties connected with the defense of the State alone. It is with the latter only that this sketch is concerned, for the former almost im- mediately became a part of the military or- ganization of the Confederacy.

During the decade following the close of the War the State military organization re- mained inactive or dormant until 1877. In that year a law "for the more efficient organ- ization of the volunteer militia of Alabama" was passed, which reorganized the military arm of the State government in many re- spects, but made no change in the status or duties of the quartermaster general. In 1881 a law was enacted to reorganize and discipline the volunteer forces of the State. It repealed the act of 1877 and created the office of quar- termaster general with the same duties as formerly and with the rank of colonel of Cavalry. Later acts specified that his duties should be, as nearly as circumstances would permit, the same as those performed by the like officer in the United States Army. In 1911 it was made a necessary qualification for the office that the incumbent should have served, prior to his appointment, at least two years in the Alabama National Guard, or in the Spansh-American War, or in the United States Army, and his rank was raised to that of brigadier general. In 1915 the office was discontinued, the duties being added to those of the adjutant general.

No publications.

REFERENCES .- Aikin, Digest, 2d ed., 1836, p. 315; Aikin, Digest Supplement, 1841, pp. 159- 160; Code. 1907, secs. 930, 935; General Acts, 1915, pp. 745-766.

QUILBY. A later Choctaw town in Sum- ter County, situated on both sides of Quilby Creek, some 400 yards above its mouth. The town was doubtless founded in early Ameri- can times, an evidence of Choctaw expansion from the ancient habitat to the northeast. The ancient name of Quilby Creek was Oski atapa, "cane there cut," doubtless referring to the cutting of canes for blow-guns. Koi albi, pronounced Quilby by Americans, means "Panther killed there," and the creek and its town may have received this name in commemoration of some panther killing ex- ploit. Few facts concerning the town are preserved.

REFERENCE .- Manuscript data in the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

QUINCES. See Fruits.

RABELL MANUFACTURING CO., Selma. See Cotton Manufacturing.

RABIES. See Health, State Board of.

RAILROAD COMMISSION. See Public Service Commission, the Alabama.

RAILROADS, EARLY BUILDING. Rail- road building in Alabama began with the act

of the State Legislature, approved January 16, 1830, chartering the Tuscumbia Railway Com- pany (q. v.), a line slightly less than two miles in length, connecting the town of Tuscumbia with the point on the Tennessee River where Sheffield now stands. The first railroad of which there is indisputable record in the United States was built in 1809, but the first road built with the avowed intention from the first of using steam locomotives as mo- tive power was commenced in 1830. Soon thereafter general attention was attracted to the new method of connecting inland and isolated communities with navigable streams or the seaboard, for at the beginning rail- roads were built scarcely for any other pur- pose. Most of the early railroads projected in Alabama prior to the war were intended to connect two or more navigable streams, with the object of forming a direct line of transportation facilities from the northern and the central portions of the state to tide- water at Mobile or Pensacola.

About the time the first steam-operated railroad in the United States was begun, David Hubbard, an Alabamian whose planta- tion was in the fertile Tennessee River Val- ley, heard of a line of railroad which had been built in Pennsylvania as an experiment, and became much interested; so deeply in- terested, in fact, as to undertake the slow and tedious journey from Alabama to Penn- sylvania in order to see with his own eyes what manner of contrivance it was and how it worked. Just why Hubbard should have been so much interested in the problem of mechanical transportation methods does not appear, but his curiosity, or his mechanical turn of mind, and his energy in gratifying the same, was the immediate cause of the introduction of steam railways into Alabama, for it appears to have been upon his initia- tive, based upon the investigation he had made of the Pennsylvania road, that applica- tion was made for the charter of the Tus- cumbia Railway, the pioneer railroad in the state. It was a short road and a steam loco- motive probably never ran upon its rails while it retained its identity under its orig- inal charter, yet that document authorized the construction and operation of a railroad, which, prior to that time, had been unknown in Alabama, and was unlike any other sort of road then in use. Moreover, the road later in its history became a part of a railroad regularly operated by steam. These facts entitle the little Tuscumbia Railway to the honor of having been the first railroad in the state.

Two years later, the second railroad in the state was chartered and built as an extension of this earliest road. It was the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur railroad (q. v.), forty- six miles long, connecting Tuscumbia and Decatur. The latter is situated at the upper end of the Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River and Tuscumbia at the lower end. These shoals were practically an insurmount- able barrier to the transportation of the abundant cotton crops raised in the rich soil of the Tennessee Valley in the vicinity of

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Decatur to the principal cotton market at New Orleans. Only boats of the lightest draft and, consequently, not heavily load- ed, could pass the shoals, particularly in the late autumn, the time when most of the cotton was marketed. These conditions inclined the valley planters to take an inter- est in transportation questions and pre- disposed them to look with kindly eye upon any scheme for surmounting or circumvent- ing these natural obstacles to cheap and speedy transportation their

wares to market. Hence, little time elapsed between the demonstration of the practicability and economy of the method introduced by Hub- bard for getting bags of cotton from the warehouse to the steamboat, and the adapta- tion of that method to getting cotton ship- ments around the shoals. The planters were the principal subscribers to the capital stock of the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur.

