USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume I > Part 2
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MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
this arrangement appears the earliest form of the representative princi- ple. "In these four discreet men sent to speak for their township in the old county assembly, we have the germ of institutions that have ripened into the house of commons and into the legislatures of modern kingdoms and republics. In the system of representation thus inaugurated lay the future possibility of such gigantic political aggregates as the United States of America." Out of a union of townships arose the larger aggre- gate known as the hundred, out of a union of hundreds arose the primitive kingdom-the civitas of Cæsar and Tacitus. But before the historic period begins these primitive states in which the settlers originally grouped themselves in Britain have ceased to exist as independent com- munities-they have become bound up in seven or eight larger aggre- gates, generally known as the heptarchic kingdoms. These larger aggregates were finally fused into a single consolidated kingdom, which is the ultimate outcome of a process of aggregation in which the local self-governing communities, out of whose union it arose, descend in status without the loss of their autonomy. The consolidated kingdom repre- sents an aggregation of shires; the shire an aggregation of hundreds; the hundred an aggregation of townships. Upon the substructure thus made up of local self-governing communities the English political system has ever depended for its permanency, its elasticity, its expanding power. Without a clear comprehension of this process of state-building, by the binding together of a widening circle of self-governing communities into a larger whole, it is impossible to understand the making of that vast political aggregate which we call the federal republic of the United States. The great units in this aggregate are the states; "they existed before it; they could exist without it." It is therefore a matter of the first importance to the student of American institutions to fully under- stand the details of the political evolution through which the several states came into existence. A careful review of all the facts involved in this process will bear out the general statement that they either arose, as the mother kingdom arose, out of the aggregation of pre-existing local communities; or that they were formed by the subdivision of large areas into such comumnities as the growth of population demanded their organi- zation. And it may also be stated, as a general rule, that the northern colonies were formed by the former process-the southern, by the latter. While in New England we generally find the state to be an after-growth, which arose out of a process of aggregation in which the township is the unit or starting point; in Virginia, which may be accepted as a typical representative of the colonial group to which she belonged, the colony was first created as an entirety, and then sub-divided into self-governing districts as rapidly as they were demanded by the growth of population. It made no matter, of course, in the end by which process the state was formed, as the practical result was everywhere the same. The completed state was invariably an aggregation of local self-governing communities,
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formed after the old model, and bound together after the old model. Such was the outcome of that marvelous process of reproduction through which the English colonies in America were developed into a group of independent commonwealths, in which each member was, in its organic structure, a substantial reproduction of the English kingdom. In all of the states subsequently organized the same principle of construction has prevailed. No matter in what part of the territory now embraced within the limits of the United States a new state has been built up, it has been constructed strictly after the English model, regardless of the nationality of those by whom its first settlements were planted. The political instincts of the French and Spanish settlers of Louisiana and southern Alabama have made no impress whatever upon their political framework; their constitutional organization is as purely English as that of Massachusetts or Virginia.
From what has now been said the conclusions may be drawn that each member of the American union is such a political organism as is known to international law as the modern state, endowed with territorial sover- eignty within fixed geographical boundaries; that the political history of each consists of the process through which its self-governing communi- ties were formed, and through which they have been bound up in the corporate personality of the state, under the provisions of written consti- tutions. In the attempt which will here be made to outline the political history of Alabama a brief epitome will first be given of the history of the title to the soil upon which the state now stands; then will follow an account of the formation of the settlements which have been made upon that soil, and of their subsequent development under the several consti- tutions by which the state has been governed.
SPANISH DISCOVERY, CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT.
