History of Alabama - Early Statehood

Early Statehood

In 1819, Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state to the Union. Its constitution provided for equal suffrage for white men.

One of the first problems of the new commonwealth was that of finance. Since the amount of money in circulation was not sufficient to meet the demands of the increasing population, a system of state banks was instituted. State bonds were issued and public lands were sold to secure capital, and the notes of the banks, loaned on security, became a medium of exchange. Prospects of an income from the banks led the legislature of 1836 to abolish all taxation for state purposes. This was hardly done, however, before the Panic of 1837 wiped out a large portion of the banks' assets. Next came revelations of grossly careless and even of corrupt management. In 1843 the banks were placed in liquidation. After disposing of all their available assets, the state assumed the remaining liabilities, for which it had pledged its faith and credit.

In 1830 the Indian Removal Act set in motion the process that resulted in the Indian removal of southeastern tribes, including the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole. In 1832, the national government provided for the removal of the Creeks via the Treaty of Cusseta. Before the actual removal occurred between 1834 and 1837, the state legislature defined counties from Indian lands, and settlers flocked in.

Until 1832, there was only one party in the state, the Democratic. The question of nullification caused a division that year into the (Jackson) Democratic party and the State's Rights (Calhoun Democratic) party. About the same time the Whig party emerged as an opposition party. It drew support from plantation owners and townsmen, while the Democrats were strongest among poor farmers and Catholic communities (descendants of French and Spanish colonists) in the Mobile area. For some time, the Whigs were almost as numerous as the Democrats, but they never secured control of the state government. The State's Rights faction were in a minority; nevertheless, under their active and persistent leader, William L. Yancey (1814–1863), they prevailed upon the Democrats in 1848 to adopt their most radical views.

During the agitation over the Wilmot Proviso, which would bar slavery from territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican War, Yancey induced the Democratic State Convention of 1848 to adopt what was known as the "Alabama Platform". It declared that neither Congress nor the government of a territory had the right to interfere with slavery in a territory, that those who held opposite views were not Democrats, and that the Democrats of Alabama would not support a candidate for the presidency if he did not agree with them. This platform was endorsed by conventions in Florida and Virginia and by the legislatures of Georgia and Alabama.

The Compromise of 1850 split people from their old party lines. The State's Rights faction, joined by many Democrats, founded the Southern Rights Party, which demanded the repeal of the Compromise, advocated resistance to future encroachments and prepared for secession. The Whigs were joined by the remaining Democrats and called themselves the "Unionists". The party unwillingly accepted the Compromise and denied that the Constitution provided for secession.

Development of large cotton plantations in the Black Belt after the invention of the cotton gin had added dramatically to the state's wealth. The owners' wealth depended on the labor of numerous enslaved African Americans. In other parts of the state, the soil supported only subsistence farming. Most of the yeoman farmers owned few or no slaves. By 1860 the success of cotton production led to planters' holding 435,000 enslaved African Americans, 45% of the state's population.

Early Alabama settlers were noted for their spirit of frontier democracy and egalitarianism, and their fierce defense of the republican values of civic virtue and opposition to corruption. J. Mills Thornton (1978) argued that Whigs worked for positive state action to benefit society as a whole, while the Democrats feared any increase of power in government, or in state-sponsored institutions as central banks. Fierce political battles raged in Alabama on issues ranging from banking to the removal of the Creek Indians. Thornton suggested the overarching issue in the state was how to protect liberty and equality for white people. Fears that Northern agitators threatened their value system angered the voters and made them ready to secede when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 (Thornton 1978).