These early railroads did not resemble very closely the roads we have now. The "rail" consisted of thin iron straps laid on top of wooden bars, or stringers, which sometimes were set upon small stone blocks, but oftener were fastened with long nails or spikes to light crossties laid upon the ground. Bal- last was unknown, and grading consisted of little more than removing trees and stumps and smoothing the ground for a sufficient width to permit the ties being laid on a level. Because of the character of the country it traversed-the heavily wooded Tennessee Valley-the cost of building the road between Tuscumbia and Decatur, even in so crude a manner, proved almost prohibitive to the planters, and it was necessary for some time to operate the road with horses and mules as motive power for lack of funds with which to purchase a locomotive. But in spite of handicaps and hindrances, the new method of hauling proved a success, and railroads in Alabama had come to stay.

Later Development .- During the decade immediately following the introduction of the railroad into Alabama, a considerable and widespread interest developed among the people in the question of its possibilities as a means of overcoming the handicap placed upon the planters by the exorbitant charges exacted by the steamboat companies for transporting cotton and other produce to mar- ket and bringing supplies to the consumer. From 1830 to 1839, inclusive, there were more than twenty-five charters issued by the legislature to enterprising promoters of rail- road projects in different parts of the state, but only three or four of these undertakings ever came to fruition. Most of them got no farther than paper, having been swamped in the general financial depression which fol- lowed the panic of 1837. Nearly all of them were intended to form links in a chain of railways and waterways which should connect the inland planter with the seaport most convenient and advantageous to his interests. The steamboat men had a monopoly, and it was they and not the railroads which came after them who originated the idea and in- augurated the practice so much complained of

at the present time of "charging all the traffic will bear."

In 1832 certain citizens of Mobile prepared an address to the public on the subject of railroads, published in the "Railroad Advo- cate" of May 12th, in which it was stated that "very recently, when flour was selling at 10 dollars per barrel at Montgomery, the price was but 2 dollars and 50 cents in Ohio," and this remarkable discrepancy in prices was de- clared to be due solely to the unreasonable exactions of the steamboat men. The address proceeded to show that what was needed was "a ready and cheap avenue of commercial in- tercourse between the States of Alabama and Tennessee," and to advance arguments in favor of inaugurating at once a systematic plan of railroad building which would pro- vide competition for the steamboat lines. At that time "competition" and not "regulation" was the economic cure-all.

The sentiment of the people of Alabama, as indicated by the contemporary newspapers, was strongly in favor of the construction of railroads and other internal improvements, meaning canals and wagon-roads, with the aid of the government, of the state, and even of counties and towns. It was believed that such transportation facilities were not only prerequisite but essential to the indus- trial development of the state. The feeling was pretty general that some of the other states were outstripping Alabama in the de- velopment of their natural resources and in the resultant increase of wealth and prestige. Alabama's failure to undertake or to aid such improvements when undertaken by others was alleged as the reason for her people's commercial backwardness, and a strong sentiment existed in favor of a policy of public assistance to the construction of any sort of transportation facilities which would bring into touch with each other the isolated sections of the state and promote the convenient exchange of their products. It had for many years been a recognized prin- ciple of state economic policy that the first essential to the realization of this desideratum was the connection of the Tennessee River with the navigable portion of the Alabama.

The first method considered for accom- plishing this connection was the construction of canals; but, upon the introduction of the railroad into the state, it supplanted the canal in the opinion of most advocates of the internal improvement policy as being cheaper of construction, more practical in rough country, and affording more rapid transporta- tion as well as cheaper rates. Hence, about the year 1836, the railroad was substituted for canals and stagecoach roads in schemes for carrying out the plan of connecting North Alabama with the Gulf coast.

On January 20, 1832, a charter was granted by the legislature to a company com- posed of 142 representative citizens of thir- teen different counties, distributed over the stałe from Jackson, in the northeast, to Mobile, in the southwest corner, which em- powered them to construct a railroad from Selma to Decatur, and to the head of the Ten

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Island Shoals in the Coosa River. The act authorized a capital stock of $3,000,000, and the last section provided, "That if, upon a survey of the ground over which the said railroad is proposed to be made, it should be found more expensive, and of less public utility, than it would be to remove the ob- structions, and render navigable the Coosa river from the Ten Island Shoals to the Ala- bama river, then, and in that case, the stock- holders are hereby authorized to render navi- gable the Coosa river, from the Ten Islands to the Alabama river; and are hereby al- lowed to take and receive the same toll that they are by this act allowed to take and re- ceive, if they should prefer making a railroad from the Ten Islands to the Cahawba or Alabama rivers.