The discovery of the new world, with which Columbus startled Europe 1 at the close of the fifteenth century, was followed early in the sixteenth by a spirited competition between the European nations for its posses- sion. A magnificent prize suddenly appeared to be within the grasp of each large enough, even when subdivided, to satisfy the necessities of all. How to regulate the competition for dominion, how to agree upon a principle which would confer title upon each discoverer who claimed a certain portion of the vast domain as his own, was the question of ques- tions which demanded a prompt and definite solution. For that solution the continental jurists looked to the Roman jurisprudence, from which they were able to draw nothing more satisfactory than those rules which regulated the acquisition of such valuable objects of property as could be covered by the hand. As Sir Henry Maine, in his great work upon "Ancient Law," has told us: "In applying to the discovery of new coun- tries the same principle which the Romans had applied to the finding of
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MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
a jewel, the publicists forced into their service a doctrine altogether une- qual to the task expected from it. Elevated into extreme importance by the discoveries of the great navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, it raised more disputes than it solved. The greatest uncertainty was very shortly found to exist on the very two points on which certainty was most required, the extent of the territory which was acquired for his - sovereign by the discoverer, and the nature of the acts which were neces- sary to complete the apprehension or assumption of sovereign possession." In the case of Johnson vs. McIntosh (8 Wheat., p. 573), the supreme court of the United States, speaking through Chief Justice Marshall, has told us that the European nations agreed "to establish a principle which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. This prin- ciple was that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European govern- ments, which title might be consummated by possession." Under this principle, which assumed that the Indian tribes found upon the soil were mere temporary occupants, a spirited competition began, early in the six- teenth century, between England, France, and Spain for the possession of that part of North America which is bounded on the north by the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, on the south by the gulf of Mexico, on the west by the Mississippi, and on the east by the Atlantic. The results of the first period of struggle for the possession of the heart of the new world may be summed up in the assertion that while Spain succeeded in securing a footing upon its southern, and France upon its northern, bor- der, every attempt at settlement made by Englishmen in America during the sixteenth century. ended before its close in failure and disappointment. The only circumstance from which England could draw any consolation whatever was embodied in the fact that while her rivals had secured a hold upon Canada and Florida, their mutual hostilities and contentions pre- vented both from entering into possession of the vast and priceless central district in which the English settlements of the seventeenth cen- tury were destined to be established. During that period it was that the permanent English settlements were made which were incorporated in the thirteen colonies that finally grew into the federal republic of the United States. With the founding of these English settlements began that determined warfare which never ended until both France and Spain were forced to give up all dominion within the vast limits which were once their own. No part of the territory thus acquired from France and Spain ever became the subject of such prolonged and tangled controversy as that which borders upon the coast of the gulf of Mexico. A great his- torian and geographer once said to the writer of this chapter that the history of no part of the earth's surface had ever troubled him so much as that of the strip of land lying on the gulf between the limits of Lou- isiana and Florida-a strip which has in turn belonged, in whole or in
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POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
part, to Spain, France, England and the United States. In order to make a complete statement of the title to the territory upon which the state of Alabama now stands some account must be given of the claims which were asserted to each and every portion of it by the several possessors who have in turn exercised dominion within its present boundaries.
Not until after Columbus had gone to his grave, happy in the delusion that he had touched the confines of India, was the southern part of the mainland of North America, which Columbus never saw, added to the Spanish crown by the title of discovery. The earliest conception which the Spaniards formed of this vast region north of Cuba was vague and shadowy in the extreme. At first they regarded it as an island which we find under the name of "Illa de Beimeni, parte," on a map in the edition of Peter Martyr's Decades published in 1511. It was this inland, which was said to contain a fountain whose waters conferred perpetual youth, that John Ponce de Leon, who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, undertook to explore and conquer under a royal grant issued to him on the 23d of February, 1512, directing him "to proceed to discover and settle the Island of Bimini.". If he succeeded, he was to be governor of Bimini for life, with the title of Adelantado. Sailing from Porto Rico in March, 1513, he discovered the main land on Easter Sunday (March 27), and from that circumstance named the country Flor- ida, from Pascua Florida, the Spanish name for that day. The ill-starred expedition of Ponce de Leon was soon followed by other Spanish expe- ditions, each one of which added to a knowledge of the country. In 1520, the need for laborers to work in the newly discovered mines in Mexico prompted Vasquez de Ayllon to cruise along the coast of the island of Florida in quest of slaves, an undertaking in which he was eminently successful. In 1528 followed the expedition of Pamphilo de Narvaez who in April of that year landed in the bay of Espiritu Santo, the modern Tampa bay, with a force of three hundred men. After taking formal possession of the country in the name of his imperial master he under- took to penetrate northwardly into the interior in quest of some populous and wealthy empire like Mexico or Peru. After unparalleled hardships the whole band seems to have perished with the exception of Alvar Nunez and his four companions, who finally made their way to the Spanish set- tlements in Mexico. Such failures and misfortunes were, however, insufficient to deter the romantic adventurer, Hernando de Soto, who, in 1538, set out upon an expedition determined to rival the achievements of Cortez and Pizarro. In May, 1539, De Soto arrived in Tampa bay with his brilliant cavaliers, with whom he soon invaded the wilds of east Florida, whence he proceeded northwardly into the southwest section of what is now the territory of Georgia, through the country of the warlike Semi- noles. In the next year traversing the state of Georgia northwardly they entered the barren region of the Cherokees in quest of gold; then, after passing down the valley of the Coosa, he proceeded southwardly down the
