The government of the people of the state of Alabama

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THE

Chapter I. French, English, And Spanish Government In What Is Now Alabama

Spanish Exploration. 1. The territory now embraced in the State of Alabama was first explored in 1540 by the Spanish adventurer, Hernando De Soto, upon whom the title of Adelantado, which combined military and civil command, had been conferred by the emperor Charles V. Earlier Spanish voyagers had ascended Mobile Bay, and it is possible that scouting parties of the expedition of Pamphilo de Narvacz, in 1528, may have touched what is now the south-eastern border of the State, along the line which separates it from Florida; but of this we can have no certain knowledge.

2. On May 12, 1539, De Soto, holding his commission as governor and captain-general for life of Florida, as well as of the island of Cuba, set sail from Havana on the illstarred expedition which he had planned for the " conquest of Florida." It must be understood that what the Spaniards then called Florida included not only the peninsula and State which we now know by that name, but all the Spanish claims in America extending indefinitely northward and sweeping from the confines of Mexico to Nova Scotia. On the 25th of May De Soto arrived at the mouth of Tampa Bay, which he named the bay of Espiritu Santo, He soon afterward landed and took possession of the country in the name of the Spanish monarch. His force consisted of about six hundred men, including soldiers, priests, artisans, and ' ■ men of science," thoroughly equipped in every way for the perilous adventure of exploring and conquering an unknown land.

3. De Soto had been a lieutenant of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, and his expedition to Florida had been planned with the expectation of finding in this unexplored region something of the wealth in gold and silver that had rewarded the Spanish conquerors in Mexico and South America. It was primarily a quest for gold, although the glory of conquest and the conversion of the heathen were also motives that appealed alike to the Adelantado and his followers.

4. De Soto commenced his march from Tampa northward up the peninsula. The Indian tribes along the route offered, at different times, a desperate resistance; but the Spanish cavaliers, protected by armor and mounted upon horses — animals which the natives had never before seen — were almost proof against the arrows and other missiles of their assailants, and they steadily bore down all oppo-

SPANISH EXPLORATION. 7

sition. De Soto spent five months in winter quarters in the neighborhood of the present city of Tallahassee, Florida. Resuming his march in the early spring of 1540, he traversed what is now the State of Georgia ; and from the hilly country of the Cherokees, whither he was drawn in his search for gold, he passed into the valley of the Coosa river in w r hat is now Alabama.

5. From the Coosa region, De Soto proceeded down the valley of the Alabama river toward its junction with the Tombigbee. Somewhere above this junction on the northwestern bank of the Alabama, 1 he fought the great battle of Mauvila with the mighty Indian chief Tuscaloosa, the first battle upon Alabama soil of which we have any record. The battle was won by the Spanish invaders, but it was well-nigh as disastrous to the victors as to the vanquished ; for, in addition to the heavy loss of men and horses, many of the equipments necessary to a successful prosecution of the enterprise were destroyed in the burning of Mauvila.

6. From Mauvila De Soto turned his course to the northwest and crossed the Warrior river somewhere between the present cities of Tuscaloosa and Demopolis — possibly near the village of Carthage, the site of noted Indian mounds, which some authorities identify with the " Cabusto " of the Spanish narratives. From that point De Soto marched into the country of the Chickasaw Indians, in what is now northern Mississippi. With the remainder of this unfortunate expedition, which did nothing more than to lift for a while the curtain of history upon the South-west, it is not the purpose of this sketch to deal. It is sufficient to note here that De Soto had exercised the military, if not the civil, functions of Adelantado for a few brief months upon what is now the soil of Alabama before he passed on to the exploration of the then unknown lands to the

1 Pickett says at Choctaw Bluff.

west. Long before England had determined to follow up the voyages of the Cabots with colonizing projects, before the Pilgrims had left their English homes for Holland, even long before Raleigh had sent out his ill-fated expeditions to what is now the coast of Carolina, Spanish cavaliers had trooped across Alabama's hills and plains in their vain search for gold, awing the natives with the power of European civilization and government.

