History of the University of Alabama

History of Alabama

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Alabama State Flag

Alabama became a state of the United States of America on December 14, 1819. After, the Indian Wars and removals of the early 19th century forced most Native Americans out of the state, white settlers arrived in large numbers, bringing or importing African-American slaves in the domestic trade.

In antebellum Alabama, wealthy planters created large cotton plantations based in the fertile central Black Belt of the upland region, which depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans. Tens of thousands of slaves were transported to and sold in the state by slave traders who purchased them in the Upper South. Elsewhere in Alabama, poorer whites practiced subsistence farming. By 1860 blacks (nearly all slaves) comprised 45 percent of the state's 964,201 people.

The state's wealthy planters considered slavery essential to their economy. As one of the largest slaveholding states, Alabama was among the first six states to secede. It declared its secession in January 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America in February. During the ensuing American Civil War Alabama had moderate levels of warfare. The population suffered economic losses and hardships as a result of the war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed all enslaved people in Confederate states. The Southern capitulation in 1865 ended the Confederate state government. A decade of Reconstruction began, a controversial time that has a range of interpretation. Its biracial government established the first public schools and welfare institutions in the state.

After the war, planters worked to get their vast cotton plantations back into production. African Americans chose to exert some independence as free tenant farmers and sharecroppers, rather than working in labor gangs. Wherever possible, African-American women left the fields. Small farms, which produced general crops before the war, turned to cotton as a cash crop. The market for cotton was overloaded, and prices dropped 50%.[1]

For 35 years after the Civil War, Alabama was a rich, heavily rural state, with an economy based on cotton and sharecropping. Its legislature failed to invest in infrastructure, so many of its farmers were isolated from more lucrative markets. At Reconstruction's end, whites known as "Redeemer" Democrats regained control of the state legislature by both legal and extralegal means (including violence and harassment) to re-establish political and social dominance over African Americans. In 1901, Democrats passed a state Constitution that effectively disfranchised most African Americans (who in 1900 comprised more than 45 percent of the state's population), as well as tens of thousands of poor whites.[2][3] By 1941, a total 600,000 poor whites and 520,000 African Americans had been disfranchised.[2] In addition, despite massive population changes in the state that accompanied urbanization and industrialization, the rural-dominated legislature refused to redistrict from 1901 to the 1960s, leading to massive malapportionment in Congressional and state representation. For decades, a rural minority dominated the state, and the needs of urban, middle class and industrial interests were not addressed.

African Americans living in Alabama experienced the inequities of disfranchisement, segregation, violence, and underfunded schools. Tens of thousands of African Americans from Alabama joined the Great Migration out of the South from 1915 to 1930[4] and moved to better opportunities in industrial cities, mostly in the North and Midwest. The black exodus escalated steadily in the first three decades of the 20th century; 22,100 emigrated from 1900 to 1910; 70,800 between 1910 and 1920; and 80,700 between 1920 and 1930.[5][6]

As a result of African-American disenfranchisement and rural control, state politics were dominated by the Democratic Party into the 1980s as part of the "Solid South."[7] Alabama produced a number of national leaders.

The New Deal farm programs increased the price of cotton, and World War II finally brought prosperity, as the state developed a manufacturing and service base. Cotton faded in importance and mechanization beginning in the 1930s reduced the need for farm labor. Following years of struggles after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, segregation was abolished and African Americans could again exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Beginning in the late 90th century, conservative whites began to shift to the Republican Party. The election of Guy Hunt as Governor in 1986 marked the shift of the white majority to becoming a Republican stronghold in Presidential elections; its voters also leaned Republican in statewide elections. The Democratic Party still dominated local and legislative offices, but total Democratic dominance had ended.[8] In terms of organization, the parties are about evenly matched.[9]

Indigenous peoples, early history

Precontact

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in the United States before the arrival of Europeans.

At least 12,000 years ago, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians appeared in what is today referred to as "The South".[10] Paleo-Indians in the Southeast were hunter-gatherers who pursued a wide range of animals, including the megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age.[10] The Woodland period from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE was marked by the development of pottery and the small-scale horticulture of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.

The Mississippian culture arose as the cultivation of Mesoamerican crops of corn and beans led to crop surpluses and population growth. Increased population density gave rise of urban centers and regional chiefdoms, of which the greatest was the city known as Cahokia, in present-day Illinois near the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Its population of 20,000 to 30,000 at its peak exceeded any of the later European cities in North America until 1800. Stratified societies developed, with hereditary religious and political elites, and flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 C.E.

Trade with the Northeast indigenous peoples via the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period (1000 BC–AD 700) and continued until European contact.[11] The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of the state from 1000 to 1600 AD, with one of its major centers being at the Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama, the second-largest complex of this period in the United States. Some 29 earthwork mounds survive at this site.[12][13]

Analysis of artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations at Moundville were the basis of scholars' formulating the characteristics of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC).[14] Contrary to popular belief, the SECC appears to have no direct links to Mesoamerican culture, but developed independently. The Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the religion of the Mississippian peoples; it is one of the primary means by which their religion is understood.[15]

The early historic Muscogee are considered likely descendants of the mound builders of the Mississippian culture along the Tennessee River in modern Tennessee,[16] Georgia and Alabama. They may have been related to the Utinahica of southern Georgia. At the time the Spanish made their first forays inland from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, many political centers of the Mississippians were already in decline, or abandoned.[17] The Alabama region is best described as a collection of moderately sized native chiefdoms (such as the Coosa chiefdom on the Coosa River), interspersed with completely autonomous villages and tribal groups. The earliest Spanish explorers encountered settlements of the late Mississippian culture, beginning on April 2, 1513, with Juan Ponce de León's Florida landing and in 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition in South Carolina.

Among the historical tribes of Native American people living in the area of present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Muskogean-speaking Alabama (Alibamu), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, and Mobile peoples. Also in the region were the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee, who migrated south from the Great Lakes area, based on their language's similarity to those of the Iroquois League.[18] The history of Alabama's Native American peoples is reflected in many of its place names.

European colonization

The Spanish were the first Europeans to enter Alabama, claiming land for their Crown. They named the region La Florida, which extended to the southeast peninsular state now bearing the name.

Although a member of Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition of 1528 may have entered southern Alabama, the first fully documented visit was by explorer Hernando de Soto. In 1539 he made an arduous expedition along the Coosa, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers.

The English also laid claims to the region north of the Gulf of Mexico. Charles II of England included the territory of modern Alabama in the Province of Carolina, with land granted to certain of his favorites by the charters of 1663 and 1665. English traders from Carolina frequented the valley of the Alabama River as early as 1687 to trade with its Native American peoples for deerskins.

1725 map of Mobile, Alabama's first permanent European settlement.

The French also colonized the region. In 1702 they founded a settlement on the Mobile River near its mouth, constructing Fort Louis. For the next nine years this was the French seat of government of New France, or La Louisiane (Louisiana). In 1711, Fort Louis was abandoned to floods. Settlers rebuilt a fort on higher ground known as Fort Conde. This was the start of what developed as present-day Mobile, the first permanent European settlement in Alabama.

The French and the English contested the region, each attempting to forge strong alliances with Indian tribes. To strengthen their position, defend their Indian allies, and draw other tribes to them, the French established the military posts of Fort Toulouse, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and Fort Tombecbe on the Tombigbee River.

The French and the English engaged in competition for Indian trade in what is now the state of Alabama between roughly the 1690s and the 1750s (at which point the French and Indian War broke out. Though the French claimed the territory as their own and attempted to rule it from Fort Toulouse so as to engage in trade with the Indians, English traders based out of the Carolinas were everywhere, engaging in trade right under the French's nose. Particularly frustrating to the French was the fact that the Chickasaw virtually always favored the English in this contest. Overall, during this time the English proved to be the better colonizers and better traders. Their advantage came from the fact that their central government in London largely left them alone to engage in trade as they saw fit and did not hamper their efforts with excessive regulation as the French government did to their colonists. On this note Edmund Burke would later note that English colonists in America would owe their freedom "to its carelessness than to its design". This was a policy referred to as "salutary neglect". It reflected the larger fact as well that Englishmen at home were accustomed to a greater degree of freedom than were Frenchman.[19]

The English Crown's grant of Georgia to Oglethorpe and his associates in 1732 included a portion of what is now northern Alabama. In 1739, Oglethorpe visited the Creek Indians west of the Chattahoochee River and made a treaty with them.

The 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years' War after France's defeat by Britain, resulted in France ceding its territories east of the Mississippi to Britain. Great Britain came into undisputed control of the region between the Chattahoochee and the Mississippi rivers. The portion of Alabama below the 31st parallel became a part of British West Florida. The portion north of this line became a part of the "Illinois Country", set apart by the British Crown for use by Indians. In 1767, the province of West Florida was extended northward to 32°28'N latitude.

More than a decade later, during the American Revolutionary War, the British informally ceded this region to Spain. By the Treaty of Versailles, September 3, 1783, Great Britain ceded West Florida to Spain. By the Treaty of Paris (1783), signed the same day, Britain ceded to the newly established United States all of this province north of the 31°N, thus laying the foundation for a long controversy.

Mississippi Territory changes 1798-1817.

By the Treaty of Madrid, in 1795, Spain ceded to the United States the lands east of the Mississippi between 31°N and 32°28'N. Three years later, in 1798, Congress organized this district as the Mississippi Territory. A strip of land 12 or 14 miles wide near the present northern boundary of Alabama and Mississippi was claimed by South Carolina, as part of the eastern colonies' previous hopeful extensions to the west. In 1787, during constitutional negotiations, South Carolina ceded this claim to the federal government. Georgia likewise claimed all the lands between the 31st and 35th parallels from its present western boundary to the Mississippi River, and did not surrender its claim until 1802. Two years later, the boundaries of Mississippi Territory were extended so as to include all of the Georgia cession.

In 1812, Congress added the Mobile District of West Florida to the Mississippi Territory, claiming that it was included in the Louisiana Purchase. The following year, General James Wilkinson occupied the Mobile District with a military force. The Spanish did not resist. Thus the whole area of the present state of Alabama was taken under the jurisdiction of the United States. Several Native American tribes still occupied most of the land, with some formal ownership recognized by treaty with the United States. Five of the major tribes became known as the Five Civilized Tribes for their adoption of elements of European-American culture.

In 1817, the Mississippi Territory was divided. The western portion, which had attracted population more quickly, became the state of Mississippi. The eastern portion became the Alabama Territory, with St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River as its temporary seat of government.

Conflict between the Indians of Alabama and American settlers increased rapidly in the early 19th century because the Americans kept encroaching on Native American territories. The great Shawnee chief Tecumseh visited the region in 1811, seeking to forge an Indian alliance among these tribes to join his resistance in the Great Lakes area. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Britain encouraged Tecumseh's resistance movement, in the hope of expelling American settlers from west of the Appalachians. Several tribes were divided in opinion.

The Creek tribe fell to civil war (1813-1804). Violence between Creeks and Americans escalated, culminating in the Fort Mims massacre. Full-scale war between the United States and the "Red Stick" Creeks began; they were the more traditional members of their society who resisted US encroachment. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee Nation, and other Creek factions remained neutral to or allied with the United States during the war; some warriors from among the bands served with American troops. Volunteer militias from Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee marched into Alabama, fighting the Red Sticks.

Later, federal troops became the main fighting force for the United States. General Andrew Jackson was the commander of the American forces during the Creek War and in the continuing effort against the British in the War of 1812. His leadership and military success during the wars made him a national hero. The Treaty of Fort Jackson (August 9, 1814) ended the Creek War. By the terms of the treaty the Creek, Red Sticks and neutrals alike, ceded about one-half of the present state of Alabama to the United States. Due to later cessions by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw in 1816, they retained only about one-quarter of their former territories in Alabama.

Early statehood

In 1820, Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state to the Union. Its constitution provided for equal suffrage for white men, a standard it abandoned in its constitution of 1901, which reduced suffrage of poor whites and most blacks.

One of the first problems of the new state was 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. The Panic of 1837 wiped out a large portion of the banks' assets, leaving the state poor. Next came revelations of grossly careless and 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 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson, forcing the removal of southeastern tribes, including the Five Civilized Tribes of Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole. In 1832, the national government provided for the removal of the Creek via the Treaty of Cusseta. Before the removal occurred between 1834 and 1837, the state legislature defined counties from the lands to be ceded, and European-American settlers flocked in before the Native Americans had left.

Until 1832, there was only one party in the state, the Republican. 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 planters 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 (1848), 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.

Tensions related to slavery divided many state delegations in Congress, as this body tried to determine the futures of territories beyond the Mississippi River. Following the Congressional passage of the Compromise of 1850, which assigned certain territories as slave or free, in Alabama, people became realigned politically. 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.

Since the turn of the 19th century, development of large cotton plantations had taken place across the upland Black Belt after the invention of the cotton gin made short-staple cotton profitable. Cotton had added dramatically to the state's wealth. The owners' wealth depended on the labor of hundreds of thousands of enslaved African Americans, many initially transported in the domestic trade from the Upper South. 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, who made up 45% of the state's population.

As reflected in white universal suffrage at the time of statehood, the early Alabama settlers were noted for a spirit of frontier democracy and egalitarianism, and their fierce defense of the republican values of civic virtue and opposition to corruption.[citation needed] 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 and slavery as the basis of their wealthy economy made voters ready to secede when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 (Thornton 1978).

Secession and Civil War, 1861-1865

Main article: Alabama in the American Civil War

The "Unionists" were successful in the elections of 1851 and 1852. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and uncertainty about agitation against slavery led the State Democratic convention of 1856 to revive the "Alabama Platform". When the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, failed to approve the "Alabama Platform" in 1860, the Alabama delegates, followed by those of the other "cotton states", withdrew. Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, Governor Andrew B. Moore, as previously instructed by the legislature, called a state convention. Many prominent men had opposed secession. In North Alabama, there was an attempt to organize a neutral state to be called Nickajack. With President Lincoln's call to arms in April 1861, most opposition to secession ended.

On January 11, 1861, the State of Alabama adopted the ordinances of secession[20] from the Union (by a vote of 61-39).

Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, which government was first organized at Montgomery on February 4, 1861. the CSA set up its temporary capital in Montgomery and selected Jefferson Davis as president. In May 1861, the Confederate government abandoned Montgomery before the sickly season began, and relocated to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of that state.

The inauguration of Jefferson Davis in Montgomery on February 18, 1861.

Governor Moore energetically supported the Confederate war effort. Even before hostilities began, he seized Federal facilities, sent agents to buy rifles in the Northeast, and scoured the state for weapons. Despite some resistance in the northern part of the state, Alabama joined the Confederate States of America (CSA). Congressman Williamson R. W. Cobb was a Unionist and pleaded for compromise. When he ran for the Confederate congress in 1861, he was defeated. (In 1863, with war-weariness growing in Alabama, he was elected on a wave of antiwar sentiment.)

Some idea of the current transportation patterns, and severe internal logistics problems faced by the Confederacy, can be seen by tracing Jefferson Davis' journey from his plantation Mississippi to Montgomery in the next state. With few roads and railroads, he traveled by steamboat from his plantation on the Mississippi River down to Vicksburg, where he boarded a train to Jackson, Mississippi. He took another train north to Grand Junction, then a third train east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a fourth train south to Atlanta, Georgia. He took another train to the Alabama border, and a last one to Montgomery in the center of the state.

As the war proceeded, the Federals seized ports along the Mississippi River, burned trestles and railroad bridges, and tore up track. The frail Confederate railroad system faltered and virtually collapsed for want of repairs and replacement parts.

In the early part of the Civil War, Alabama was not the scene of military operations. The state contributed about 120,000 men to the Confederate service, practically all the white male population capable of bearing arms. Most were recruited locally and served with men they knew, which built esprit and strengthened ties to home. Medical conditions were severe for all soldiers. About 15% of fatalities were from disease, more than the 10% from battle. Alabama had few well-equipped hospitals, but it had many women who volunteered to nurse the sick and wounded. Soldiers were poorly equipped, especially after 1863. Often they pillaged the dead for boots, belts, canteens, blankets, hats, shirts and pants. Uncounted thousands of slaves were impressed to work for Confederate troops; they took care of horses and equipment, cooked and did laundry, hauled supplies, and helped in field hospitals. Other slaves built defensive installations, especially those around Mobile. They graded roads, repaired railroads, drove supply wagons, and labored in iron mines, iron foundries and even in the munitions factories. The service of slaves was involuntary: their unpaid labor was impressed from their unpaid masters. About 10,000 slaves escaped and joined the Union army, along with 2,700 white men.