The enterprise authorized by this act was typical for the time and the trend of opinion indicated by the objects of the company char- tered thereby became the settled policy of Alabamians with reference to transportation questions, and continued to he the key to the railroad situation in the state until after the war.

The preamble of an act chartering the Ten- nessee and Coosa railroad company, passed in January, 1844, recited that: "WHEREAS, a connection by Rail Road of the navigable waters of the Tennessee with those of the Coosa river, is a project greatly desired by the citizens of a large portion of the State of Alabama: And whereas, it would develop its resources, bind together sections now re- mote, and tend generally to the advance- ment and the prosperity of the State."

Appropriations were made from the three per cent. fund (q. v.) in aid of various in- ternal improvement enterprises, amounting in all to about $135,000. These loans from the state's trust funds were the forerunners of, and paved the way in public opinion for, the policy of direct state aid to railroad companies which was inaugurated with such disastrous effects to the state shortly after the close of the war.

The charters of the early railroads in Ala- bama were very comprehensive and complete documents, broad in scope and explicit in their provisions. They exhibited fewer evi- dences of having been prepared by the pro- moters themselves and lobbied through the legislature than was the case with some of those granted in later years. Most of them provided elaborate machinery for obtaining subscriptions to capital stock and for organiz- ing the company; prescribed the number and mode of selection of the officers and defined their powers and duties; fixed the amount of the capital stock; designated the route of the road and its termini, and usually con- tained a forfeiture clause conditioned upon the commencement and completion of con- struction of the road by stipulated times. Some of them were limited to a specified term of years at whose expiration the state might take possession of the road upon pay- ment to the company of an amount equal to the par value of the capital stock. The right of eminent domain was usually granted but

no specified width of right-of-way. Most of the charters contained a provision that if aid was asked or received of the Federal Government, they should be forfeited. The personal property of the stockholders, to the. extent of the value of their stock, in addition to the stock itself, was made liable for the debts of the corporation. The president and directors of the companies were in most cases empowered to borrow money upon bonds or notes secured by mortgages or liens upon the property. The state regulated rates from the first by limiting in the charter the "tolls" to be charged, sometimes fixing a general maximum limit of twenty-five per cent. net annual profit upon the amount invested in the road and its appurtenances. This was a survival of the old custom of limiting the tolls to be charged by turnpike companies to twenty-five per cent. profit on the cost of the plant.

Frequently provisions were included in the charters to compel the officers and directors of the companies to make "clear and distinct statements" of the companies' affairs to the stockholders at their annual meetings. In all cases a separate charter was granted to each company, by a special act of the legislature, adapted to its particular objects and needs, but also in accord with the state's constitu- tional and legal principles and in harmony with its general policy. In 1845 a clause was first inserted in a railroad charter to prohibit the exercise of banking powers or the emis- sion of any sort of paper or evidences of debt intended as circulation by the company. This was intended to protect the interests of the Alabama State Bank (q. v.).

As has been shown, there were about twenty-five different companies chartered be- tween 1830 and 1840, most of them prior to the financial panic of 1837, which brought all such activities to a standstill for several years and caused the failure or abandonment of most of the enterprises that had been begun. During the decade, 1840-1849, inclu- sive, only seven railroad companies were chartered and records are not available to show how much, if any, actual construction work was done by them. From 1850 to 1859, inclusive, a revival of interest in railroad building took place, which, unfortunately, partook somewhat of the character of a public mania. The spirit of speculation was rife, and men associated themselves together, obtained franchises for the construction of long lines of railroad, secured exclusive rights when they could, and held the charters for the purpose of speculating upon these privil- eges instead of building the roads. During this decade seventy-three railroads were chartered by the legislature but few of them were ever built and on most of them no work whatever was done. The outbreak of the war in 1861 brought to an abrupt close the promotion of railroads.

State Aid Before the War .- During the early fifties opinion upon the question of pub- lic aid to internal improvement projects of all sorts was divided. There was strong opposition to the policy in many quarters, led

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by John A. Winston (q. v.), who was elected governor upon what might be called an anti- railroad platform. Some of the opposition was the outgrowth of the unpleasant experi- ences of the state in connection with the dis- astrous failure of the state bank. Others dreaded the high taxes which they believed would be a concomitant feature of a policy of expending public funds in aid of what otherwise would have to be private enterprise. The losses sustained by the state in connec- tion with the failure of the bank had resulted in burdensome taxation of the people who had grown accustomed to light taxes, or none at all while the state bank had prospered, and they looked askance upon any project which involved the possibility of further increases in taxes. Moreover, the circumstances sur- rounding the failure of the bank had not tended to improve the general opinion of the efficiency of state officials and employees as administrators of financial and commercial undertakings.