French Exploration and Settlement.

7. After the expedition of De Soto, the territory now embraced in Alabama dropped back into the darkness of aboriginal life until another European power appeared not only as an explorer, but as a colonizer in the South-west. In 1682, Robert Cavalier de la Salle, the French explorer, worked his way, slowly and painfully, from the Lake region down the Mississippi, and at the mouth of that great river took possession of the valleys drained by it and its tributaries in the name of the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., " King of France and of Navarre." Standing by the column which he had erected at the mouth of the river, La Salle proclaimed the sovereignty of the French king over " this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, towns, cities, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said territory of Louisiana .... from the great river's source as far as its mouth at the sea or the Gulf of Mexico."

8. The French territory of Louisiana was thus as vaguely bounded as the Florida of the Spaniards ; but the French were not long in asserting practically their claims to that region now embraced in Alabama. Of course the French claim overlapped the Spanish in this territory, and before many years another European power, England, was to assert her claim to the same region. It is not necessary

FRENCH EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT. 9

to speak here of the misfortunes that attended La Salle's attempt at colonization, nor of his tragic death, in 1687. in the wilds of Texas. The Treaty of Ryswick, 1697, left the French king free to carry out the plans of La Salle for the occupation and colonization of Louisiana. The man selected to command the enterprise was Pierre Le- Moyne d'Iberville, a Canadian soldier, who, on account of, his native ability as well as his varied experience in New-World warfare, was well fitted for the responsibilities of the position.

9. Iberville set sail with his expedition from the harbor of Brest in October, 1698. Having touched at St. Domingo for supplies of food and fresh water, he sailed from there through the Yucatan channel, thence northward across the Gulf of Mexico, and he would have made a lodgement somewhere on Pensacola Bay, had he hot found it already in the possession of the Spaniards. From Pensacola he sailed westward until he touched Dauphin Island, which he named Massacre Island, at the mouth of Mobile Bay. He then proceeded to Ship Island at the mouth of Pascagoula river, and finally settled his colony, in 1699, on the north-east shore of the Bay of Biloxi. There he built a fort, " as a symbol of French jurisdiction that was to be asserted from the Bay of Pensacola on the east to the Rio del Norte on the west." Iberville returned to France, leaving his brother, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville, in command of the colony. During a subsequent absence of Iberville in 1702, Bienville was ordered to move the settlement to the Mobile river. Thus it came about that while Iberville was the founder of Louisiana, his brother Bienville, who was personally in charge of the removal from Biloxi, in what is now Mississippi, to the Mobile river, in what is now Alabama, may be said to be, in some sense, the founder of Alabama.

10. The site selected for the new fort and settlement was on the west bank of the Mobile river, twenty-five or thirty miles above the present city of Mobile. 1 It was named Fort St. Louis de la Mobile, and was the first white settlement in what is now Alabama. The story of its struggle for existence under its brave and capable young governor, Bienville, cannot be told here. It is enough to state, that owing to high water in the river and other threatened disasters, it was decided to move the fort colony to a more desirable location nearer the mouth of the river ; and thus it happened that the permanent settlement of the French was made in 1711, where the city of Mobile now stands. The fort there built was named by the French Fort Conde ; but it was afterwards known during the English and Spanish occupancy as Fort Charlotte. Its site was about where the principal market, the court-house, and the theatre stand in the Mobile of to-day.

11. In the same year that the French settlement was transferred from Biloxi to the Mobile River, the French and Spanish authorities agreed upon the Perdido River as the boundary between Florida and Louisiana. From this eastern limit of Louisiana, thus fixed upon the Gulf coast, it was the policy of France to draw her line of forts northward to the St. Lawrence; and, in furtherance of this policy. Bienville, in 1714, built Fort Toulouse, long afterward known as Fort Jackson, between the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, about four miles above the junction of these rivers. It was already apparent that this outpost was necessary to protect the Indian allies of the French, as well as the territory claimed by the French, from the encroachments of the English from the Carolinas. Another fort in the interior of what is now Alabama that owed its origin to Bienville was Fort Tombeckbee, afterwards Fort Confederation, which he built upon the Tombigbee river in 1736, on the occasion of his disastrous

1 Possibly Chastang's Bluff.

ENGLISH OCCUPANCY. 11

campaign against the Chickasaw Indians. It is located in what is now Sumter county, near Epes' station.