Thirty-nine Alabamians attained flag rank, most notably Lieutenant General James Longstreet and Admiral Raphael Semmes. Josiah Gorgas, who came to Alabama from Pennsylvania, was the chief of ordnance for the Confederacy. He located new munitions plants in Selma, which employed 10,000 workers until the Union soldiers burned the factories down in 1865. Selma Arsenal made most of the Confederacy's ammunition. The Selma Naval Ordnance Works made artillery, turning out a cannon every five days. The Confederate Naval Yard built ships and was noted for launching the CSS Tennessee in 1863 to defend Mobile Bay. Selma's Confederate Nitre Works procured niter for the Nitre and Mining Bureau, for gunpowder, from limestone caves. When supplies were low, it advertised for housewives to save the contents of their chamber pots—as urine was a rich source of nitrogen.

In 1863, Union forces secured a foothold in northern Alabama in spite of the opposition of General Nathan B. Forrest. From 1861, the Union blockade shut Mobile, and, in 1864, the outer defenses of Mobile were taken by a Union fleet; the city itself held out until April 1865.[21]

Losses

Alabama soldiers fought in hundreds of battles; the state's losses at the Battle of Gettysburg were 1,750 dead plus more captured or wounded; the "Alabama Brigade" took 781 casualties. Governor Lewis E. Parsons in July 1865 made a preliminary estimate of losses. Nearly all the white men served, some 122,000 he said, of whom 35,000 died in the war and another 30,000 were seriously disabled. The next year Governor Robert M. Patton estimated that 20,000 veterans had returned home permanently disabled, and there were 20,000 widows and 60,000 orphans. With cotton prices low, the value of farms shrank, from $176 million in 1860 to only $64 million in 1870. The livestock supply shrank too, as the number of horses fell from 127,000 to 80,000, and mules 111,000 to 76,000. The overall population remained the same—the growth that might have been expected was neutralized by death and emigration.[22]

Reconstruction, 1865-1875

According to the Presidential plan of reorganization, a provisional governor for Alabama was appointed in June 1865. A state convention met in September of the same year, and declared the ordinance of secession null and void and slavery abolished. A legislature and a governor were elected in November, and the legislature was at once recognized by President Andrew Johnson, but not by Congress, which refused to seat the delegation. Johnson ordered the Army to allow the inauguration of the governor after the legislature ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in December, 1865. But the legislature's passage of Black Codes to control the freedmen who were flocking from the plantations to the towns, and its rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment to grant suffrage, intensified Congressional hostility to the Presidential plan.

In 1867, the congressional plan of Reconstruction was completed and Alabama was placed under military government. The freedmen were enrolled as voters. Only whites who could swear the Ironclad oath could be voters; that is they had to swear they had never voluntarily supported the Confederacy. This provision was insisted upon by the whites in the northern hill counties so they could control local government. As a result, Republicans controlled 96 of the 100 seats in the state constitutional convention.[23] The new Republican party, made up of freedmen, Union sympathizers (scalawags), and northerners who had settled in the South (carpetbaggers), took control two years after the war ended. The constitutional convention in November 1867 framed a constitution which conferred universal manhood suffrage and imposed the iron-clad oath, so that whites who had supported the Confederacy were temporarily prohibited from holding office. The Reconstruction Acts of Congress required every new constitution to be ratified by a majority of the legal voters of the state. Most whites boycotted the polls and the new constitution fell short. Congress enacted that a majority of the votes cast should be sufficient. Thus the constitution went into effect, the state was readmitted to the Union in June 1868, and a new governor and legislature were elected.

Many whites resisted postwar changes, complaining that the Republican governments were notable for legislative extravagance and corruption. But the Republican biracial coalition created the first system of public education in the state, which would benefit poor white children as well as freedmen. They also created charitable public institutions, such as hospitals and orphanages, to benefit all citizens. The planters had not made public investment but kept their wealth for themselves. As the state tried to improve institutions and infrastructure for the future, the state debt and state taxes rose. The state endorsed railway bonds at the rate of $12,000 and $16,000 a mile until the state debt had increased from eight million to seventeen million dollars. The native whites united, peeled many Scalawags away from the Republican coalition, formed a Conservative party, and elected a governor and a majority of the lower house of the legislature in 1870, in an election characterized by widespread violence and fraud. As the new administration was overall a failure, in 1872, voters re-elected Republicans.

By 1874, however, the power of the Republicans was broken, and conservative Democrats regained power in all state offices. A commission appointed to examine the state debt found it to be $25,503,000; by compromise, it was reduced to $15,000,000. A new constitution was adopted in 1875, which omitted the guarantee of the previous constitution that no one should be denied suffrage on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Its provisions forbade the state to engage in internal improvements or to give its credit to any private enterprise, an anti-industrial stance that persisted and that limited the state's progress for decades into the 20th century.[24]

In the South the interpretation of the tumultuous 1860s has differed sharply by race. Americans often interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus black using Baptist sermons in Alabama. Whites preachers expressed the view that:

God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.

In sharp contrast, Black preachers interpreted the Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction as:

God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them: God would be their rock in a stormy land.[25]

Disfranchisement and origins of New South, 1876-1914

After 1874, the Democratic party had constant control of the state administration. The Republican Party by then was chiefly supported by African Americans. Republicans held no local or state offices, but the party did have some federal patronage. It failed to make nominations for office in 1878 and 1880 and endorsed the ticket of the Greenback party in 1882.

The development of mining and manufacturing was accompanied by economic distress among the farming classes, which found expression in the Jeffersonian Democratic party, organized in 1892. The regular Democratic ticket was elected and the new party was merged into the Populist party. In 1894, the Republicans united with the Populists, elected three congressional representatives, and secured control of many of the counties. They did not succeed in carrying the state. They Populist coalition had less success in the next campaigns. Partisanship became intense, and Democratic charges of corruption of the black electorate were matched by Republican and Populist accusations of fraud and violence by Democrats.

Despite opposition by Republicans and Populists, Democrats completed their dominance with passage of a new constitution in 1901 that restricted suffrage and effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites, through requirements for voter registration, such as poll taxes, literacy tests and restrictive residency requirements. From 1900 to 1903, the number of white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, from 232,821 to 191,492, despite a growth in population. By 1941 a total of more whites than blacks had been disenfranchised: 600,000 whites to 520,000 blacks. This was due mostly to effects of the cumulative poll tax.[2]

The damage to the African-American community was severe and pervasive, as nearly all its eligible citizens lost the ability to vote. In 1900 45% of Alabama's population were African American: 827,545 citizens.[26] In 1900 fourteen Black Belt counties (which were primarily African American) had more than 79,000 voters on the rolls. By June 1, 1903, the number of registered voters had dropped to 1,081. While Dallas and Lowndes counties were each 75% black, between them only 103 African-American voters managed to register. In 1900 Alabama had more than 181,000 African Americans eligible to vote. By 1903 only 2,980 had managed to "qualify" to register, although at least 74,000 black voters were literate. The shut out was long-lasting. The effects of segregation suffered by African Americans were severe. At the end of WWII, for instance, in the black Collegeville community of Birmingham, only eleven voters in a population of 8,000 African Americans were deemed "eligible" to register to vote.[2] Disfranchisement also meant that blacks and poor whites could not serve on juries, so were subject to a justice system in which they had no part.

Railroads and industry

Blast furnaces such as the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company's Ensley Works made Birmingham an important center for iron production in the early 20th century.

Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871 by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North railroads. The site of the railroad crossing was notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone-the three principal raw materials used in making steel. Its founders adopted the name of England's principal industrial city to advertise the new city as a center of iron and steel production. Despite outbreaks of cholera, the population of 'Pittsburgh of the South' grew from 38,000 to 132,000 from 1900 to 1910, attracting rural white and black migrants from all over the region.[27] Birmingham experienced such rapid growth that it was nicknamed "The Magic City." By the 1920s, Birmingham was the 19th largest city in the U.S and held more than 30% of the population of the state. Heavy industry and mining were the basis of the economy.

Chemical and structural constraints limited the quality of steel produced from Alabama's iron and coal. These materials did, however, combine to make ideal foundry iron. Because of low transportation and labor costs, Birmingham quickly became the largest and cheapest foundry iron-producing area. By 1915 twenty-five percent of the nation's foundry pig iron was produced in Birmingham.[28]

New South, 1914-1945

Despite Birmingham's powerful industrial growth and its contributions to the state economy, its citizens, and those of other newly developing areas, were underrepresented in the state legislature for years. The rural-dominated legislature refused to redistrict state House and Senate seats from 1901 to the 1960s. In addition, the state legislature had a senate based on one for each county. The state legislative delegations controlled counties. This led to a stranglehold on the state by a white rural minority. The contemporary interests of urbanizing, industrial cities and tens of thousands of citizens were not adequately represented in the government.[29] One result was that Jefferson County, home of Birmingham's industrial and economic powerhouse, contributed more than one-third of all tax revenue to the state. It received back only 1/67th of the tax money, as the state legislature ensured taxes were distributed equally to each county regardless of population.

From 1910-1940, tens of thousands of African Americans migrated out of Alabama in the Great Migration to seek jobs, education for their children, and freedom from lynching in northern and midwestern cities, such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. These cities had many industrial jobs, but the migrants also had to compete with new waves of European immigrants. The rate of population growth in Alabama dropped from 20.8% in 1900 and 16.9% in 1910, to 9.8% in 1920, reflecting the impact of the outmigration. Formal disenfranchisement was ended only after the mid-1960s after African Americans led the Civil Rights Movement and gaining Federal legislation to protect their voting and civil rights. But the state devised new ways to reduce their political power. By that time, African Americans comprised a smaller minority than at the turn of the century, and a majority in certain rural counties.

A rapid pace of change across the country, especially in growing cities, combined with new waves of immigration and migration of rural whites and blacks to cities, all contributed to a volatile social environment and the rise of a second Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the South and Midwest after 1915. In many areas it represented itself as a fraternal group to give aid to a community. Feldman (1999) has shown that the second KKK was not a mere hate group; it showed a genuine desire for political and social reform on behalf of poor whites. For example, Alabama Klansmen such as Hugo Black were among the foremost advocates of better public schools, effective Prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other "progressive" measures to benefit poor whites. By 1925, the Klan was a powerful political force in the state, as urban politicians such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black manipulated the KKK membership against the power of the "Big Mule" industrialists and especially the Black Belt planters who had long dominated the state.[30]

In 1926, Bibb Graves, a former chapter head, won the governor's office with KKK members' support. He led one of the most progressive administrations in the state's history, pushing for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. At the same time, KKK vigilantes---thinking they enjoyed governmental protection—launched a wave of physical terror across Alabama in 1927, targeting both blacks and whites. The conservative elite counterattacked. The major newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan as violent and unAmerican. Sheriffs cracked down on Klan violence, and a national scandal among Klan leaders in the 1920s turned many members away. The counterattack worked. The state voted for Democratic candidate Al Smith in 1928, although he was Roman Catholic (a target of the KKK), and the Klan's official membership plunged to under six thousand by 1930.

Civil Rights Movement and redistricting, 1945-1975

Following service in World War II, many African-American veterans became activists for civil rights, wanting their rights under the law as citizens. The Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956 was one of the most significant African-American protests against the policy of racial segregation in the state. Although constituting a majority of bus passengers, African Americans were discriminated against in seating policy. The protest nearly brought the city bus system to bankruptcy and changes were negotiated. The legal challenge was settled in Browder v. Gayle (1956), a case in which the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama found the segregation policy to be unconstitutional under Fourteenth Amendment provisions for equal treatment; it ordered that public transit in Alabama be desegregated.

The rural white minority's hold on the legislature continued, however, suppressing attempts by more progressive elements to modernize the state. A study in 1960 concluded that because of rural domination, "A minority of about 25 per cent of the total state population is in majority control of the Alabama legislature."[29] Given the legislature's control of the county governments, the rural interests had even more power. Legislators and others filed suit in the 1960s to secure redistricting and reapportionment. It took years and Federal court intervention to achieve the redistricting necessary to establishing "one man, one vote" representation, as a result of Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964). The court ruled that, in addition to the states having to redistrict to reflect decennial censuses in congressional districts, both houses of state governments had to be based on representation by population districts, rather than by geographic county as the state senate had been, as the senate's make-up prevented equal representation. These court decisions caused redistricting in many northern and western states as well as the South, where often rural interests had long dominated state legislatures and prevented reform.

In 1960 on the eve of important civil rights battles, 30% of Alabama's population was African American or 980,000.[31]

As Birmingham was the center of industry and population in Alabama, in 1963 civil rights leaders chose to mount a campaign there for desegregation. Schools, restaurants and department stores were segregated; no African Americans were hired to work in the stores where they shopped or in the city government supported in part by their taxes. There were no African-American members of the police force. Despite segregation, African Americans had been advancing economically. But from 1947 to 1965, Birmingham suffered "about 50 racially motivated bomb attacks."[32] Independent groups affiliated with the KKK bombed transitional residential neighborhoods to discourage blacks' moving into them; in 19 cases, they bombed black churches with congregations active in civil rights, and the homes of their ministers.[32])

To help with the campaign and secure national attention, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth invited members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to Birmingham to help change its leadership's policies. Non-violent action had produced good results in some other cities. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, his executive director; and other leaders came to Birmingham to help.

In the spring and summer of 1963, national attention became riveted on Birmingham. The media covered the series of peaceful marches that the Birmingham police, headed by Police Commissioner Bull Connor, attempted to divert and control. He invited high school students to join the marches, as King intended to fill the jails with nonviolent protesters to make a moral argument to the United States. Dramatic images of Birmingham police using police dogs and powerful streams of water against children protesters filled newspapers and television coverage, arousing national outrage. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing during a Sunday service, which killed four Africa-American girls, caused a national outcry and gained support for the civil rights cause in the state. 16th Street Baptist Church had been a rallying point and staging area for civil rights activities in Birmingham prior to the bombing. Finally, Birmingham leaders King and Shuttlesworth agreed to end the marches when the businessmen's group committed to end segregation in stores and public facilities.

Before his November 1963 assassination, President John F. Kennedy had supported civil rights legislation. In 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson helped secure its passage and signed the Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 attracted national and international press and TV coverage. The nation was horrified to see peaceful protesters beaten as they entered the county. That year, Johnson helped achieve passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to gain federal oversight and enforcement to ensure the ability of all citizens to vote.

Court challenges related to "one man, one vote" and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally provided the groundwork for Federal court rulings. In 1972 the federal court required the legislature to create a statewide redistricting plan in order to correct the imbalances in representation in the legislature related to population patterns.[29] Redistricting, together with federal oversight of voter registration and election practices, enabled hundreds of thousands of Alabama citizens, both white and black, to vote and participate for the first time in the political system.