These things brought about the election of Governor Winston in 1853 and his re-election in 1855. In his message to the general as- sembly of November -, 1855, he said: "The report of the State Commissioner, Treasurer, and Comptroller, will present a detailed and particular statement of the finances of the State. The present revenue act raises more money than is required to carry on, econo- mically administered, the ordinary affairs of the State Government; and it is improper and unjust to collect from the people more money than the necessities of the State absolutely demand, the present rate of taxation might be very properly reduced. It is unjust to a people who have at all times promptly re- sponded to whatever calls that have been made, to burden them with such taxation as may create a surplus in the Treasury, to lie there unemployed, or become the subject of controversy between different interests for the doubtful privilege of borrowing it. Al- though it is not part of the legitimate busi- ness of the State to lend its means or credit to its citizens, no matter in what pursuit en- gaged, it may be proper, as a financial opera- tion, to lend to such enterprises as are con- sidered of public utility, whatever unproduct- ive surplus there may be in the Treasury of the State, unavailable in the payment of State obligations, which is the first duty to the people and our creditors; providing the par- ties borrowing guarantee by security, both personal and real, the prompt payment prom- ised, and interest at some early date. The sum of four hundred thousand dollars has been loaned to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad Company, agreeably to the act authorizing the loan, and the interest has been paid promptly, according to the terms of the loan.

The propriety of the State loaning its credit, or raising the means from the people, to aid in the construction of railroads, appears not to have received the approbation either of the people, or those seeking place in the councils of the State. I look on it as a most fortunate circumstance for the country, that the sober common sense of the people was

of such force as to correct so promptly the mania that lately pervaded the minds of many, but a few months since. We should rejoice that for the future there is hope that the acts of the State will be confined to the few simple, legitimate purposes of a republi- can government. The report of the State Commissioner will show the amount of assets yet appertaining to the several banks in liquidation, and the means yet to be ex- pected from that source. The State banks have been in liquidation, now, about twelve years, and many of the debts yet outstanding have been in existence a much longer time. The people have a right to demand that this unfortunate experiment at State financiering be brought to a close.

During his second term, Governor Winston returned without his signature so many bills carrying appropriations or loans for rail- roads as to earn for himself the sobriquet, "the veto-Governor." Despite the Governor's opposition, many of the bills were subse- quently passed by the constitutional majority, and the state, during the administration of the most indefatigable and implacable enemy of "State aid" who ever occupied the gover- nor's office was fairly launched on a policy of state subsidized railroads.

Railroads During the War .- The outbreak of the war put a stop to most of the rail- road building in the state. Most of the ener- gies and resources' of the state, and of the people, were then diverted to other channels of activity. In some instances special acts were passed by the legislature to extend the privileges of railroad charters and franchises "until after the ratification of peace." In at least one case, an extension of the time in which the road was to have been completed was granted indefinitely, "on account of the absence in the army of the officers and stock- holders." (See Selma and Gulf Railroad Company, under "Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company").

The Confederate government undertook to encourage and assist the completion of certain of the Alabama railroads because of their great value from a military standpoint. The Alabama and Tennessee River Railroad (see East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Rail- way), the Alabama and Mississippi Rivers Railroad (Ibid.), the Memphis and Charleston Railroad (q. v.), the South and North Ala- bama Railroad under Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad (q. v.) were cases in point. Liberal appropriations were made in aid of these roads, but because of the scarcity of iron, the progress of construction was slow, and some of the roads never procured the neces- sary rails with which to finish their tracks. The management of some of the more im- portant lines were directed to commandeer the rails in possession of other less important roads. By means of all these expedients. suffi- cient railroad was made available to enable the military authorities to reach the mineral deposits of North Alabama and the Black Belt from which large quantities of military sup- plies were obtained.

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During 1862 the military experts deter- mined upon the construction of a railroad from Rome, Ga., to Blue Mountain, Ala., where it was to connect with the Alabama and Tennessee River Railroad. An appropria- tion of $1,122,480.92 was made for the pur- pose by the Confederate Congress. Work was started and a good deal accomplished, but the road as projected was not completed when the war closed. (See East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway).

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History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume II, Part 82

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869- Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 724

Author: Owen, Thomas McAdory, 1866-1920; Owen, Marie (Bankhead) Mrs. 1869-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 724