12. The Indians with whom the French came in contact at their different settlements in what is now Mississippi and Alabama belonged chiefly, if we except the Natchez tribes, to the great Maskoki stock l — the Creeks, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws. Far to the north-east were the Cherokees, a branch of the great Iroquois stock, occupying a small part of what afterwards became the State of Alabama ; but they did not come in direct contact with the French outposts.

13. The capital of the French province of Louisiana was moved from Mobile to Biloxi in 1720, and from there to New Orleans in 1722. The history of the province under its successive royal and proprietary governors, and their wars with the native tribes and with rival European powers, cannot be noticed here. We must pause, however, at the final struggle that was to determine whether the French or the English were to hold and occupy the great domain east of the Mississippi to the Alleghanies — whether to the Anglo-Saxon or to the Romano-Gallic race had been given the future of North America.

English Occupancy.

The struggle of three-quarters of a century 2 between the French and English colonists in America was to be fought to a finish in the Seven Years' War, 1755-1763, known in Colonial history as the French-Indian War. " It was no mere question of succession to distant thrones that was this time to wet the soil of America with the blood of her colonists." The struggle was for land. The first prize to be contended for was the rich valley of the Ohio

1 Sometimes called the " Mobilian family."

2 "King William's War "—1689-1697 ; "Queen Anne's War"— 1702-1713; "King George's War" — 1744-1748 ; "French-Indian War"— 1754-1763.

river, and naturally the war broke out at the gateway to that valley, commanded by Fort Duquesne, held by the French, at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers.

14. The war began with disaster to the English and Colonial forces in the memorable defeat of Braddock ; but it closed triumphantly for them in the capture of Quebec and the conquest of Canada. The planting of the cross of England upon the heights of Quebec was the signal for it to supplant the lilies of France upon the walls of Forts Conde, Toulouse, and Tombeckbee in what is now Alabama. By the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, France formally ceded to England all her territory east of the Mississippi river, except New Orleans and the adjacent district known as the Island of Orleans. At the same time Spain ceded to Great Britain all her claims to Florida, receiving in exchange the city of Havana, Cuba, which had been seized by the English during the war. According to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, the French commandant at Mobile delivered Fort Conde to Major Robert Farmer, of the English army, and Fort Tombeckbee was surrendered to Captain Thomas Ford; while the Chevalier Lavnoue, commanding Fort Toulouse, not being relieved by an English officer, spiked his guns, broke off their trunnions, and threw all his military stores into the Coosa river.

15. It was by this series of events that the territory now embraced in Alabama, explored by the Spanish and settled by the French, passed under the government of the English crown. By a secret treaty, France at the same time ceded to Spain all her remaining territory in North America. Thus passed away France's dream of empire in the New World. The rich heritage left her by La Salle, Iberville, Bienville, and other explorers and colonizers had by the fortunes of war fallen from her grasp.

16. After Florida and the French claims east of the Mississippi had passed into the hands of the English, the

THE SPANISH CONQUEST. 13

provinces of East and West Florida were created — the latter embracing a large part of what is now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. The northern boundary of West Florida, as thus organized, was the line of 32° 28', north latitude, extending from the mouth of the Yazoo River on the Mississippi east to the Chattahoochee. That line ran between the sites of Montgomery and Wetumpka, which are within fifteen miles of each other. All of the present state of Alabama south of that line — the section which corresponds very nearly to what we now loosely call "South Alabama" — was in the British province of West Florida, and all north of that line was in the British province of Illinois.