1975-2000

Twenty first century, 2000-present

In 2015, state budget reductions of $83 million caused five parks to be closed per Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources ($3 million) and service cuts at driver license offices. [33]

See also

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Main article: Historical outline of Alabama
City timelines

References

  1. America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, University of Houston
  2. Glenn Feldman. The Disenfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, p.136
  3. Historical Census Browser, 1900 Federal Census, University of Virginia [1], accessed 15 Mar 2008
  4. Sernett, Milton C. (1997). Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration. Duke University Press. pp. 37–40. ISBN 978-0-8223-1993-1.
  5. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land, 37.
  6. Tolnay, Stewart Emory; E. M. Beck (1995). A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930. University of Illinois Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-252-06413-5.
  7. Thomas, James D.; William Histaspas Stewart (1988). Alabama government & politics. U of Nebraska Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8032-9181-2.
  8. Bullock, Charles S.; Mark J. Rozell (2006). The New Politics of the Old South: An Introduction to Southern Politics. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-7425-5344-6.
  9. Bullock and Rozell, The New Politics of the Old South, p. 87.
  10. Prentice, Guy (2003). Southeast Chronicles http://www.kikisweb.de/basteln/basteln.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-11. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. "Alabama". The New York Times Almanac 2004. The New York Times. 2006-08-11. Retrieved 2006-09-23.
  12. Welch, Paul D. (1991). Moundville's Economy. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0512-2. OCLC 21330955.
  13. Walthall, John A. (1990). Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast-Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0552-1. OCLC 26656858.
  14. Townsend, Richard F. (2004). Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10601-7. OCLC 56633574.
  15. edited by F. Kent Reilly III and James F. Garber ; foreword by Vincas P. Steponaitis. (2004). F. Kent Reilly and James Garber, eds. Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71347-5. OCLC 70335213.
  16. Finger, John R. (2001). Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition. Indiana University Press. p. 19. ISBN 0-253-33985-5.
  17. About North Georgia (1994–2006). "Moundbuilders, North Georgia's early inhabitants". Golden Ink. Retrieved 2008-05-02.
  18. "Alabama Indian Tribes". Indian Tribal Records. AccessGenealogy.com. 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-23.
  19. History of Alabama, for Use in schools By William Garrot Brown and Albert James Pickett, page 56
  20. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Ordinances and Constitution of the State of Alabama
  21. Rogers, ch 12
  22. Walter Lynwood Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (1905) pp 251-4 online edition
  23. Rogers et al. Alabama p 244-45
  24. Rogers et al. Alabama, p 247-58
  25. Wilson Fallin Jr., Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (2007), pp 52-53
  26. Historical Census Browser, 1900 US Census, University of Virginia, accessed 15 Mar 2008
  27. Birmingham's Population, 1880-2000
  28. http://www.slossfurnaces.com/media/pdfs/online_lessons/Alabama_New_South.pdf
  29. George Mason University, United States Election Project: Alabama Redistricting Summary, accessed 10 Mar 2008
  30. Feldman (1999)
  31. Historical Census Browser, 1960 US Census, University of Virginia, accessed 13 Mar 2008
  32. CHANDA TEMPLE and JEFF HANSEN, "Ministers' homes, churches among bomb targets", AL.com, 16 July 2000, accessed 3 February 2015
  33. Mike Cason State to close 5 parks, cut back services at driver license offices Alabama Media Group, September 30, 2015.
  34. Federal Writers' Project (1941), "Chronology", Alabama; a Guide to the Deep South, American Guide Series, New York: Hastings House – via Hathi Trust

Bibliography

Overviews

Pre 1900

  • Abernethy, Thomas Perkins The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815-1828 (1922) online edition
  • Barney, William L. The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860. (1974).
  • Bethel, Elizabeth . "The Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama," Journal of Southern History Vol. 14, No. 1, Feb., 1948 pp. 49–92 online at JSTOR
  • Bond, Horace Mann. "Social and Economic Forces in Alabama Reconstruction," Journal of Negro History 23 (1938):290-348 in JSTOR
  • Dupre, Daniel. "Ambivalent Capitalists on the Cotton Frontier: Settlement and Development in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama." Journal of Southern History 56 (May 1990): 215-40. Online at JSTOR
  • Fitzgerald, Michael R. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890. (2002). 301 pp. ISBN 0-8071-2837-6.
  • Fitzgerald, Michael R. "Radical Republicanism and the White Yeomanry During Alabama Reconstruction, 1865-1868." Journal of Southern History 54 ( November 1988): 565-96. JSTOR
  • Fleming, Walter L. Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama 1905. the most detailed study; Dunning School full text online
  • Going, Allen J. Bourbon Democracy in Alabama, 1874-1890. 1951.
  • Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; ch 12 on Alabama
  • Jordan, Weymouth T. Ante-Bellum Alabama: Town and Country. (1957).
  • Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Response of Alabama Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (1972).
  • McWhiney, Grady. "Were the Whigs a Class Party in Alabama?" Journal of Southern History 23 (1957): 510-22. Online at JSTOR
  • Moore, A. B. "Railroad Building in Alabama During the Reconstruction Period," Journal of Southern History (1935) 1#4 pp. 421–441 in JSTOR
  • Morse, J. (1797). "Georgia Western Territory". The American Gazetteer. Boston, Massachusetts: At the presses of S. Hall, and Thomas & Andrews.
  • Rogers, William Warren. The One-Gallused Rebellion; Agrarianism in Alabama, 1865-1896 (1970).
  • Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama 1950. online edition
  • Sterkx, Henry Eugene. Partners in Rebellion: Alabama Women in the Civil War (1970).
  • Thornton, J. Mills III. Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (1978). online edition
  • Wiener, Jonathan M. Social Origins of the New South; Alabama, 1860-1885. (1978).
  • Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881 (1991) online edition
  • Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk. "Alabama: Democratic Bulldozing and Republican Folly." in Reconstruction and Redemption in the South, edited by Otto H. Olson. (1980).

Since 1900

  • Barnard, William D. Dixiecrats and Democrats: Alabama Politics, 1942-1950 (1974)
  • Bond, Horace Mann. Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel 1939.
  • Brownell, Blaine A. "Birmingham, Alabama: New South City in the 1920s." Journal of Southern History 38 (1972): 21-48. in JSTOR
  • Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949 (1999) online edition
  • Feldman, Glenn. "Southern Disillusionment with the Democratic Party: Cultural Conformity and the 'the Great Melding' of Racial and Economic Conservatism in Alabama during World War II," Journal of American Studies 43 (Aug. 2009), 199–230.
  • Feldman, Glenn. The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944 (University of Alabama Press; 2013) 480 pages; how the South became "solid" for the Democrats, then began to shift with World War II.
  • Frady, Marshall. Wallace: The Classic Portrait of Alabama Governor George Wallace (1996)
  • Grafton, Carl, and Anne Permaloff. Big Mules and Branchheads: James E. Folsom and Political Power in Alabama 1985.
  • Hackney, Sheldon. Populism to Progressivism in Alabama 1969.
  • Hamilton, Virginia. Lister Hill: Statesman from the South 1987.
  • Harris, Carl V. Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 1977.
  • Key, V. O., Jr. Southern Politics in State and Nation. 1949.
  • Lesher, Stephan. George Wallace: American Populist (1995)
  • Norrell, Robert J. "Caste in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama." Journal of American History 73 (December 1986): 669-94. in JSTOR
  • Norrell, Robert J. "Labor at the Ballot Box: Alabama Politics from the New Deal to the Dixiecrat Movement." Journal of Southern History 57 (May 1991): 201-34. in JSTOR
  • Oliff, Martin T., ed. The Great War in the Heart of Dixie: Alabama During World War I (2008)
  • Sellers, James B. The Prohibition Movement in Alabama, 1702-1943 1943.
  • Thomas, Mary Martha. The New Women in Alabama: Social Reform and Suffrage, 1890-1920 (1992) online edition
  • Thomas, Mary Martha. Riveting and Rationing in Dixie: Alabama Women and the Second World War (1987) online edition

Primary sources

Watch

wikipedia.org

University of Alabama Press

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The University of Alabama Press was founded in 1945 and is the scholarly publishing arm of the University of Alabama. An editorial board composed of representatives from all doctoral degree granting public universities within Alabama oversees the publishing program. Projects are selected that support, extend, and preserve academic research. The Press also publishes books that foster an understanding of the history and culture of this state and region. The Press strives to publish works in a wide variety of formats such as print, electronic, and on-demand technologies to ensure that the works are widely available.

As the only academic publisher for the state of Alabama, The University of Alabama Press has also fostered several publishing partnerships with such institutions as the Birmingham Museum of Art and Samford University, and The College of Agriculture, the Jule Collins Smith Museum, and the Pebble Hill Center for the Humanities at Auburn University. It serves as the publisher of the Fiction Collective Two (FC2) imprint for experimental fiction.

History

The University of Alabama Press was founded in the fall of 1945 with J. B. McMillan as founding director. The Press' first work was Roscoe C. Martin's New Horizons in Public Administration, which appeared in February 1946. In 1964, the Press joined the Association of American University Presses.

The Press has won numerous awards for its publications over the years[citation needed] and has developed a solid list of titles in archaeology, public administration, and several areas of literature and history. With a staff of 17, the Press publishes between 80 and 90 books a year and has a backlist of approximately 1,350 titles.