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MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA. -
valley of the Alabama toward its junction with the Tombigbee. There, , at the town of Maubila, upon the north bank of the Alabama, at a place probably twenty-five miles above its confluence with the Tombigbee the mighty chief Tuscaloosa, who had been held by De Soto as a hostage, escaping from the hands of his captors, inflicted upon these first Euro- pean inavders of the soil of Alabama a terrible chastisement. After the disastrous battle of Maubila, by which his fighting strength was greatly reduced, De Soto passed on to the Mississippi, in whose waters he found his grave. During the twenty years which followed the sad ending of this unfruitful expedition the province of Florida was practically aban -. doned by the Spaniards as too poor for either conquest or settlement. Not until 1560 did a few zealous missionaries attempt to plant the cross at several points along the Atlantic coast; and not until 1565 did Melen- dez found the town of St. Augustine, the oldest now existing in the United States by perhaps fifty years. By virtue of these early explora- tions and settlements Spain set up a claim of title to an area of territory to which definite limits can hardly be assigned. Along the Atlantic coast she claimed as far north as the gulf of St. Lawrence, where the French had made some unsuccessful attempts to plant colonies; while along the coast of the gulf of Mexico, where she had no rivals, there were no limits whatever to her pretensions. But the time had now come when these vast and undefined limits were to be disputed by two powerful rivals. By the English settlements on the north, and by the French settlements on the west the limits of Spain were successfully restricted "until Flor- ida, early in the eighteenth century, comprised only a narrow strip of sea-coast on the northeast side of the gulf of Mexico, chiefly south of latitude 31 degrees north, and east of the Perdido river and bay, and including the peninsula of East Florida."
THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE ATLANTIC.
The claim of the English crown to the territory upon which the English settlements in America were made was based upon the voyages of the Cabots made along the American coast during the years 1497-98. The first patent issued to the Cabots-the oldest surviving document connect- ing the old land with the new-gave to the patentees the right to sail under the royal ensign, and to set up the royal banner in any newly dis- covered land as lieutenants and vassals of the king. The inchoate right thus acquired by discovery at the close of the fifteenth century did not ripen into a perfect title until early in the seventeenth, when the permanent English settlements in America were made. The great title- deed under which the English settlers in America took actual and permanent possession of the greater part of the Atlantic seaboard is represented by the charter granted by James I., on the 10th April, 1606, to certain patentees, wherein he created two distinct corporations; and
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POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
then, in the same document, granted to the one, known as the London company, the section of North American sea-coast lying between 34 and 38 degrees north latitude; and to the other, known as the Plymouth company, the section lying between 41 degrees and 45 degrees, each having an indefinite western extension. The intervening expanse, lying between 38 degrees and 41 degrees, was placed as a march or border land between the domains of the two companies, and its common use was made subject to the limitation that neither should plant a colony within a hundred miles of one previously made by the other. Under the auspices of the London or southern company was founded in 1607 the Virginian settlement at Jamestown-the first permanent settlement made by Englishmen on the soil of the new world. As this colony grew and widened the time came, in 1651, when it became neces- sary to define its southern boundary, as against the indefinite claim of Spain northward. The colony claimed the latitude of 36 degrees as its southern boundary, and Spain after a feeble resistance substantially acceded to the demand of England by relinquishing all claims to lands north of latitude 36°, 30', the present southern boundary of the state of Virginia. Regardless, however, of this settlement a further encroachment was attempted upon the limits of Spain by Charles II., who, in 1663, granted to Lord Clarendon and others all lands from the thirty-sixth parallel of north latitude southward to what is now known as St. Mary's river, in latitude 30°, 45'. And a short time afterward the same king extended the limits of this grant on the south to the parallel of 29 degrees, so as to embrace the coast for nearly fifty miles south of St. Augustine. The proprietors were, however, unable for more than half a century to extent their settlements farther south than the parallel of 32 degrees, and Spain still upheld her claim to the unoccupied country. In 1679, north of the parallel of 32 degrees, an English colony which had settled on the Ashley river founded the colonial capital of Charlestown, the province being called Carolina after Charles II. of England. Finally in 1690, as a fresh settlement of the controversies which continually arose out of the advancing claims of the English, Spain agreed to further relin- quish all territory north of 33 degrees, which was one degree north of the most southern settlements of the English.
FRENCH DISCOVERY, CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT.