17. There Avere then no European inhabitants, except a few traders among the Indians, in the Illinois portion. The capital of British West Florida was Pensacola, and its first British governor was Captain George Johnstone, of the royal navy. He organized the civil government of the province under military commandants and magistrates. There were several unsuccessful attempts to form a colonial legislature in West Florida after the fashion of the English colonies on the Atlantic coast; but it continued to be governed as a military province until it passed to Spanish control during the war of the Revolution.

The Spanish Conquest.

18. It must be borne in mind that the struggle for independence of the thirteen English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard found little sympathy among the inhabitants of British West Florida. The Florida provincials, were, in the main, loyal to the English crown ; and this is one of the reasons why, during and just after the Revolutionary War, not a few loyalists, or Tories, as they were called, from Georgia and the Carolinas, found refuge in what is now Alabanui.

19. While the struggle for independence was in progress, Spain offered her services as a mediator between England and her revolted colonies. The proposition was rejected. Spain then decided to become a party to the struggle herself; and in 1779 she declared war against England. At this time the Spanish governor of Louisiana was Don Bernardo Galvez, an able and ambitious soldier, who saw in the neighboring British province of West Florida an opportunity for gratifying his love of military glory. After some preliminary successes along the eastern bank of the Mississippi, he marched against Fort Charlotte, at Mobile, with a force of two thousand men, and on the fourteenth of March, 1780, forced it to surrender. Galvez then determined upon the capture of Pensacola. Realizing, however, the strength of the English position at that place, he went to Cuba for aid. With the reinforcements which he received, he effected the capture of Pensacola on the 9th of May, 1781. By the terms of the capitulation the whole province of West Florida was surrendered to Spain. Among the many honors which rewarded Galvez for his brilliant exploits were the title of count and promotion to the captain-generalcy of Florida and Louisiana.

20. After the Treaty of Paris in 1783 had recognized the independence of the United States, the conquests of Galvez in Florida were confirmed. However, a controversy arose as to the northern boundary of West Florida. Spain claimed that it was the line of 32° 28', the limits of the British province, while the United States, in behalf of the State of Georgia, claimed, according to the treaty with Great Britain, that it was the line of 31°, north latitude. After ten years of controversy, the matter was finally settled in 1795, when Minister Pinckney succeeded in negotiating the Treaty of Madrid, wherein it was agreed that " the future boundary between the United States and the Floridas shall be the 31st parallel of north latitude from the Mississippi eastward to the Chattahochee river." It

THE SPANISH CONQUEST. 15

was thus that Georgia's claim, under her colonial charter, was made good to all the lands on her western frontier to the Mississippi river. As the " Mobile district " — the territory between the Pearl and Perdido rivers — lay south of the 31st parallel, it still continued under Spanish rule. How it was subsequently wrested from Spain and became incorporated with the Mississippi Territory — out of which Alabama was carved — will be told in the succeeding chapter.

Governor William C. C. Claiborne.

CHAPTER II. territorial government in alabama.

The Mississippi Territory.

21. After the settlement of the boundary between the United States and the Spanish province of Florida, there was a great influx of American settlers into the hitherto disputed territory — the district between the lines of 31° and 32° 28', stretching from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee. It was important that some kind of civil government should be organized for the people. Congress, therefore, with the consent of the State of Georgia, which still claimed the title to the land, passed an act, approved April 7, 1798, authorizing the President to form a territorial

TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT IN ALABAMA. 17

government in the ceded district, known as the Mississippi Territory, similar to that which had been provided for the North-west Territory by the famous ordinance of 1787 — a noteworthy difference being that slavery was not prohibited in the Mississippi Territory.

22. President Adams appointed Winthrop Sargent, of Massachusetts, first governor of the Territory, with John Steele of Virginia, as secretary. Thomas Rodney of Delaware, and John Tilton of New Hampshire, were appointed judges of the supreme court. These officers reached Natchez, the territorial capital, a few months after the Spaniards had withdrawn from the ceded district, and they found the country occupied by General James Wilkinson, in command of Federal troops. The governor proceeded at once to put the territorial government in force. His powers were extensive. He could appoint all territorial officers, except the secretary, the supreme court judges, and the militia generals. He could divide the Territory into counties ; and, acting with the judges, he could ordain such laws as were necessary for the government of the Territory — unless they were disapproved by Congress.