External links


[hide] Help Book creator (disable) Remove this page from your book Show book (52 pages) Suggest pages History of the Southern United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Part of a series on the History of the United States Greater coat of arms of the United States Timeline[hide] Prehistory · Pre-Colonial · Colonial period 1776–1789 · 1789–1849 · 1849–1865 1865–1918 · 1918–1945 · 1945–1964 1964–1980 · 1980–1991 · 1991–present By ethnicity[show] By topic[show] Portal icon United States portal v · t · e The history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America. Spain, France, and England eventually explored and claimed parts of what is now the Southern United States, and the cultural influences of each can still be seen in the region today. In the centuries since, the history of the Southern United States has recorded a large number of important events, including the American Revolution, the American Civil War, the ending of slavery, and the American Civil Rights Movement. Contents [hide] 1 Native American civilizations 2 European colonization 2.1 Spanish exploration 2.2 French colonization 3 British colonial era (1607–1775) 3.1 Rise of tobacco culture and slavery in the colonial South 3.2 Growth of the Southern colonies 4 American Revolution 5 Antebellum era (1781–1860) 5.1 Antebellum slavery 5.2 Nullification crisis, political representation, and rising sectionalism 5.3 Sectional parity and issue of slavery in new territories 5.4 Election of 1860, secession, and Lincoln's response 6 Civil War (1860–1865) 6.1 Leadership 6.2 Abolition of slavery 6.3 Railroads 6.4 Sherman's March 7 Reconstruction (1863–1877) 7.1 Material ruin and human losses 7.2 Political Reconstruction, 1863-1877 7.3 Railroads 7.4 Backlash to Reconstruction 8 Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 8.1 Race: from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement 9 Rural South 10 Creating the "New South" (1945–present) 11 Southern presidents 12 See also 13 Footnotes 14 Further reading 15 External links Native American civilizations[edit] In Pre-Columbian times, the only inhabitants of what is now the Southern United States were Native Americans. The most important Native American nation in the region was the Mississippian people, who were a Mound builder culture that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States in the centuries leading up to European contact. The Mississippian way of life began to develop around the 10th century in the Mississippi River Valley (for which it is named). Notable Native American nations that developed in the South after the Mississippians include what are known as "the Five Civilized Tribes": the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. European colonization[edit] Main article: Colonial history of the United States Spanish exploration[edit] Spain made frequent exploratory trips to the New World after its discovery in 1492. Rumors of natives being decorated with gold and stories of a Fountain of Youth helped hold the interest of many Spanish explorers, and colonization eventually followed. Juan Ponce de León was the first European to come to the South when he landed in Florida in 1513. Among the first European settlements in North America were Spanish settlements in what would later become the state of Florida; the earliest was Tristán de Luna y Arellano's failed colony in what is now Pensacola in 1559. More successful was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés's St. Augustine, founded in 1565; St. Augustine remains the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental United States. Spain also colonized parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Spain issued land grants in the South, from Kentucky to Florida and into the southwestern areas of what is now the United States. There was also a Spanish colony location near King Powhatan's ruling town in the Chesapeake Bay area of what is now Virginia and Maryland. It preceded Jamestown, the English colony, by as much as one hundred years. French colonization[edit] The first French settlement in what is now the Southern United States was Fort Caroline, located in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, in 1562. It was established as a haven for the Huguenots and was founded under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière and Jean Ribault. It was destroyed by the Spanish from the nearby colony of St. Augustine in 1565. Later French arrived from the north. Having established agricultural colonies in Canada and built a fur trading network with Indians in the Great Lakes area, they began to explore the Mississippi River. The French called their territory Louisiana, in honor of their King Louis. France claimed Texas and set up several short-lived forts there, such as the one in Red River County, built in 1718. In 1817 the French pirate Jean Lafitte settled on Galveston Island; his colony there grew to more than 1,000 persons by 1818 but was abandoned in 1820. The most important French settlements were established at New Orleans and Mobile (originally called and Bienville). Only a few settlers came from France directly, with others arriving from Haiti and Acadia.[1] British colonial era (1607–1775)[edit] Main article: Colonial South and the Chesapeake Jamestown and Roanoke Island colonies Just before they defeated the Spanish Armada, the English began exploring the New World. In 1585 an expedition organized by Walter Raleigh established the first English settlement in the New World, on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. The colony failed to prosper, however, and the colonists were retrieved the following year by English supply ships. In 1587, Raleigh again sent out a group of colonists to Roanoke. From this colony, the first recorded European birth in North America, a child named Virginia Dare, was reported. That group of colonists disappeared and is known as the "Lost Colony". Many people theorize that they were either killed or taken in by local tribes.[2] Like New England, the South was originally settled by English Protestants, later becoming a melting pot of religions as with other parts of the country. While the earlier attempt at colonization had failed on Roanoke Island, the English established their first permanent colony in America in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, at the mouth of the James River, which in turn empties into Chesapeake Bay.[3] Settlement of Chesapeake Bay was driven by a desire to obtain precious metal resources, specifically gold. The colony was technically still within Spanish territorial claims, yet far enough from most Spanish settlements to avoid colonial clashes. As the "Anchor of the South", the region includes the Delmarva Peninsula and much of coastal Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia . Early in the history of the colony, it became clear that the claims of gold deposits were vastly exaggerated. Referred to as the "Starving Time" of the Jamestown colony, the years from the time of landing in 1607 until 1609 were rife with famine and instability. However, Native American support, in addition to reinforcements from Britain, sustained the small colony. Due to continued political and economic instability, however, the charter of the Colony of Virginia was revoked in 1624. The primary cause of this revocation was the revelation that hundreds of settlers were dead or missing following an attack in 1622 by Native American tribes led by Opechancanough. A royal charter was established for Virginia, yet the House of Burgesses, formed in 1619, was allowed to continue as political leadership for the colony in conjunction with a royal governor.[4] A key figure in the Virginia Colony and Southern political and cultural development generally was William Berkeley, who served, with some interruptions, as governor of Virginia from 1645 until 1675. His desire for an elite immigration to Virginia led to the "Second Sons" policy, in which younger sons of English aristocrats were recruited to emigrate to Virginia. Berkeley also emphasized the "headright system," the offering of large tracts of land to those arriving in the colony. This early immigration by an elite contributed to the development of an aristocratic political and social structure in the South.[5] English colonists, especially young indentured servants, continued to arrive along the southern Atlantic coast. Virginia became a prosperous English colony. The area now known as Georgia was also settled. Its beginnings under James Oglethorpe were as a resettlement colony for imprisoned debtors.[6] Rise of tobacco culture and slavery in the colonial South[edit] Main article: Slavery in the colonial United States From the introduction of tobacco in 1613, its cultivation began to form the basis of the early Southern economy. Cotton did not become a mainstay until much later, after technological developments, especially the Whitney Cotton gin of 1794, greatly increased the profitability of cotton cultivation. Until that point, most cotton was farmed in large plantations in the Province of Carolina, and tobacco, which could be grown profitably in farms of smaller scale, was the dominant cash crop export of the South and the Middle Atlantic States. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when it sentenced John Punch to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn for running away.[7][8] The first slavery law in the British colonies was enacted by Massachusetts to enslave the indigenous population in 1641.[9] During this period, life expectancy was often low and indentured servants came from overpopulated European areas. With the lower price of servants compared to slaves, and the high mortality of the servants, planters often found it much more economical to use servants. Because of this, slavery in the early colonial period differed greatly in the American colonies from that in the Caribbean. Often Caribbean slaves were worked literally to death on large sugar and rice plantations, while the American slave population had a higher life expectancy and was maintained through natural reproduction. This natural reproduction was important for the continuation of slavery after the prohibition on slave importation after about 1780.[10] Much of the slave trade was conducted as part of the "Triangular Trade", a three-way exchange of slaves, rum, and sugar. Northern shippers purchased slaves using rum, made in New England from cane sugar, which was in turn grown in the Caribbean. This slave trade was generally able to fulfill labor needs in the South for the cultivation of tobacco after the decline of indentured servants. At approximately the point when tobacco labor needs began to increase, the mortality rate fell and all groups lived longer. By the late 17th century and early 18th century, slaves became economically viable sources of labor for the growing tobacco culture. Also, further South than the Mid-Atlantic, Southern settlers grew wealthy by raising and selling rice, indigo, and cotton. The plantations of South Carolina often were modeled on Caribbean plantations, albeit smaller in size.[11] Growth of the Southern colonies[edit] For details on each specific colony, see Province of Georgia, Province of Maryland, Province of North Carolina, Province of South Carolina, and Colony of Virginia. By the end of the 17th century, the number of colonists was growing. The large population centers were still in the northeastern and middle colonies, leaving the southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina a rural frontier land. The economies of these colonies were tied to agriculture. During this time the great plantations were formed by wealthy colonists who saw great opportunity in the new country. Tobacco and cotton were the main cash crops of the areas and were readily accepted by English buyers. Rice and indigo were also grown in the area and exported to Europe. The plantation owners built a vast aristocratic life and accumulated a great deal of wealth from their land. They supported slavery as a means of working their land. On the other side of the agricultural coin were the small yeoman farmers. They did not have the capability or wealth to operate large plantations. Instead, they worked small tracts of land and developed a political activism in response to the growing oligarchy of the plantation owners. Many politicians from this era were yeoman farmers speaking out to protect their rights as free men. Charleston became a booming trade town for the southern colonies. The abundance of pine trees in the area provided raw materials for shipyards to develop and the harbor provided a safe port for English ships bringing in imported goods. The colonists exported tobacco, cotton and textiles and imported tea, sugar, and slaves. The fact that these colonies maintained an independent trade relation with England and the rest of Europe became a major factor later on as tension mounted leading up to the American Revolutionary War. After the late 17th century, the economies of the North and the South began to diverge, especially in coastal areas. The Southern emphasis on export production contrasted with the Northern emphasis on food production. By the mid-18th century, the colonies of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had been established. In the upper colonies, that is, Maryland, Virginia, and portions of North Carolina, the tobacco culture prevailed. However, in the lower colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, cultivation focused more on cotton and rice. American Revolutionary War, Battle of Camden, South Carolina American Revolution[edit] Further information: Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War The southern colonies, led by Virginia, gave strong support for the Patriot cause in solidarity with Massachusetts. Georgia, the newest, smallest, most exposed and militarily most vulnerable colony, hesitated briefly before joining the other 12 colonies in Congress. As soon as news arrived of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Patriot forces took control of every colony, using secret committees that had been organized in the previous two years.[12] After the combat began, Governor Dunmore of Virginia was forced to flee to a British warship off the coast. In late 1775 he issued a proclamation offering freedom to slaves who escaped from Patriot owners and volunteer to fight for the British Army. Over 1000 volunteered and served in British uniforms, chiefly in the Ethiopian Regiment. However they were defeated in Battle of Great Bridge and most of them died of disease. The Royal Navy took Dunmore and other officials home in August 1776, and also carried to freedom 300 surviving former slaves.[13] After their defeat at Saratoga in 1777 and the entry of the French into the American Revolutionary War, the British turned their attention to the South. With fewer regular troops at their disposal, the British commanders developed a "southern strategy" that relied heavily on volunteer soldiers and militia from the Loyalist element.[14] Beginning in late December 1778, the British captured Savannah and controlled the Georgia coastline. In 1780 they seized took Charleston, capturing a large American army. A significant victory at the Battle of Camden meant that royal forces soon controlled most of Georgia and South Carolina. The British set up a network of forts inland, expecting the Loyalists would rally to the flag. Far too few Loyalists turned out, however, and the British had to fight their way north into North Carolina and Virginia with a severely weakened army. Behind them most of the territory they had already captured dissolved into a chaotic guerrilla war, fought predominantly between bands of Loyalist and Patriot militia, with the Patriots retaking the gains the British had previously made.[15] The siege of Yorktown ended with the surrender of a second British army, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War The siege of Yorktown ended with the surrender of a second British army, marking effective British defeat in the war. The British army marched to Yorktown, Virginia where they expected to be rescued by a British fleet. The fleet showed up but so did a larger French fleet, so the British fleet after the Battle of the Chesapeake returned to New York for reinforcements, leaving General Cornwallis trapped by the much larger American and French armies under Washington. He surrendered. The most prominent Loyalists, especially those who joined Loyalist regiments, were evacuated by the Royal Navy back to England, Canada or other British colonies; they brought their slaves along, but lost their land. However, the great majority of Loyalists remained in the southern states and became American citizens.[16] Antebellum era (1781–1860)[edit] After the upheaval of the American Revolution effectively came to an end at the Siege of Yorktown (1781), the South became a major political force in the development of the United States. With the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, the South found political stability and a minimum of federal interference in state affairs. However, with this stability came weakness by design, and the inability of the Confederation to maintain economic viability eventually forced the creation of the United States Constitution, in Philadelphia in 1787. Importantly, Southerners of 1861 often believed their secessionist efforts and the Civil War paralleled the American Revolution, as a military and ideological "replay" of the latter. Southern leaders were able to protect their sectional interests during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, preventing the insertion of any explicit anti-slavery position in the Constitution. Moreover, they were able to force the inclusion of the "fugitive slave clause" and the "Three-Fifths Compromise." Nevertheless, Congress retained the power to regulate the slave trade, and twenty years after the ratification of the Constitution, the law-making body prohibited the importation of slaves, effective January 1, 1808. While North and South were able to find common ground in order to gain the benefits of a strong Union, the unity achieved in the Constitution masked deeply rooted differences in economic and political interests. After the 1787 convention, two discrete understandings of American republicanism emerged. For the North, a Puritanical republicanism predominated, with leaders such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. In the South, Agrarian republicanism formed the basis of political culture. Led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Agrarian republican position is characterized by the epitaph on the grave of Jefferson. While including his "condition bettering" roles in the foundation of the University of Virginia, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, absent from the epitaph was his role as President of the United States. The development of Southern political thought thus focused on the ideal of the yeoman farmer; i.e., those who are tied to the land also have a vested interest in the stability and survival of the government. Antebellum slavery[edit] Main article: Slavery in the United States In the North, where slaves were mostly household servants or farm laborers, every state abolished slavery; New Jersey was the last in 1804. Slavery was also abolished in the Northwest Territory and its states. Therefore, by 1804 a North-South line over slavery emerged; it was called the Mason–Dixon line (which separated free Pennsylvania and slave Maryland.) While about a third of white Southern families were slave owners, most were independent yeoman farmers. Nevertheless, the slave system represented the basis of the Southern social and economic system, and thus even non-slaveowners opposed any suggestions for terminating that system, whether through outright abolition or case-by case manumission. Comparison of Union and CSA[17] Union CSA Total population 22,000,000 (71%) 9,000,000 (29%) Free population 22,000,000 5,500,000 1860 Border state slaves 432,586 NA 1860 Southern slaves NA 3,500,000 Soldiers 2,200,000 (67%) 1,064,000 (33%) Railroad miles 21,788 (71%) 8,838 (29%) Manufactured items 90% 10% Firearm production 97% 3% Bales of cotton in 1860 Negligible 4,500,000 Bales of cotton in 1864 Negligible 300,000 Pre-war U.S. exports 30% 70% This chart shows how dependent the south was on foreign trade, and why it was so violently opposed to abolition, since slaves provided the labor needed to support the cotton economy. Nullification crisis, political representation, and rising sectionalism[edit] See also, Nullification and Nullification crisis Although slavery had yet to become a major issue, states' rights issues surfaced periodically in the early antebellum period, especially in the South. The election of Federalist John Adams in the 1796 presidential election came in tandem with escalating tensions with France. In 1798, the XYZ Affair brought these tensions to the fore, and Adams became concerned about French power in America, fearing internal sabotage and malcontent brought on by French agents. In response to these developments and to repeated attacks on Adams and the Federalists by Democratic-Republican publishers, Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Enforcement of the acts resulted in the jailing of "seditious" Democratic-Republican editors throughout the North and South, and prompted the adoption of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), by the legislatures of those states. Thirty years later, during the "Nullification" crisis, the "Principles of '98" embodied in these resolutions were cited by leaders in South Carolina as a justification for state legislatures' asserting the power to nullify, or prevent the local application of, acts of the federal Congress that they deemed unconstitutional. The Nullification crisis arose as a result of the Tariff of 1828, a set of high taxes on imports of manufactures, enacted by Congress as a protectionist measure to foster the development of domestic industry, primarily in the North. In 1832, the legislature of South Carolina nullified the entire "Tariff of Abominations," as the Tariff of 1828 was known in the South, prompting a stand-off between the state and federal government. On May 1, 1833, President Andrew Jackson wrote, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."[18] Although the crisis was resolved through a combination of the actions of the president, Congressional reduction of the tariff, and the Force Bill, it had lasting importance for the later development of secessionist thought.[19] An additional factor that led to Southern sectionalism was the proliferation of cultural and literary magazines such as the Southern Literary Messenger and DeBow's Review.[20] Sectional parity and issue of slavery in new territories[edit] Another issue feeding sectionalism was slavery, and especially the issue of whether to permit slavery in western territories seeking admission to the Union as states. In the early 19th century, as the cotton boom took hold, slavery became more economically viable on a large scale, and more Northerners began to perceive it as an economic threat, even if they remained indifferent to its moral dimension. While relatively few Northerners favored outright abolition, many more opposed the expansion of slavery to new territories, as in their view the availability of slaves lowered wages for free labor. At the same time, Southerners increasingly perceived the economic and population growth of the North as threatening to their interests. For several decades after the Union was formed, as new states were admitted, North and South were able to finesse their sectional differences and maintain political balance by agreeing to admit "slave" and "free" states in equal numbers. By means of this compromise approach, the balance of power in the Senate could be extended indefinitely. The House of Representatives, however, was a different matter. As the North industrialized and its population grew, aided by a major influx of European immigrants, the Northern majority in the House of Representatives also grew, making Southern political leaders increasingly uncomfortable. Southerners became concerned that they would soon find themselves at the mercy of a federal government in which they no longer had sufficient representation to protect their interests. By the late 1840s, Senator Jefferson Davis from Mississippi stated that the new Northern majority in the Congress would make the government of the United States "an engine of Northern aggrandizement" and that Northern leaders had an agenda to "promote the industry of the United States at the expense of the people of the South." With the Mexican War, which alarmed many Northerners by adding new territory on the Southern side of the free-slave boundary, the slavery-in-the-territories issue heated up dramatically. After a four-year sectional conflict the Compromise of 1850 narrowly averted civil war with a complex deal in which California was admitted as a free state including Southern California thus preventing a separate slave territory there, while slavery was allowed in the New Mexico and Utah territories and a stronger Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed requiring all citizens to assist in recapturing runaway slaves wherever found. Four years later, the peace bought with successive compromises finally came to an end. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress left the issue of slavery to a vote in each territory, thereby provoking a breakdown of law and order as rival groups of pro- and anti-slavery immigrants competed to populate the newly settled region. Election of 1860, secession, and Lincoln's response[edit] For many Southerners, the last straws were the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 by fanatical abolitionist John Brown, immediately followed by a Northern Republican presidential victory in the election of 1860. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president with only 40% of the popular vote and with hardly any popular support in the South.[21] Members of the South Carolina legislature had previously sworn to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected, and the state declared its secession on December 20, 1860. In January and February, six other cotton states of the Deep South followed suit: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The other eight slave states postponed a decision, but the seven formed a new government in Montgomery, Alabama in February: the Confederate States of America. Throughout the South, Confederates seized federal arsenals and forts, without resistance, and forced the surrender of all U.S. forces in Texas. The sitting President, James Buchanan, believed he had no constitutional power to act, and in the four months between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, the South strengthened its military position.[22] In Washington, proposals for compromise and reunion went nowhere, as the Confederates demanded complete, total, permanent independence. When Lincoln dispatched a supply ship to federal-held Fort Sumter, in South Carolina, the Confederate government ordered an attack on the fort, which surrendered on April 13. President Lincoln called upon the states to supply 75,000 troops to serve for ninety days to recover federal property, and, forced to choose sides, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina promptly voted to secede. Kentucky declared its neutrality.[23] Civil War (1860–1865)[edit] Sequence of states' secession, Civil War, and restoration to the Union See also: Confederate States of America, Confederate States Army and Confederate Navy The seceded states, joined together as the Confederate States of America and only wanting to be independent, had no desire to conquer any state north of its border. After secession, no compromise was possible, because the Confederacy insisted on its independence and the Lincoln Administration refused to meet with President Davis's commissioners. Instead of diplomacy, Lincoln ordered that a Navy fleet of warships and troop transports be sent to Charleston Harbor to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter. Just before the fleet was about to enter the harbor, Confederates forced the Federal garrison holed up in the fort to surrender. That incident, although only a cannon duel that produced no deaths, allowed President Lincoln to proclaim that United States forces had been attacked and justified his calling up of troops to invade the seceded states. In response the Confederate military strategy was to hold its territory together, gain worldwide recognition, and inflict so much punishment on invaders that the Northerners would tire of an expensive war and negotiate a peace treaty that would recognize the independence of the CSA. Two Confederate counter-offensives into Maryland and southern Pennsylvania failed to influence Federal elections as hoped. The victory of Lincoln and his party in the 1864 elections made the military victory only a matter of time.[citation needed] Both sides wanted the border states, but the Union military forces took control of all of them in 1861-1862. Union victories in western Virginia allowed a Unionist government based in Wheeling to take control of western Virginia and, with Washington's approval, create the new state of West Virginia.[24] The Confederacy did recruit troops in the border states, but the enormous advantage of controlling them went to the Union. The Union naval blockade starting in May 1861, reducing exports by 95%; only small, fast blockade runners—mostly owned and operated by British interests—could get through. The South's vast cotton crops became nearly worthless.[25] In 1861 the rebels assumed that "King Cotton" was so powerful that the threat of losing their supplies would induce Britain and France to enter the war as allies, and thereby frustrate Union efforts. Confederate leaders were ignorant of European conditions; Britain depended on the Union for its food supply, and would not benefit from an extremely expensive major war with the U.S. The Confederacy moved its capital from a defensible location in remote Montgomery, Alabama, to the more cosmopolitan city of Richmond, Virginia, only 100 miles from Washington. Richmond had the heritage and facilities to match those of Washington, but its proximity to the Union forced the CSA to spend most of its war-making capability to defend Richmond.[citation needed] Leadership[edit] The strength of the Confederacy included an unusually strong officer corps—about a third of the officers of the U.S. Army had resigned and joined. But the political leadership was not very effective. A classic interpretation is that the Confederacy "died of states' rights," as governors of Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina refused Richmond's request for troops.[26] The Confederacy decided not to have political parties. There was a strong sense that parties were divisive and would weaken the war effort. Historians, however, agree that the lack of parties weakened the political system. Instead of having a viable alternative to the current system, as expressed by a rival party, the people could only grumble and complain and lose faith.[27] Historians disparage the effectiveness of President Jefferson Davis, with a consensus holding that he was much less effective than Abraham Lincoln.[28] As a former Army officer, Senator, and Secretary of War, he possessed the stature and experience to be president, but certain character defects undercut his performance. He played favorites and was imperious, frosty, and quarrelsome. By dispensing with parties, he lost the chance to build a grass roots network that would provide critically needed support in dark hours. Instead, he took the brunt of the blame for all difficulties and disasters. Davis was animated by a profound vision of a powerful, opulent new nation, the Confederate States of America, premised on the right of its white citizens to self-government. However, in dramatic contrast to Lincoln, he was never able to articulate that vision or provide a coherent strategy to fight the war. He neglected the civilian needs of the Confederacy while spending too much time meddling in military details. Davis's meddling in military strategy proved counterproductive. His explicit orders that Vicksburg be held no matter what sabotaged the only feasible defense and led directly to the fall of the city in 1863.[29][30] Abolition of slavery[edit] Main article: Emancipation Proclamation By 1862 most northern leaders realized that the mainstay of Southern secession, slavery, had to be attacked head-on. All the border states rejected President Lincoln's proposal for compensated emancipation. However, by 1865 all had begun the abolition of slavery, except Kentucky and Delaware. The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In a single stroke it changed the legal status, as recognized by the U.S. government, of 3 million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free." It had the practical effect that as soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally and actually free. Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army. By June 1865, the Union Army controlled all of the Confederacy and liberated all of the designated slaves. The owners were never compensated.[31] Many of the Freedmen remained on the same plantation, others crowded into refugee camps operated by the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau provided food, housing, clothing, medical care, church services, some schooling, legal support, and arranged for labor contracts.[32] The severe dislocations of war and Reconstruction had a severe negative impact on the black population, with a large amount of sickness and death.[33] Railroads[edit] See also: Confederate railroads in the American Civil War The Union had a 3-1 superiority in railroad mileage and (even more important) an overwhelming advantage in engineers and mechanics in the rolling mills, machine shops, factories, roundhouses and repair yards that produced and maintained rails, bridging equipage, locomotives, rolling stock, signaling gear, and telegraph equipment. In peacetime the South imported all its railroad gear from the North; the Union blockade completely cut off such imports. The lines in the South were mostly designed for short hauls, as from cotton areas to river or ocean ports; they were not designed for trips of more than 100 miles or so, and such trips involved numerous changes of trains and layovers.[34] The South's 8,500 miles of track comprised enough of a railroad system to handle essential military traffic along some internal lines, assuming it could be defended and maintained. As the system deteriorated because of worn out equipment, accidents and sabotage, the South was unable to construct or even repair new locomotives, cars, signals or track. Little new equipment ever arrived, although rails in remote areas such as Florida were removed and put to more efficient use in the war zones. Realizing their enemy's dilemma, Union cavalry raids routinely destroyed locomotives, cars, rails, roundhouses, trestles, bridges, and telegraph wires. By the end of the war, the southern railroad system was totally ruined. Meanwhile, the Union army rebuilt rail lines to supply its forces. A Union railroad through hostile territory, as from Nashville to Atlanta in 1864, was an essential but fragile lifeline—it took a whole army to guard it, because each foot of track had to be secure. Large numbers of Union soldiers throughout the war were assigned to guard duty and, while always ready for action, seldom saw any fighting.[35] Sherman's March[edit] Main article: Sherman's March to the Sea Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas By 1864 the top Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman realized the weakest point of the Confederate armies was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure, so they escalated efforts to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin railroads and bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust; he predicted his raid would "demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.".[36] Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched, but the actual damage was confined to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of Georgia. Sherman struck at Georgia in October, just after the harvest, when the food supplies for the next year had been gathered and were exposed to destruction. In early 1865 Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia. More telling than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment.[37] Out-gunned, out-manned, and out-financed, defeat loomed after four years of fighting. When Lee surrendered to Grant in April 1865, the Confederacy fell. There was no insurgency, no treason trials, and only one war crimes trial. Reconstruction (1863–1877)[edit] Main article: Reconstruction Era Reconstruction began as soon as the Union Army took control of a state; the start and ending times varied by state, beginning in 1863 and ending in 1877. Slavery ended and the large slave-based plantations were mostly subdivided into tenant or sharecropper farms of 20-40 acres. Many white farmers (and some blacks) owned their land. However sharecropping, along with tenant farming, became a dominant form in the cotton South from the 1870s to the 1950s, among both blacks and whites. By the 1960s both had largely disappeared. Sharecropping was a way for very poor farmers, both white and black, to earn a living from land owned by someone else. The landowner provided land, housing, tools and seed, and perhaps a mule, and a local merchant provided food and supplies on credit. At harvest time the sharecropper received a share of the crop (from one-third to one-half, with the landowner taking the rest). The cropper used his share to pay off his debt to the merchant. The system started with blacks when large plantations were subdivided. By the 1880s white farmers also became sharecroppers. The system was distinct from that of the tenant farmer, who rented the land, provided his own tools and mule, and received half the crop. Landowners provided more supervision to sharecroppers, and less or none to tenant farmers.[38][39] Material ruin and human losses[edit] Charleston, like most Southern cities in 1865, was "a city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotten wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness." Reconstruction played out against a backdrop of a once prosperous economy that lay in ruins. According to Hesseltine (1936), :"Throughout the South, fences were down, weeds had overrun the fields, windows were broken, live stock had disappeared. The assessed valuation of property declined from 30 to 60 percent in the decade after 1860. In Mobile, business was stagnant; Chattanooga and Nashville were ruined; and Atlanta's industrial sections were in ashes.[40] In Charleston, a journalist in September 1865 discovered "a city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotten wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness."[41][42] Reports from Confederate officials show 94,000 killed in battle and another 164,000 who died of disease, with about 194,000 wounded.[43] The Confederate official counts are too low; perhaps another 75,000-100,000 Confederate soldiers died because of the war.[44] The number of civilian deaths is unknown, but was highest among refugees and former slaves.[33][45] Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Confederate state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Indian Territory; Pennsylvania was the only northerner state to be the scene of major action, during the Gettysburg campaign. In the Confederacy there was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56% of them, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however by the time the action took place some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.[46] The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Ten were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 8,100, and 37,900, respectively), plus Charleston, much of which was destroyed in an accidental fire in 1861. These eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.[46] The economic calamity suffered by the South during the war affected every family. Except for land, most assets and investments had vanished with slavery, but debts were left behind. Worst of all were the human deaths and amputations. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:[47] One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes. . . . Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration. Railroad mileage was of course located mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.[46] Political Reconstruction, 1863-1877[edit] Reconstruction was the process by which the states returned to full status. It took place in four stages, which varied by state. Tennessee and the border states were not affected. First came the governments appointed by President Andrew Johnson that lasted 1865-66. The Freedmen's Bureau was active, helping refugees, setting up employment contracts for Freedmen, and setting up courts and schools for the Freedmen. Second came rule by the U.S. Army, which held elections that included all Freedmen but excluded over 10,000 Confederate leaders. Third was "Radical Reconstruction" or "Black Reconstruction" in which a Republican coalition governed the state, comprising a coalition of Freedmen, Scalawags (native whites) and Carpetbaggers (migrants from the North). Violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan and related groups was suppressed by President Ulysses S. Grant and the vigorous use of federal courts and soldiers in 1868-70. The Reconstruction governments spent large sums on railroad subsidies and schools, but quadrupled taxes and set off a tax revolt among conservatives. Stage four was reached by 1876 as the conservative coalition, called Redeemers, had won political control of all the states except South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The disputed presidential election of 1876 hinged on those three violently contested states. The outcome was the Compromise of 1877 whereby the Republican Rutherford Hayes became president and all federal troops were withdrawn from the South, leading to the immediate collapse of the last Republican state governments. Railroads[edit] The building of a new, modern rail system was widely seen as essential to the economic recovery of the South, and modernizers invested in a "Gospel of Prosperity." Northern money financed the rebuilding and dramatic expansion of railroads throughout the South; they were modernized in terms of rail gauge, equipment and standards of service. the Southern network expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) in 1890. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic.[48][49] The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners, who often had to pay heavy bribes to corrupt politicians for needed legislation.[50] The Panic of 1873 ended the expansion everywhere in the United States, leaving many Southern lines bankrupt or barely able to pay the interest on their bonds. Backlash to Reconstruction[edit] In 1866 at stage 2, the states were grouped into five military districts. Reconstruction was a harsh time for many white Southerners who found themselves without many of the basic rights of citizenship (such as the ability to vote). Reconstruction was also a time when many African Americans began to secure these same rights. With the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution (which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment (which granted full U.S. citizenship to African Americans) and the 15th Amendment (which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy more rights than they had ever had in the past. A reaction to the defeat and changes in society began immediately, with vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan arising in 1866 as the first line of insurgents. They attacked and killed both freedmen and their white allies. By the 1870s, more organized paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts, took part in turning Republicans out of office and barring or intimidating blacks from voting. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913[edit] The classic history was written by C. Vann Woodward, The Origins of the New South: 1877-1913, which was published in 1951 by Louisiana State University Press. Sheldon Hackney, explains: "Of one thing we may be certain at the outset. The durability of Origins of the New South is not a result of its ennobling and uplifting message. It is the story of the decay and decline of the aristocracy, the suffering and betrayal of the poor whites, and the rise and transformation of a middle class. It is not a happy story. The Redeemers are revealed to be as venal as the carpetbaggers. The declining aristocracy are ineffectual and money hungry, and in the last analysis they subordinated the values of their political and social heritage in order to maintain control over the black population. The poor whites suffered from strange malignancies of racism and conspiracy-mindedness, and the rising middle class was timid and self-interested even in its reform movement. The most sympathetic characters in the whole sordid affair are simply those who are too powerless to be blamed for their actions."[51] Race: from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement[edit] After the Redeemers took control in the mid-1870s, Jim Crow laws were created to legally enforce racial segregation in public facilities and services. The phrase separate but equal, upheld in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, came to represent the notion that whites and blacks should have access to physically separate but ostensibly equal facilities. It would not be until 1954 that Plessy was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education, and only in the late 1960s was segregation fully repealed by legislation passed following the American Civil Rights Movement. The most extreme white leader was Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina, who proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]...we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."[52] With no voting rights and no voice in government, Blacks in the South were subjected to a system of segregation and discrimination. Blacks and whites attended separate schools. Blacks could not serve on juries, which meant that they had little if any legal recourse. In Black Boy, an autobiographical account of life during this time, Richard Wright writes about being struck with a bottle and knocked from a moving truck for failing to call a white man "sir."[53] Between 1889 and 1922, the NAACP calculates that lynchings reached their worst level in history, with almost 3,500 people, three-fourths of them black men, murdered.[54] African-Americans responded with two major reactions: the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement. The Great Migration began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.[55] This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen in the emergence of jazz and the blues from New Orleans north to Memphis and Chicago.[56] The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights Movement.[57] While the Civil Rights movement existed in all parts of the United States, its focus was against the Jim Crow laws in the South. Most of the major events in the movement occurred in the South, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the March on Selma, Alabama, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. In addition, some of the most important writings to come out of the movement were written in the South, such as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". As a result of the Civil Rights Laws of 1964 and 1965, all Jim Crow laws across the South were dropped. This change in the South's racial climate combined with the new industrialization in the region to help usher in what is called the New South. Rural South[edit] The Southern United States as defined by the Census Bureau.[58] Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force by Region, 1890: Northeast 15% Middle Atlantic 17% Midwest 43% South Atlantic 63% South Central 67% West 29% Source[59] The South remained heavily rural until World War II. There were only a few scattered cities; small courthouse towns serviced the farm population. Local politics revolve around the politicians and lawyers based at the courthouse. Mill towns, narrowly focused on textile production or cigarette manufacture, began opening in the Piedmont region especially in the Carolinas. Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were everywhere, and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were liable to expulsion or lynching.