While the northern boundaries of Florida were being thus contracted by the growth of the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, another colonial power was gradually advancing along the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi, which for a long time interposed an unbroken rampart against both English and Spanish expansion westward. As early as 1535, even before De Soto had landed in Florida, Cartier had conducted an expedition to the gulf of St. Lawrence, a name which was extended to the
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MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
great river of the north, while to the country along it shores Cartier was the first to apply the name of "New France." Not. however, until seventy- five years after Cartier's first voyage up the St. Lawrence did Samuel Champlain. in the summer of 1608, ascend the same river as far as the island of Orleans with a colony which then laid the foundations of a set- tlement which grew into the city of Quebec, a settlement contemporaneous with the first permanent English settlement made in Virginia. To the missionary field thus opened up by the French in Canada the Jesuit fathers came filled with an indomitable zeal which made them either the leaders or companions in every enterprise through which the cross could be borne farther into the wildness. Through the inquiries of Father Allouez, whose missionary work had taken him to the southern shores of lake Superior, it was learned that far to the westward there was a great river known to the natives as the Mesasippi, whose discovery was under- taken in 1673 by Father Marquette, who, together with Joliet, explored it for about eleven hundred miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin. The · exploration of the Mississippi thus begun by Marquette and Joliet was revived in earnest by La Salle, who in 1682 traversed its entire course down its confluence with the gulf of Mexico. The path thus marked out by the explorer was soon followed by the colonist; in 1702 D'Iberville came over sea and founded Mobile, and in 1718 the French Mississippi company founded New Orleans. Thus did the French possess themselves of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and between the mouths of the two mighty rivers were placed at points of the greatest strategic valuc a line of forts which were desinged to protect from English and Spanish intrusion that vast domain called New France, which now stretched on the west of the Alleghanies from New Orleans to Quebec. By such means as these did the French hope to retain for themselves the priceless valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio, and to confine the English colonies within that comparatively narrow strip of country lying between the Appalachian range and the Atlantic ocean. Prior to the founding of the French settlements upon the gulf of Mexico Spain had claimed the entire northern coast from Tampico eastward to the Appalachicola river as a. part of the vice-royalty of Mexico. And yet she had done little or noth- ing to secure its possession by the establishment of colonies or fortifica- tions. When the French exploration of the Mississippi began the entire district was in the possession of the Indian tribes, without a single Span- ish settlement-a condition of things which continued up to the founding of the settlement at Pensacola in 1696. The close proximity of that settle- ment to the French colony at Mobile soon made it necessary that a line of demarcation should be agreed upon between them. A favorable oppor- tunity for such an agreement arose in 1702, after war had been declared against both France and Spain by England. In the face of the common enemy the French and Spanish commandants agreed that the boundary on the gulf between Louisiana and Florida should be the Perdido river.
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POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE STATE
From the eastern limit thus fixed on the gulf unto the mouth of the St. Lawrence France did all in her power to secure herself in her priceless heritage. The practical foresight of the French engineers in the selection of sites for the long line of forts by which this vast domain was to be guarded is evidenced by the fact that the great and flourishing cities of Natchez, Vincennes, Peoria, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, Ogdensburg and Montreal have been built either on or near them. And yet in spite of all this foresight France's dominion in North America was destined to be of short duration. When the time for English expansion came, when the necessities of the English colonists who had settled down upon the Atlan- tic seaboard impelled them to pass, with their swelling numbers, the tops of the Alleghanies in order to possess themselves of the great valleys beyond, upon which France had first laid hold, the fact was revealed that the young giant of the Atlantic had only been bound with the thongs of Lilliput. When the English colonial system came in collision with the French colonial system, when the new self-governing soldiery which had been reared in the southern counties and in the New England townships went out together under the lead of the mother country to do battle with a colonial power which had never been trained in self-reliance, it "was like a Titan overthrowing a cripple." France's dream of empire in the. west was broken; she was forced to give up her priceless possessions and to retire from North America. The details of the great surrender were all settled in the famous peace of Paris, evidenced by the treaty signed in that city in February, 1763, wherein France ceded to Great Britain all of her northern provinces, commonly known as New France or Canada, together with all that portion of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi, with the exception of the island of New Orleans, including the port and river of Mobile. As compensation for the restoration of Havana, Spain at or about the same time ceded to Great Britain the whole of Florida, together with the coast line which extends from Perdido bay to the river St. Mary on the Atlantic. The remainder of her possessions, including all territory on the west side of the Mississippi, and the island of New Orleans to the east of it, France ceded to Spain. Thus ended the domin- ion of France in North America, and thus was her imperial domain divided between her rivals, Spain and England.
FLORIDA AND HER BOUNDARIES.
The southern portion of the great tract between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies that passed from France and Spain to Great Britain under the treaty of 1663, was divided by royal decree into two districts, called East and West Florida, which were governed, not like the Atlantic colo- nies, but as mere military departments, down to the revolution. As the northern line of West Florida subsequently became the subject of serious dispute, it may be well here to note that the boundaries of this province
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