23. By a proclamation, dated April 2, 1799, Governor Sargent divided the " Natchez district " into the counties of Adams and Pickering ; and he established county courts to be held quarterly by the territorial judges. On June 4, 1800, he issued another proclamation establishing the county of Washington, which embraced the settlements along the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers — which embraced, in fact, all that part of the original Mississippi Territory now lying in the State of Alabama. Out of the county of Washington there have since been carved, in whole or in part, twenty-nine counties in what is now Alabama and sixteen in what is now Mississippi. 1

1 By act approved March 27, 1804, Congress made a judicial district 2

24. Dissatisfaction with the arbitrary powers of Governor Sargent and a considerable increase in population were the causes which induced Congress to complete the territorial government of Mississippi by a supplemental act, approved May 10, 1800, which provided for a territorial legislature. Representation was apportioned among the three counties on a basis of one representative for every five hundred free white males, with the result that Adams and Pickering had four representatives each, while the county of Washington had only one. These representatives and a legislative council, or upper house, of five members, appointed by the president, met in General Assembly at Natchez, in December, 1800 — the first representative body of white men that ever met for the purpose of making laws for what is now a large part of Alabama. It was thus that Mississippi passed from a " first grade " to a " second grade " territory.

25. The first governor under the new system was William Charles Cole Claiborne, a native of Virginia and a citizen of Tennessee, who was appointed by President Jefferson. By authority of the legislature, the new governor moved the capital from Natchez to the village of Washington, six miles east of the former place. It was at the lastmentioned capital, during the legislative session 1801-2, that the first regular code of laws, with forms of judicial proceedings, was adopted for the use of the Territory.

26. As a settlement of controversies that had grown out of conflicting land claims, the State of Georgia in 1802 ceded all the territory on her western frontier to the United States. This whole Georgia cession, stretching from the western boundary of that State to the Mississippi river, and embracing all the country lying between the lines of

of the county of Washington, and President Jefferson appointed Harry Toulmin to the judgeship thus created. That appointment is said to mark the beginning of the judicial history of Alabama. — Hannis Taylor.

TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT IN ALABAMA. 19

31° and 35° north latitude, was bound up in the Mississippi Territory by an act of Congress approved March 27, 1804. Within the northern boundary of the Territory as thus enlarged was included a strip of land about twelve miles wide that had been ceded to the United States by South Carolina in 1787.

27. In December, 1803, William C. C. Claiborne, still acting as territorial governor of Mississippi, accepted — with General Wilkinson as a fellow commissioner — the formal surrender of Louisiana. That province having been retroceded by Spain to France by a secret treaty in 1800, had been purchased by the United States from Napoleon. Spain continued in possession of that portion of what is now Alabama and Mississippi lying south of the line 31° — the "Mobile district "—although the United States claimed that it had acquired by purchase the whole of Louisiana which belonged to France prior to 1763 — that is, as far east as the Perdido river.

28. In the War of 1812, Spain became the virtual ally of England, and the opportunity was thus presented to dislodge the Spanish forces at the mouth of Mobile river. Accordingly General Wilkinson moved from New Orleans with six hundred men, and, on the 13th of April, 1813, he forced the Spanish garrison of Fort Charlotte to surrender. By an act of Congress approved May 12, 1813, the " Mobile district," thus wrested from Spain by military force, was annexed to the Mississippi Territory. These events removed the last vestige of foreign domination from what is now the soil of Alabama. 1

29. In the Mississippi Territory as thus completed there were embraced " three distinct groups of white settlements, separated from each other by wide stretches of country in the possession of the Creek, the Choctaw, the Cherokee and

1 On February 12, 1815, British forces captured Fort Bowyer (now Fort Morgan) on Mobile Point, and held it for a short time after the news of the Peace of Ghent had come across the Atlantic.

THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF ALABAMA.

the Chickasaw Indians." These settlements were the Natchez district, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi ; the Tombigbee settlements, including the "Mobile district"; and the settlements north of the Tennessee river. The

Map showing successive additions to the Mississippi Territory and its division into the state of mississippi and the alabama territory in 1817.

aggregate population of these three groups was about thirty-five thousand.

30. The general policy of the Federal government in dealing with the Indians of the Mississippi Territory was to extinguish by purchase their titles to the land as " soon as it could be done peaceably and on reasonable terms." Agents and officials of the government succeeded, with more or less difficulty, in negotiating successive treaty purchases with the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, and the Cherokees f but the Creek Indians, claiming the larger part of what is now Alabama, had to be dealt with in another way.

1 The last reservation of the Chickasaws in Alabama was ceded in 1832. By the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, concluded September 27, 1830, the Choctaws made the final cession of all their lands in Alabama and Mississippi. The final treaty with the Cherokees was made at New Echota, December 29, 1835.— Brewer.

TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT IN ALABAMA. 21

They constituted the roost powerful tribes with which the white settlers had to contend. After the close of the Revolutionary War the Creeks had shown some hostility to the American settlers, but under the prudent diplomacy of the government at Washington their lands might ultimately have been peaceably purchased, had it not been for English and Spanish influence.

31. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, it was- the policy of Great Britain to array the Indian tribes against the Americans. In pursuance of this policy, Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, came southward from the lakes, preaching his war of extermination against the white settlers. He found eager listeners in Josiah Francis, the prophet ; William Weatherford, the " Red Eagle ;' : Peter McQueen, the half-breed of Tallase ; and other leaders among the Creeks.

32. The flames of the Creek War broke out at the battle of Burnt Corn in what is now Conecuh county ; and this was followed by the horrible massacre at Fort Mims, in Baldwin county, August 30, 1813. Scattered as were the white settlers, they were unable, in many instances, to protect themselves ; but a strong deliverer was at hand. Down from Tennessee came Andrew Jackson, with his volunteers, w T ho, with terrible energy, broke to pieces the Creek confederacy in the hard-fought battles of Talladega, Emuckfau, 1 and Tohopeka. An important result of the last decisive victory was the conclusion of the Treaty of Fort Jackson, signed August 9, 1814, by which the Creeks ceded to the United States all their claims to territory lying " west of the Coosa river and south of a line drawn from Wetumpka to a point on the Chattahoochee river below the present city of Eufaula." 2

1 The Creek warriors claimed a victory at the battle of Emuckfau creek, and boasted that they had made "Captain Jackson " run. — Pickett.

2 The final treaty with the Creeks by which they ceded to the United States all their lands east of the Mississippi, was negotiated at Cusseta

33. It was in the early days of the Creek War that " the smallest naval battle on record " occurred in Alabama waters. On the 12th of November, 1813, Samuel Dale, James Smith, and Jeremiah Austill, manning a canoe, met a party of nine Indian warriors in another boat on the Alabama river near the mouth of Randon's creek in what is now Monroe county. A hand-to-hand fight with war-clubs and rifle-barrels ensued, with the result that the nine Indians were killed and the three white men escaped with a few painful though not serious wounds.

The Alabama Territory.

34. By an act of Congress approved March 1, 1817, the Mississippi Territory was divided into two parts by " a line to be drawn from the mouth of Big Bear creek on the Tennessee river to the north-west corner of Washington county on the Tombigbee river, thence due south with the western limit of said county to the sea." That part lying west of the line indicated became, December 10, 1817, the State of Mississippi. That part tying east of the line was organized by act of Congress, approved March 3, 1817, into the Alabama Territory — the name being taken from the principal river within its borders. 1 St. Stephens, on the Tombigbee river, was made the provisional capital ; and President Monroe appointed William Wyatt Bibb, of Georgia, governor of the Territory.