[60] Cotton became even more important than before, even though prices were much lower. White southerners showed a reluctance to move north, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms proliferated, and they became smaller and smaller as the population grew. Many of the white farmers, and some of the blacks, were tenant farmers who owned their work animals and tools, and rented their land. Others were day laborers or impoverished sharecroppers, who worked under the supervision of the landowner. Sharecropping was a way for landless farmers (both black and white) to earn a living. The landowner provided land, housing, tools and seed, and perhaps a mule, and a local merchant loaned money for food and supplies. At harvest time the sharecropper received a share of the crop (from one-third to one-half), which paid off his debt to the merchant. By the late 1860s white farmers also became sharecroppers. The cropper system was a step below that of the tenant farmer, who rented the land, provided his own tools and mule, and received half the crop. Landowners provided more supervision to sharecroppers, and less or none to tenant farmers.[61] There was little cash in circulation, since most farmers operated on credit accounts from local merchants, and paid off their debts at cotton harvest time in the fall. Although there were small country churches everywhere, there were only a few dilapidated schools; high schools were available in the cities, which were few in number, but were hard to find in most rural areas. All the Southern high schools combined graduated 66,000 students in 1928. The school terms were shorter in the South, and total spending per student was much lower. Nationwide, the students in elementary and secondary schools attended 140 days of school in 1928, compared to 123 days for white children in the South and 95 for blacks. The national average in 1928 for school expenditures was $70,700 for every 1000 children aged 5–17. Only Florida reached that level; seven of the eleven Southern states spent under $31,000 per 1000 children.[62][63] Conditions were marginally better in newer areas, especially in Texas and central Florida, with the deepest poverty in South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Hookworm[64] and other diseases sapped the vitality of a large fraction of Southerners.[65] Creating the "New South" (1945–present)[edit] Main article: Southern United States In the decades after World War II, the old agrarian Southern economy evolved into the "New South" – a manufacturing region with strong roots in laissez faire capitalism. As a result, high-rise buildings began to crowd the skylines of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and Little Rock.[66] King Cotton was dethroned. There were 1.5 million cotton farms in 1945, and only 18,600 remained in 2009. The Census stopped counting sharecroppers because they were so few.[38] The industrialization and modernization of the South picked up speed with the ending of racial segregation in the 1960s. Today, the economy of the South is a diverse mixture of agriculture, light and heavy industry, tourism, and high technology companies, and is becoming increasingly integrated into the global economy.[67] State governments aggressively recruited northern business to the "Sunbelt," promising more enjoyable weather and recreation, a lower cost of living, an increasingly skilled work force, minimal taxes, weak labor unions, and a business-friendly attitude.[68] With the expansion of jobs in the South, there has been migration of northerners, increasing the population and political influence of southern states. The newcomers displaced the old rural political system built around courthouse cliques. The suburbs became the base of the emerging Republican Party, which became dominant in presidential elections by 1968, and in state politics by the 1990s.[69] The South urbanized as the cotton base collapsed, especially east of the Mississippi River. Farming was much less important (and the remaining farmers more often specialized in soybeans and cattle, or citrus in Florida). The need for cotton pickers ended with the utilization of picking machines after 1945, and nearly all the black cotton farmers moved to urban areas, often in the North. Whites, who had been farmers, usually moved to nearby towns. Factories and service industries were opened in those towns for employment.[70] Millions of Northern retirees moved down for the mild winters. These well-to-do retirees often moved into expensive homes located near the ocean, which, over the years, resulted in increasingly expensive hurricane damages. Tourism became a major industry, especially in venues such as Williamsburg, Virginia, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Orlando, Florida, and Branson, Missouri.[71] Sociologists report that Southern collective identity stems from political, demographic and cultural distinctiveness. Studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas including religion, morality, international relations and race relations.[72][73] In the 21st century, the South remains demographically distinct with higher percentages of blacks, lower percentages of high school graduates, lower housing values, lower household incomes and higher percentages of people in poverty.[74] That, combined with the fact that Southerners continue to maintain strong loyalty to family ties, has led some sociologists to label white Southerners a "quasi-ethnic regional group."[75] Apart from the still-distinctive climate, the living experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners (especially in the suburbs and coastal areas)[76] and millions of Hispanics[77] means the introduction of cultural values and social norms not rooted in Southern traditions.[78][79] Observers conclude that collective identity and Southern distinctiveness are thus declining, particularly when defined against "an earlier South that was somehow more authentic, real, more unified and distinct."[80] The process has worked both ways, however, with aspects of Southern culture spreading throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed "Southernization".[81] Southern presidents[edit] The South has long been a center of political power in the United States, especially in regard to presidential elections. During the history of the United States, the South has supplied many of the 44 presidents. Virginia specifically was the birthplace of seven of the nation's first twelve presidents (including four of the first five). Presidents born in the South and identified with the region include: George Washington of Virginia (term 1789-1797). Thomas Jefferson of Virginia (term 1801-1809). James Madison of Virginia (term 1809-1817). James Monroe of Virginia (term 1817-1825). Andrew Jackson, born in either North Carolina or South Carolina, identified with Tennessee (term 1829-1837). John Tyler of Virginia (term 1841-1845). James Knox Polk, born in North Carolina, identified with Tennessee (term 1845-1849). Polk was born in North Carolina, but spent his adult and political life in Tennessee. Zachary Taylor of Virginia (term 1849-1850). Andrew Johnson, born in North Carolina, identified with Tennessee (term 1865-1869). Johnson was born in North Carolina, but spent his adult and political life in Tennessee. Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas (term 1963-1969). Jimmy Carter of Georgia (term 1977-1981). Bill Clinton of Arkansas (term 1993-2001). One President was born in the South, and is identified both with the South and elsewhere: Woodrow Wilson, was born and raised in the South. His academic and political career was in the North but he retained strong ties with the South. Presidents born outside the South, but generally identified with the region: George H. W. Bush (term 1989-1993) was born in Massachusetts, but spent his adult life in Texas. George W. Bush, born in Connecticut, lived from early childhood in Texas. Presidents born in Southern states, but not primarily identified with that region, include: William Henry Harrison, born in Virginia, identified with Midwest Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky, left at age 7; identified with Illinois. Dwight D. Eisenhower, born in Texas], left at age 2 and identified with Kansas. This list encompasses members of the Whig Party, Republican Party and the Democratic Party; in addition, Washington, while officially non-partisan, was generally associated with the Federalist Party. They have also supplied Presidential losers: Charles Pinckney of South Carolina – 1804 election, 1808 election Henry Clay of Kentucky (born in Virginia) – 1824 election, 1832 election, 1844 election William Crawford of Georgia (born in Virginia) – 1824 election Hugh White of Tennessee (born in North Carolina) – 1836 election John Breckinridge of Kentucky – 1860 election John Bell of Tennessee – 1860 election) John W. Davis of West Virginia – 1924 election J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina - 1948 election Al Gore of Tennessee (born in Washington, D.C.) – 2000 election (Former) Candidates for President: Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House 1995-1999 Herman Cain, Businessman See also[edit] American Civil War American gentry Border states Confederate States of America Culture of honor (Southern United States) Culture of the Southern United States Dueling in the United States South European colonization of the Southern United States Free and slave states History of the United States Politics of the Southern United States Southern literature Southern United States Triangular trade Footnotes[edit] 1.Jump up ^ Weddle, Robert S. (1991). The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682–1762. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 0-89096-480-7. 2.Jump up ^ Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The abandoned colony (2007). 3.Jump up ^ Robert Appelbaum, and John Wood Sweet, eds., Envisioning an English empire: Jamestown and the making of the North Atlantic world (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) 4.Jump up ^ Warren M. Billings, John E. Selby, and Thad W. Tate, Colonial Virginia: A History (1986). 5.Jump up ^ Warren M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the forging of colonial Virginia (LSU Press, 2004) 6.Jump up ^ Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia: a history (1976). 7.Jump up ^ Jordan, Winthrop (1968). White Over Black: American attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. University of North Carolina Press. 8.Jump up ^ Higginbotham, A. Leon (1975). In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Greenwood Press. 9.Jump up ^ Higginbotham, A. Leon (1975). In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Greenwood Press. p. 62. 10.Jump up ^ C. Vann Woodward, American counterpoint: Slavery and racism in the North-South dialogue (1971) pp 78-91 11.Jump up ^ Walter B. Edgar (1998). South Carolina: A History. U. of South Carolina Press. pp. 131–54. 12.Jump up ^ John Richard Alden, The South in the Revolution, 1763-1789 (LSU Press, 1957). 13.Jump up ^ W. Hugh Moomaw, "The British Leave Colonial Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1958) 66#2 pp. 147-160 in JSTOR 14.Jump up ^ Jeffrey J. Crow and Larry E. Tise, eds., The Southern Experience in the American Revolution (1978) p. 157–9 15.Jump up ^ Henry Lumpkin, From Savannah to Yorktown: The American Revolution in the South (2000) 16.Jump up ^ Brendan Morrissey, Yorktown 1781: The World Turned Upside Down (1997) 17.Jump up ^ Railroad mileage is from: Chauncey Depew (ed.), One Hundred Years of American Commerce 1795–1895, p. 111; For other data see: 1860 US census and Carter, Susan B., ed. The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006. 18.Jump up ^ Jon Meacham (2009), American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, New York: Random House, p. 247; Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Vol. V, p. 72. 19.Jump up ^ Freehling, William W. (1992) [1966]. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507681-8. 20.Jump up ^ Haveman, H. A. (2004). "Antebellum literary culture and the evolution of American magazines". Poetics 32 (1): 5–28. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2003.12.002. 21.Jump up ^ David Potter, The impending crisis, 1848-1861 (1976). 22.Jump up ^ Robert J. Cook and William L. Barney, Secession Winter: When the Union Fell Apart (2013) 23.Jump up ^ William C. Davis, Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America (2003). 24.Jump up ^ Rice, Otis K.; Brown, Stephen W. (1994). West Virginia: A History (2nd ed.). Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. pp. 111–123. ISBN 0-8131-1854-9. 25.Jump up ^ Surdam, David G. (2001). Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War. Columbia: U. of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-407-9. 26.Jump up ^ Owsley, Frank Lawrence (1925). "Local Defense and the Overthrow of the Confederacy: A Study in State Rights". Mississippi Valley Historical Review 11 (4): 490–525. JSTOR 1895910. 27.Jump up ^ James M. McPherson (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. p. 690. 28.Jump up ^ James M. McPherson (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. p. 754. 29.Jump up ^ Cooper, William James (2000). Jefferson Davis, American: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-56916-4; compare Goodwin, Doris Kearns (2005). Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82490-6. 30.Jump up ^ For a defense of Davis see Johnson, Ludwell H. (1981). "Jefferson Davis And Abraham Lincoln As War Presidents: Nothing Succeeds Like Success". Civil War History 27 (1): 49–63. doi:10.1353/cwh.1981.0055. 31.Jump up ^ Michael Vorenberg, ed. The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents (2010), 32.Jump up ^ Paul A. Cimbala, The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War (2005) 33.^ Jump up to: a b Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (2015) 34.Jump up ^ Marrs, Aaron W. (2009). Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-9130-4. 35.Jump up ^ Turner, George Edgar (1953). Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 36.Jump up ^ Beringer, Richard E.; et al. (1991). Why the South Lost the Civil War. University of Georgia Press. p. 349. ISBN 0-8203-1396-3. 37.Jump up ^ Trudeau, Noah Andre (2008). Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-059867-9. 38.^ Jump up to: a b Brown, D. Clayton (2010). King Cotton in Modern America: A Cultural, Political, and Economic History since 1945. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-798-1. 39.Jump up ^ Joseph D. Reid, "Sharecropping as an understandable market response: The post-bellum South." Journal of Economic History (1973) 33#1 pp: 106-130. in JSTOR 40.Jump up ^ Hesseltine, William B. (1936). A History of the South, 1607–1936. New York: Prentice-Hall. pp. 573–574. 41.Jump up ^ Rosen, Robert N. (1997). A short history of Charleston. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. p. 121. ISBN 1-57003-197-5. 42.Jump up ^ For more detail see Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson (1917). A history of the United States since the Civil War 1. pp. 56–67. 43.Jump up ^ For details see Livermore, Thomas L. (1901). Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America 1861–65. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. 44.Jump up ^ Hacker, J. David (2011). "A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead". Civil War History 57 (4): 307–348. doi:10.1353/cwh.2011.0061. PMID 22512048. 45.Jump up ^ Humphreys, Margaret (2013). Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0999-3. 46.^ Jump up to: a b c Paskoff, Paul F. (2008). "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy". Civil War History 54 (1): 35–62. doi:10.1353/cwh.2008.0007. 47.Jump up ^ Ezell, John Samuel (1963). The South since 1865. New York: Macmillan. pp. 27–28. 48.Jump up ^ Stover, John F. (1955). The Railroads of the South, 1865-1900: A Study in Finance and Control. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 49.Jump up ^ Moore, A. B. (1935). "Railroad Building in Alabama During the Reconstruction Period". Journal of Southern History 1 (4): 421–441. JSTOR 2191774. 50.Jump up ^ Summers, Mark Wahlgren (1984). Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radical Republicans, 1865–1877. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04695-6. 51.Jump up ^ Hackney, Sheldon (1972). "Origins of the New South in Retrospect". Journal of Southern History 38 (2): 191–216 [quote at p. 191]. JSTOR 2206441. 52.Jump up ^ Logan (1997). The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. New York: Da Capo Press. p. 91. ISBN 0-306-80758-0. 53.Jump up ^ Wright, Richard (1945). "9". Black Boy. New York City: Harper & Brothers. ISBN 0-06-113024-9. 54.Jump up ^ Estes, Steve (2005). I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-5593-6. 55.Jump up ^ Nicholas Lemann, The promised land: The great black migration and how it changed America (2011) 56.Jump up ^ Richard Knight, The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago: a Travel and Music Guide (2003) 57.Jump up ^ Bernadette Pruitt (2013). The Other Great Migration: The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941. Texas A&M University Press. p. 287. 58.Jump up ^ "Census Regions and Divisions of the United States" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. 59.Jump up ^ Whitten, David O. (2010). "The Depression of 1893". 60.Jump up ^ Hahn, Steven (2005). A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge: Belknap Press. pp. 425–426. ISBN 0-674-01765-X. 61.Jump up ^ Sharon Monteith, ed. (2013). The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American South. Cambridge U.P. p. 94. 62.Jump up ^ U.S. Department of Commerce (1930). Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1930. Washington. pp. 113–115. 63.Jump up ^ Odum, Howard (1936). Southern regions of the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 100. 64.Jump up ^ Coelho, Philip R. P.; McGuire, Robert A. (2006). "Racial Differences in Disease Susceptibilities: Intestinal Worm Infections in the Early Twentieth-Century American South". Social History of Medicine 19 (3): 461–482. doi:10.1093/shm/hkl047. indicates 56% of the whites suffered from worms, and 20% of the blacks. 65.Jump up ^ The classic histories are Woodward, C. Vann (1951). The Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press and Tindall, George B. (1967). The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-0010-2. 66.Jump up ^ Cobb, James C. (2011). The South and America Since World War II. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516650-7. 67.Jump up ^ Cobb, James C.; Stueck, William (2005). Globalization and the American South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-2648-8. 68.Jump up ^ Dennis, Michael (2009). The New Economy and the Modern South. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-3291-7. 69.Jump up ^ Black, Earl (2003). "The Republican Surge". The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00728-X. 70.Jump up ^ Kirby, Jack Temple (1986). Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920–1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-1300-X. 71.Jump up ^ Stanonis, Anthony J. (2008). Dixie Emporium: Tourism, Foodways, and Consumer Culture in the American South. Athens: University of Georgia Press. pp. 120–147 on Branson. ISBN 978-0-8203-2951-2. 72.Jump up ^ Cooper, Christopher A.; Knotts, H. Gibbs (2010). "Declining Dixie: Regional Identification in the Modern American South". Social Forces 88 (3): 1083–1101. doi:10.1353/sof.0.0284. 73.Jump up ^ Rice, Tom W.; McLean, William P.; Larsen, Amy J. (2002). "Southern Distinctiveness over Time: 1972–2000". American Review of Politics 23: 193–220. 74.Jump up ^ Cooper, Christopher A.; Knotts, H. Gibbs (2004). "Defining Dixie: A State-Level Measure of the Modern Political South". American Review of Politics 25 (2): 25–39. 75.Jump up ^ Reed, John Shelton (1982). One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-8071-1003-5. 76.Jump up ^ Egnal, Marc (1996). Divergent Paths: How Culture and Institutions have shaped North American Growth. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 170. ISBN 0-19-509866-8. 77.Jump up ^ Mark, Rebecca; Vaughan, Robert C. (2004). The South. Westport: Greenwood Press. p. 147. ISBN 0-313-32734-3. 78.Jump up ^ Cooper, Christopher A.; Knotts, H. Gibbs (2010). "Declining Dixie: Regional Identification in the Modern American South". Social Forces 88 (3): 1083–1101 [p. 1084]. doi:10.1353/sof.0.0284. 79.Jump up ^ Cooper, Christopher A.; Knotts, H. Gibbs, eds. (2008). The New Politics of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-3191-3. 80.Jump up ^ Ayers, Edward L. (2005). What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History. New York: Norton. p. 46. ISBN 0-393-05947-2. 81.Jump up ^ Hirsh, Michael (April 25, 2008). "How the South Won (This) Civil War". Newsweek. Retrieved 22 Nov 2008. Further reading[edit] Abernethy, Thomas P. The South in the New Nation, 1789–1819. LSU Press. Alden, John R. The South in the Revolution, 1763–1789. LSU Press. Ayers; Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction Oxford University Press, 1993 online edition Bartley, Numan V. The New South, 1945–1980. LSU Press. Craven, Avery O. The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861. LSU Press. Craven, Wesley Frank. The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1689. LSU Press. Coulter, E. Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. LSU Press. Coulter, E. Merton. The South During Reconstruction, 1865–1877. LSU Press. Current, Richard, ed. Encyclopaedia of the Confederacy (4 vol 1995) Davis, William C. (2003). Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86585-8. Hesseltine; William B. A History of the South, 1607-1936 Prentice-Hall, 1936 online edition Hill, Samuel S. et al. eds. Encyclopedia of Religion in the South (2005) Hubbell; Jay B. The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 Duke University Press, 1973 Key, V.O. Southern Politics In State and Nation (1949), a famous classic Lamis, Alexander P. ed. Southern Politics in the 1990s Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Logan, Rayford,The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson,, 1997. (This is an expanded edition of Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought, The Nadir, 1877-1901 (1954) Mark, Rebecca, and Rob Vaughan. The South: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures (2004), post 1945 society Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (2009) Moreland; Laurence W. et al. Blacks in Southern Politics Praeger Publishers, 1987 online edition Paterson, Thomas G. ed. (1999). Major Problems in the History of the American South. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-87139-5. readings from primary and secondary sources Richter, William L. The A to Z of the Old South (2009), a short scholarly encyclopedia Shafer, Byron E. and Richard Johnston, eds. The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (2009) excerpt and text search Sydnor, Charles W. The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819–1848. (LSU Press, 1964), Broad ranging history of the region Tindall, George B. The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (LSU Press, 1967 ) Tucker, Spencer, ed. American Civil War: A State-by-State Encyclopedia (2 vol 2015) 1019pp excerpt Volo, James M. Encyclopedia of the Antebellum South (2000) Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. LSU Press. External links[edit] Documenting the American South - text, image, and audio collections. Journal of Southern History articles in JSTOR Southern Historical Association, The major scholarly society The Society of Independent Southern Historians contains a bibliography of endorsed works concerning Southern history, biography, literature and culture; Lost Cause of the Confederacy perspective Categories: History of the Southern United States Navigation menu Create account Not logged in Talk Contributions Log in Article Talk Read Edit View history Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Wikipedia store Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact page Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Wikidata item Cite this page Print/export Disable book creator Download as PDF Printable version Languages 日本語 Edit links This page was last modified on 3 November 2015, at 21:42. 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History of Alabama

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Alabama State Flag
Alabama became a state of the United States of America on December 14, 1819. After, the Indian Wars and removals
of the early 19th century forced most Native Americans out of the
state, white settlers arrived in large numbers, bringing or importing
African-American slaves in the domestic trade.


In antebellum Alabama, wealthy planters created large cotton plantations based in the fertile central Black Belt of the upland region, which depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans. Tens of thousands of slaves were transported to and sold in the state by slave traders who purchased them in the Upper South. Elsewhere in Alabama, poorer whites practiced subsistence farming. By 1860 blacks (nearly all slaves) comprised 45 percent of the state's 964,201 people.


The state's wealthy planters considered slavery essential to their
economy. As one of the largest slaveholding states, Alabama was among
the first six states to secede. It declared its secession in January 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America in February. During the ensuing American Civil War Alabama had moderate levels of warfare. The population suffered economic losses and hardships as a result of the war. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
freed all enslaved people in Confederate states. The Southern
capitulation in 1865 ended the Confederate state government. A decade of
Reconstruction
began, a controversial time that has a range of interpretation. Its
biracial government established the first public schools and welfare
institutions in the state.


After the war, planters worked to get their vast cotton plantations
back into production. African Americans chose to exert some independence
as free tenant farmers and sharecroppers, rather than working in labor
gangs. Wherever possible, African-American women left the fields. Small
farms, which produced general crops before the war, turned to cotton as a
cash crop. The market for cotton was overloaded, and prices dropped
50%.[1]


For 35 years after the Civil War, Alabama was a rich, heavily rural
state, with an economy based on cotton and sharecropping. Its
legislature failed to invest in infrastructure, so many of its farmers
were isolated from more lucrative markets. At Reconstruction's end,
whites known as "Redeemer" Democrats
regained control of the state legislature by both legal and extralegal
means (including violence and harassment) to re-establish political and
social dominance over African Americans. In 1901, Democrats passed a state Constitution that effectively disfranchised most African Americans (who in 1900 comprised more than 45 percent of the state's population), as well as tens of thousands of poor whites.[2][3] By 1941, a total 600,000 poor whites and 520,000 African Americans had been disfranchised.[2]
In addition, despite massive population changes in the state that
accompanied urbanization and industrialization, the rural-dominated
legislature refused to redistrict from 1901 to the 1960s, leading to massive malapportionment in Congressional and state representation. For decades, a rural minority dominated the state, and the needs of urban, middle class and industrial interests were not addressed.


African Americans living in Alabama experienced the inequities of disfranchisement, segregation, violence, and underfunded schools. Tens of thousands of African Americans from Alabama joined the Great Migration out of the South from 1915 to 1930[4] and moved to better opportunities in industrial cities, mostly in the North and Midwest.
The black exodus escalated steadily in the first three decades of the
20th century; 22,100 emigrated from 1900 to 1910; 70,800 between 1910
and 1920; and 80,700 between 1920 and 1930.[5][6]


As a result of African-American disenfranchisement and rural control, state politics were dominated by the Democratic Party into the 1980s as part of the "Solid South."[7] Alabama produced a number of national leaders.


The New Deal farm programs increased the price of cotton, and World War II
finally brought prosperity, as the state developed a manufacturing and
service base. Cotton faded in importance and mechanization beginning in
the 1930s reduced the need for farm labor. Following years of struggles
after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, segregation was abolished and African Americans could again exercise their constitutional right to vote.


Beginning in the late 90th century, conservative whites began to shift to the Republican Party. The election of Guy Hunt as Governor in 1986 marked the shift of the white majority to becoming a Republican
stronghold in Presidential elections; its voters also leaned Republican
in statewide elections. The Democratic Party still dominated local and
legislative offices, but total Democratic dominance had ended.[8] In terms of organization, the parties are about evenly matched.[9]



Indigenous peoples, early history

Precontact



The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture
that flourished in the United States before the arrival of Europeans.
At least 12,000 years ago, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians appeared in what is today referred to as "The South".[10] Paleo-Indians in the Southeast were hunter-gatherers who pursued a wide range of animals, including the megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age.[10] The Woodland period from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE was marked by the development of pottery and the small-scale horticulture of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.


The Mississippian culture arose as the cultivation of Mesoamerican
crops of corn and beans led to crop surpluses and population growth.
Increased population density gave rise of urban centers and regional chiefdoms, of which the greatest was the city known as Cahokia, in present-day Illinois
near the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Its
population of 20,000 to 30,000 at its peak exceeded any of the later
European cities in North America until 1800. Stratified societies
developed, with hereditary
religious and political elites, and flourished in what is now the
Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500
C.E.


Trade with the Northeast indigenous peoples via the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period (1000 BC–AD 700) and continued until European contact.[11] The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of the state from 1000 to 1600 AD, with one of its major centers being at the Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama, the second-largest complex of this period in the United States. Some 29 earthwork mounds survive at this site.[12][13]


Analysis of artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations at Moundville were the basis of scholars' formulating the characteristics of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC).[14] Contrary to popular belief, the SECC appears to have no direct links to Mesoamerican culture, but developed independently. The Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the religion of the Mississippian peoples; it is one of the primary means by which their religion is understood.[15]


The early historic Muscogee are considered likely descendants of the mound builders of the Mississippian culture along the Tennessee River in modern Tennessee,[16] Georgia and Alabama. They may have been related to the Utinahica of southern Georgia. At the time the Spanish made their first forays inland from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, many political centers of the Mississippians were already in decline, or abandoned.[17] The Alabama region is best described as a collection of moderately sized native chiefdoms (such as the Coosa chiefdom on the Coosa River),
interspersed with completely autonomous villages and tribal groups. The
earliest Spanish explorers encountered settlements of the late Mississippian culture, beginning on April 2, 1513, with Juan Ponce de León's Florida landing and in 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition in South Carolina.


Among the historical tribes of Native American people living in the area of present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Muskogean-speaking Alabama (Alibamu), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, and Mobile peoples. Also in the region were the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee, who migrated south from the Great Lakes area, based on their language's similarity to those of the Iroquois League.[18] The history of Alabama's Native American peoples is reflected in many of its place names.


European colonization

The Spanish were the first Europeans to enter Alabama, claiming land for their Crown. They named the region La Florida, which extended to the southeast peninsular state now bearing the name.


Although a member of Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition of 1528 may have entered southern Alabama, the first fully documented visit was by explorer Hernando de Soto. In 1539 he made an arduous expedition along the Coosa, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers.


The English also laid claims to the region north of the Gulf of Mexico. Charles II of England included the territory of modern Alabama in the Province of Carolina,
with land granted to certain of his favorites by the charters of 1663
and 1665. English traders from Carolina frequented the valley of the Alabama River as early as 1687 to trade with its Native American peoples for deerskins.




1725 map of Mobile, Alabama's first permanent European settlement.
The French also colonized the region. In 1702 they founded a settlement on the Mobile River near its mouth, constructing Fort Louis. For the next nine years this was the French seat of government of New France, or La Louisiane (Louisiana). In 1711, Fort Louis was abandoned to floods. Settlers rebuilt a fort on higher ground known as Fort Conde. This was the start of what developed as present-day Mobile, the first permanent European settlement in Alabama.


The French and the English contested the region, each attempting to
forge strong alliances with Indian tribes. To strengthen their position,
defend their Indian allies, and draw other tribes to them, the French
established the military posts of Fort Toulouse, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and Fort Tombecbe on the Tombigbee River.


The French and the English engaged in competition for Indian trade in
what is now the state of Alabama between roughly the 1690s and the
1750s (at which point the French and Indian War broke out. Though the French claimed the territory as their own and attempted to rule it from Fort Toulouse
so as to engage in trade with the Indians, English traders based out of
the Carolinas were everywhere, engaging in trade right under the
French's nose. Particularly frustrating to the French was the fact that
the Chickasaw virtually always favored the English in this contest.
Overall, during this time the English proved to be the better colonizers
and better traders. Their advantage came from the fact that their
central government in London largely left them alone to engage in trade
as they saw fit and did not hamper their efforts with excessive
regulation as the French government did to their colonists. On this note
Edmund Burke
would later note that English colonists in America would owe their
freedom "to its carelessness than to its design". This was a policy
referred to as "salutary neglect". It reflected the larger fact as well
that Englishmen at home were accustomed to a greater degree of freedom
than were Frenchman.[19]


The English Crown's grant of Georgia to Oglethorpe and his associates in 1732 included a portion of what is now northern Alabama. In 1739, Oglethorpe visited the Creek Indians west of the Chattahoochee River and made a treaty with them.


The 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years' War after France's defeat by Britain, resulted in France ceding its territories east of the Mississippi to Britain. Great Britain came into undisputed control of the region between the Chattahoochee and the Mississippi rivers. The portion of Alabama below the 31st parallel became a part of British West Florida. The portion north of this line became a part of the "Illinois Country",
set apart by the British Crown for use by Indians. In 1767, the
province of West Florida was extended northward to 32°28'N latitude.


More than a decade later, during the American Revolutionary War, the British informally ceded this region to Spain. By the Treaty of Versailles, September 3, 1783, Great Britain ceded West Florida to Spain. By the Treaty of Paris (1783),
signed the same day, Britain ceded to the newly established United
States all of this province north of the 31°N, thus laying the
foundation for a long controversy.




Mississippi Territory changes 1798-1817.
By the Treaty of Madrid,
in 1795, Spain ceded to the United States the lands east of the
Mississippi between 31°N and 32°28'N. Three years later, in 1798,
Congress organized this district as the Mississippi Territory. A strip of land 12 or 14 miles wide near the present northern boundary of Alabama and Mississippi was claimed by South Carolina,
as part of the eastern colonies' previous hopeful extensions to the
west. In 1787, during constitutional negotiations, South Carolina ceded
this claim to the federal government. Georgia likewise claimed all the
lands between the 31st and 35th parallels
from its present western boundary to the Mississippi River, and did not
surrender its claim until 1802. Two years later, the boundaries of
Mississippi Territory were extended so as to include all of the Georgia
cession.


In 1812, Congress added the Mobile District of West Florida to the Mississippi Territory, claiming that it was included in the Louisiana Purchase. The following year, General James Wilkinson
occupied the Mobile District with a military force. The Spanish did not
resist. Thus the whole area of the present state of Alabama was taken
under the jurisdiction of the United States. Several Native American
tribes still occupied most of the land, with some formal ownership
recognized by treaty with the United States. Five of the major tribes
became known as the Five Civilized Tribes for their adoption of elements of European-American culture.


In 1817, the Mississippi Territory was divided. The western portion,
which had attracted population more quickly, became the state of Mississippi. The eastern portion became the Alabama Territory, with St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River as its temporary seat of government.


Conflict between the Indians of Alabama and American settlers
increased rapidly in the early 19th century because the Americans kept
encroaching on Native American territories. The great Shawnee chief Tecumseh
visited the region in 1811, seeking to forge an Indian alliance among
these tribes to join his resistance in the Great Lakes area. With the
outbreak of the War of 1812,
Britain encouraged Tecumseh's resistance movement, in the hope of
expelling American settlers from west of the Appalachians. Several
tribes were divided in opinion.


The Creek tribe fell to civil war (1813-1804). Violence between Creeks and Americans escalated, culminating in the Fort Mims massacre.
Full-scale war between the United States and the "Red Stick" Creeks
began; they were the more traditional members of their society who
resisted US encroachment. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee Nation,
and other Creek factions remained neutral to or allied with the United
States during the war; some warriors from among the bands served with
American troops. Volunteer militias from Georgia, South Carolina, and
Tennessee marched into Alabama, fighting the Red Sticks.


Later, federal troops became the main fighting force for the United States. General Andrew Jackson
was the commander of the American forces during the Creek War and in
the continuing effort against the British in the War of 1812. His
leadership and military success during the wars made him a national
hero. The Treaty of Fort Jackson
(August 9, 1814) ended the Creek War. By the terms of the treaty the
Creek, Red Sticks and neutrals alike, ceded about one-half of the
present state of Alabama to the United States. Due to later cessions by
the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw in 1816, they retained only about
one-quarter of their former territories in Alabama.


Early statehood

In 1820, Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state to the Union. Its constitution provided for equal suffrage for white men, a standard it abandoned in its constitution of 1901, which reduced suffrage of poor whites and most blacks.


One of the first problems of the new state was 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. The Panic of 1837
wiped out a large portion of the banks' assets, leaving the state poor.
Next came revelations of grossly careless and 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 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson, forcing the removal
of southeastern tribes, including the Five Civilized Tribes of Creek,
Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole. In 1832, the national
government provided for the removal of the Creek via the Treaty of Cusseta.
Before the removal occurred between 1834 and 1837, the state
legislature defined counties from the lands to be ceded, and
European-American settlers flocked in before the Native Americans had
left.


Until 1832, there was only one party in the state, the Republican. 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 planters 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 (1848), 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.


Tensions related to slavery divided many state delegations in
Congress, as this body tried to determine the futures of territories
beyond the Mississippi River. Following the Congressional passage of the
Compromise of 1850,
which assigned certain territories as slave or free, in Alabama, people
became realigned politically. 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.


Since the turn of the 19th century, development of large cotton
plantations had taken place across the upland Black Belt after the
invention of the cotton gin
made short-staple cotton profitable. Cotton had added dramatically to
the state's wealth. The owners' wealth depended on the labor of hundreds
of thousands of enslaved African Americans, many initially transported
in the domestic trade from the Upper South. 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,
who made up 45% of the state's population.


As reflected in white universal suffrage at the time of statehood,
the early Alabama settlers were noted for a spirit of frontier democracy
and egalitarianism, and their fierce defense of the republican values
of civic virtue and opposition to corruption.[citation needed]
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 and slavery as the basis of their wealthy economy
made voters ready to secede when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 (Thornton 1978).


Secession and Civil War, 1861-1865

Main article: Alabama in the American Civil War
The "Unionists" were successful in the elections of 1851 and 1852. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
and uncertainty about agitation against slavery led the State
Democratic convention of 1856 to revive the "Alabama Platform". When the
Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina,
failed to approve the "Alabama Platform" in 1860, the Alabama
delegates, followed by those of the other "cotton states", withdrew.
Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, Governor Andrew B. Moore,
as previously instructed by the legislature, called a state convention.
Many prominent men had opposed secession. In North Alabama, there was
an attempt to organize a neutral state to be called Nickajack. With President Lincoln's call to arms in April 1861, most opposition to secession ended.


On January 11, 1861, the State of Alabama adopted the ordinances of secession[20] from the Union (by a vote of 61-39).


Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, which government was first organized at Montgomery on February 4, 1861. the CSA set up its temporary capital in Montgomery and selected Jefferson Davis as president. In May 1861, the Confederate government abandoned Montgomery before the sickly season began, and relocated to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of that state.




The inauguration of Jefferson Davis in Montgomery on February 18, 1861.
Governor Moore energetically supported the Confederate war effort.
Even before hostilities began, he seized Federal facilities, sent agents
to buy rifles in the Northeast, and scoured the state for weapons.
Despite some resistance in the northern part of the state, Alabama
joined the Confederate States of America (CSA). Congressman Williamson R. W. Cobb was a Unionist and pleaded for compromise. When he ran for the Confederate congress in 1861, he was defeated. (In 1863, with war-weariness growing in Alabama, he was elected on a wave of antiwar sentiment.)


Some idea of the current transportation patterns, and severe internal
logistics problems faced by the Confederacy, can be seen by tracing
Jefferson Davis' journey from his plantation Mississippi to Montgomery
in the next state. With few roads and railroads, he traveled by steamboat from his plantation on the Mississippi River down to Vicksburg, where he boarded a train to Jackson, Mississippi. He took another train north to Grand Junction, then a third train east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a fourth train south to Atlanta, Georgia. He took another train to the Alabama border, and a last one to Montgomery in the center of the state.


As the war proceeded, the Federals seized ports along the Mississippi
River, burned trestles and railroad bridges, and tore up track. The
frail Confederate railroad system faltered and virtually collapsed for
want of repairs and replacement parts.


In the early part of the Civil War,
Alabama was not the scene of military operations. The state contributed
about 120,000 men to the Confederate service, practically all the white
male population capable of bearing arms. Most were recruited locally
and served with men they knew, which built esprit and strengthened ties
to home. Medical conditions were severe for all soldiers. About 15% of
fatalities were from disease, more than the 10% from battle. Alabama had
few well-equipped hospitals, but it had many women who volunteered to
nurse the sick and wounded. Soldiers were poorly equipped, especially
after 1863. Often they pillaged the dead for boots, belts, canteens,
blankets, hats, shirts and pants. Uncounted thousands of slaves were
impressed to work for Confederate troops; they took care of horses and
equipment, cooked and did laundry, hauled supplies, and helped in field
hospitals. Other slaves built defensive installations, especially those
around Mobile. They graded roads, repaired railroads, drove supply
wagons, and labored in iron mines, iron foundries and even in the
munitions factories. The service of slaves was involuntary: their unpaid
labor was impressed from their unpaid masters. About 10,000 slaves
escaped and joined the Union army, along with 2,700 white men.


Thirty-nine Alabamians attained flag rank, most notably Lieutenant General James Longstreet and Admiral Raphael Semmes. Josiah Gorgas, who came to Alabama from Pennsylvania, was the chief of ordnance for the Confederacy. He located new munitions plants in Selma,
which employed 10,000 workers until the Union soldiers burned the
factories down in 1865. Selma Arsenal made most of the Confederacy's
ammunition. The Selma Naval Ordnance Works made artillery, turning out a
cannon every five days. The Confederate Naval Yard built ships and was
noted for launching the CSS Tennessee in 1863 to defend Mobile Bay. Selma's Confederate Nitre Works procured niter for the Nitre and Mining Bureau,
for gunpowder, from limestone caves. When supplies were low, it
advertised for housewives to save the contents of their chamber pots—as
urine was a rich source of nitrogen.


In 1863, Union forces secured a foothold in northern Alabama in spite of the opposition of General Nathan B. Forrest.
From 1861, the Union blockade shut Mobile, and, in 1864, the outer
defenses of Mobile were taken by a Union fleet; the city itself held out
until April 1865.[21]


Losses

Alabama soldiers fought in hundreds of battles; the state's losses at the Battle of Gettysburg were 1,750 dead plus more captured or wounded; the "Alabama Brigade" took 781 casualties. Governor Lewis E. Parsons
in July 1865 made a preliminary estimate of losses. Nearly all the
white men served, some 122,000 he said, of whom 35,000 died in the war
and another 30,000 were seriously disabled. The next year Governor Robert M. Patton
estimated that 20,000 veterans had returned home permanently disabled,
and there were 20,000 widows and 60,000 orphans. With cotton prices low,
the value of farms shrank, from $176 million in 1860 to only $64
million in 1870. The livestock supply shrank too, as the number of
horses fell from 127,000 to 80,000, and mules 111,000 to 76,000. The
overall population remained the same—the growth that might have been
expected was neutralized by death and emigration.[22]


Reconstruction, 1865-1875

According to the Presidential plan of reorganization, a provisional
governor for Alabama was appointed in June 1865. A state convention met
in September of the same year, and declared the ordinance of secession
null and void and slavery abolished. A legislature and a governor were
elected in November, and the legislature was at once recognized by
President Andrew Johnson,
but not by Congress, which refused to seat the delegation. Johnson
ordered the Army to allow the inauguration of the governor after the
legislature ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in December, 1865. But the legislature's passage of Black Codes to control the freedmen who were flocking from the plantations to the towns, and its rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment to grant suffrage, intensified Congressional hostility to the Presidential plan.


In 1867, the congressional plan of Reconstruction
was completed and Alabama was placed under military government. The
freedmen were enrolled as voters. Only whites who could swear the Ironclad oath
could be voters; that is they had to swear they had never voluntarily
supported the Confederacy. This provision was insisted upon by the
whites in the northern hill counties so they could control local
government. As a result, Republicans controlled 96 of the 100 seats in
the state constitutional convention.[23] The new Republican party, made up of freedmen, Union sympathizers (scalawags), and northerners who had settled in the South (carpetbaggers),
took control two years after the war ended. The constitutional
convention in November 1867 framed a constitution which conferred
universal manhood suffrage and imposed the iron-clad oath, so that
whites who had supported the Confederacy were temporarily prohibited
from holding office. The Reconstruction Acts of Congress required every
new constitution to be ratified by a majority of the legal voters of the
state. Most whites boycotted the polls and the new constitution fell
short. Congress enacted that a majority of the votes cast should be
sufficient. Thus the constitution went into effect, the state was
readmitted to the Union in June 1868, and a new governor and legislature
were elected.


Many whites resisted postwar changes, complaining that the Republican
governments were notable for legislative extravagance and corruption.
But the Republican biracial coalition created the first system of public
education in the state, which would benefit poor white children as well
as freedmen. They also created charitable public institutions, such as
hospitals and orphanages, to benefit all citizens. The planters had not
made public investment but kept their wealth for themselves. As the
state tried to improve institutions and infrastructure for the future,
the state debt and state taxes rose. The state endorsed railway bonds at
the rate of $12,000 and $16,000 a mile until the state debt had
increased from eight million to seventeen million dollars. The native
whites united, peeled many Scalawags away from the Republican coalition,
formed a Conservative party, and elected a governor and a majority of
the lower house of the legislature in 1870, in an election characterized
by widespread violence and fraud. As the new administration was overall
a failure, in 1872, voters re-elected Republicans.


By 1874, however, the power of the Republicans was broken, and
conservative Democrats regained power in all state offices. A commission
appointed to examine the state debt found it to be $25,503,000; by
compromise, it was reduced to $15,000,000. A new constitution was
adopted in 1875, which omitted the guarantee of the previous
constitution that no one should be denied suffrage on account of race,
color or previous condition of servitude. Its provisions forbade the
state to engage in internal improvements
or to give its credit to any private enterprise, an anti-industrial
stance that persisted and that limited the state's progress for decades
into the 20th century.[24]


In the South the interpretation of the tumultuous 1860s has differed
sharply by race. Americans often interpreted great events in religious
terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War
and Reconstruction in white versus black using Baptist sermons in
Alabama. Whites preachers expressed the view that:

God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.
In sharp contrast, Black preachers interpreted the Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction as:

God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them: God would be their rock in a stormy land.[25]

Disfranchisement and origins of New South, 1876-1914

After 1874, the Democratic party had constant control of the state
administration. The Republican Party by then was chiefly supported by
African Americans. Republicans held no local or state offices, but the
party did have some federal patronage. It failed to make nominations for
office in 1878 and 1880 and endorsed the ticket of the Greenback party
in 1882.


The development of mining and manufacturing was accompanied by
economic distress among the farming classes, which found expression in
the Jeffersonian Democratic party, organized in 1892. The regular
Democratic ticket was elected and the new party was merged into the
Populist party. In 1894, the Republicans united with the Populists,
elected three congressional representatives, and secured control of many
of the counties. They did not succeed in carrying the state. They
Populist coalition had less success in the next campaigns. Partisanship
became intense, and Democratic charges of corruption of the black
electorate were matched by Republican and Populist accusations of fraud
and violence by Democrats.


Despite opposition by Republicans and Populists, Democrats completed
their dominance with passage of a new constitution in 1901 that
restricted suffrage and effectively disenfranchised most African
Americans and many poor whites, through requirements for voter
registration, such as poll taxes, literacy tests
and restrictive residency requirements. From 1900 to 1903, the number
of white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, from 232,821 to
191,492, despite a growth in population. By 1941 a total of more whites
than blacks had been disenfranchised: 600,000 whites to 520,000 blacks.
This was due mostly to effects of the cumulative poll tax.[2]


The damage to the African-American community was severe and
pervasive, as nearly all its eligible citizens lost the ability to vote.
In 1900 45% of Alabama's population were African American: 827,545
citizens.[26]
In 1900 fourteen Black Belt counties (which were primarily African
American) had more than 79,000 voters on the rolls. By June 1, 1903, the
number of registered voters had dropped to 1,081. While Dallas and Lowndes
counties were each 75% black, between them only 103 African-American
voters managed to register. In 1900 Alabama had more than 181,000
African Americans eligible to vote. By 1903 only 2,980 had managed to
"qualify" to register, although at least 74,000 black voters were
literate. The shut out was long-lasting. The effects of segregation
suffered by African Americans were severe. At the end of WWII, for
instance, in the black Collegeville community of Birmingham, only eleven
voters in a population of 8,000 African Americans were deemed
"eligible" to register to vote.[2]
Disfranchisement also meant that blacks and poor whites could not serve
on juries, so were subject to a justice system in which they had no
part.


Railroads and industry



Blast furnaces such as the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company's Ensley Works made Birmingham an important center for iron production in the early 20th century.
Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871 by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North railroads. The site of the railroad crossing was notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone-the three principal raw materials used in making steel.
Its founders adopted the name of England's principal industrial city to
advertise the new city as a center of iron and steel production.
Despite outbreaks of cholera, the population of 'Pittsburgh
of the South' grew from 38,000 to 132,000 from 1900 to 1910, attracting
rural white and black migrants from all over the region.[27]
Birmingham experienced such rapid growth that it was nicknamed "The
Magic City." By the 1920s, Birmingham was the 19th largest city in the
U.S and held more than 30% of the population of the state. Heavy
industry and mining were the basis of the economy.


Chemical and structural constraints limited the quality of steel
produced from Alabama's iron and coal. These materials did, however,
combine to make ideal foundry iron. Because of low transportation and
labor costs, Birmingham quickly became the largest and cheapest foundry
iron-producing area. By 1915 twenty-five percent of the nation's foundry
pig iron was produced in Birmingham.[28]


New South, 1914-1945

Despite Birmingham's powerful industrial growth and its contributions
to the state economy, its citizens, and those of other newly developing
areas, were underrepresented in the state legislature for years. The
rural-dominated legislature refused to redistrict state House and Senate
seats from 1901 to the 1960s. In addition, the state legislature had a
senate based on one for each county. The state legislative delegations
controlled counties. This led to a stranglehold on the state by a white
rural minority. The contemporary interests of urbanizing, industrial
cities and tens of thousands of citizens were not adequately represented
in the government.[29]
One result was that Jefferson County, home of Birmingham's industrial
and economic powerhouse, contributed more than one-third of all tax
revenue to the state. It received back only 1/67th of the tax money, as
the state legislature ensured taxes were distributed equally to each
county regardless of population.


From 1910-1940, tens of thousands of African Americans migrated out of Alabama in the Great Migration to seek jobs, education for their children, and freedom from lynching in northern and midwestern cities, such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland.
These cities had many industrial jobs, but the migrants also had to
compete with new waves of European immigrants. The rate of population
growth in Alabama dropped from 20.8% in 1900 and 16.9% in 1910, to 9.8%
in 1920, reflecting the impact of the outmigration. Formal
disenfranchisement was ended only after the mid-1960s after African
Americans led the Civil Rights Movement and gaining Federal legislation
to protect their voting and civil rights. But the state devised new ways
to reduce their political power. By that time, African Americans
comprised a smaller minority than at the turn of the century, and a
majority in certain rural counties.


A rapid pace of change across the country, especially in growing
cities, combined with new waves of immigration and migration of rural
whites and blacks to cities, all contributed to a volatile social
environment and the rise of a second Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) in the South and Midwest after 1915. In many areas it represented
itself as a fraternal group to give aid to a community. Feldman (1999)
has shown that the second KKK was not a mere hate group; it showed a
genuine desire for political and social reform on behalf of poor whites.
For example, Alabama Klansmen such as Hugo Black
were among the foremost advocates of better public schools, effective
Prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other
"progressive" measures to benefit poor whites. By 1925, the Klan was a
powerful political force in the state, as urban politicians such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black
manipulated the KKK membership against the power of the "Big Mule"
industrialists and especially the Black Belt planters who had long
dominated the state.[30]


In 1926, Bibb Graves,
a former chapter head, won the governor's office with KKK members'
support. He led one of the most progressive administrations in the
state's history, pushing for increased education funding, better public
health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. At the same
time, KKK vigilantes---thinking they enjoyed governmental
protection—launched a wave of physical terror across Alabama in 1927,
targeting both blacks and whites. The conservative elite
counterattacked. The major newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on
the Klan as violent and unAmerican. Sheriffs cracked down on Klan
violence, and a national scandal among Klan leaders in the 1920s turned
many members away. The counterattack worked. The state voted for
Democratic candidate Al Smith
in 1928, although he was Roman Catholic (a target of the KKK), and the
Klan's official membership plunged to under six thousand by 1930.


Civil Rights Movement and redistricting, 1945-1975

Following service in World War II, many African-American veterans
became activists for civil rights, wanting their rights under the law as
citizens. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
from 1955 to 1956 was one of the most significant African-American
protests against the policy of racial segregation in the state. Although
constituting a majority of bus passengers, African Americans were
discriminated against in seating policy. The protest nearly brought the
city bus system to bankruptcy and changes were negotiated. The legal
challenge was settled in Browder v. Gayle (1956), a case in which the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
found the segregation policy to be unconstitutional under Fourteenth
Amendment provisions for equal treatment; it ordered that public transit
in Alabama be desegregated.


The rural white minority's hold on the legislature continued,
however, suppressing attempts by more progressive elements to modernize
the state. A study in 1960 concluded that because of rural domination,
"A minority of about 25 per cent of the total state population is in
majority control of the Alabama legislature."[29]
Given the legislature's control of the county governments, the rural
interests had even more power. Legislators and others filed suit in the
1960s to secure redistricting and reapportionment. It took years and
Federal court intervention to achieve the redistricting necessary to
establishing "one man, one vote" representation, as a result of Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims
(1964). The court ruled that, in addition to the states having to
redistrict to reflect decennial censuses in congressional districts,
both houses of state governments had to be based on representation by
population districts, rather than by geographic county as the state
senate had been, as the senate's make-up prevented equal representation.
These court decisions caused redistricting in many northern and western
states as well as the South, where often rural interests had long
dominated state legislatures and prevented reform.


In 1960 on the eve of important civil rights battles, 30% of Alabama's population was African American or 980,000.[31]


As Birmingham was the center of industry and population in Alabama,
in 1963 civil rights leaders chose to mount a campaign there for
desegregation. Schools, restaurants and department stores were
segregated; no African Americans were hired to work in the stores where
they shopped or in the city government supported in part by their taxes.
There were no African-American members of the police force. Despite
segregation, African Americans had been advancing economically. But from
1947 to 1965, Birmingham suffered "about 50 racially motivated bomb
attacks."[32] Independent groups affiliated with the KKK
bombed transitional residential neighborhoods to discourage blacks'
moving into them; in 19 cases, they bombed black churches with
congregations active in civil rights, and the homes of their ministers.[32])


To help with the campaign and secure national attention, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth invited members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) to Birmingham to help change its leadership's policies.
Non-violent action had produced good results in some other cities. The
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, his executive director; and other leaders came to Birmingham to help.


In the spring and summer of 1963, national attention became riveted
on Birmingham. The media covered the series of peaceful marches that the
Birmingham police, headed by Police Commissioner Bull Connor,
attempted to divert and control. He invited high school students to
join the marches, as King intended to fill the jails with nonviolent
protesters to make a moral argument to the United States. Dramatic
images of Birmingham police using police dogs and powerful streams of
water against children protesters filled newspapers and television
coverage, arousing national outrage. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
during a Sunday service, which killed four Africa-American girls,
caused a national outcry and gained support for the civil rights cause
in the state. 16th Street Baptist Church
had been a rallying point and staging area for civil rights activities
in Birmingham prior to the bombing. Finally, Birmingham leaders King and
Shuttlesworth agreed to end the marches when the businessmen's group
committed to end segregation in stores and public facilities.


Before his November 1963 assassination, President John F. Kennedy had supported civil rights legislation. In 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson helped secure its passage and signed the Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches
in 1965 attracted national and international press and TV coverage. The
nation was horrified to see peaceful protesters beaten as they entered
the county. That year, Johnson helped achieve passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to gain federal oversight and enforcement to ensure the ability of all citizens to vote.


Court challenges related to "one man, one vote"
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally provided the groundwork for
Federal court rulings. In 1972 the federal court required the
legislature to create a statewide redistricting plan in order to correct
the imbalances in representation in the legislature related to
population patterns.[29]
Redistricting, together with federal oversight of voter registration
and election practices, enabled hundreds of thousands of Alabama
citizens, both white and black, to vote and participate for the first
time in the political system.


1975-2000

Twenty first century, 2000-present

In 2015, state budget reductions of $83 million caused five parks to be closed per Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources ($3 million) and service cuts at driver license offices. [33]


See also

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Main article: Historical outline of Alabama
City timelines

References

  1. America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, University of Houston
  2. Glenn Feldman. The Disenfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, p.136
  3. Historical Census Browser, 1900 Federal Census, University of Virginia [1], accessed 15 Mar 2008
  4. Sernett, Milton C. (1997). Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration. Duke University Press. pp. 37–40. ISBN 978-0-8223-1993-1.
  5. Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land, 37.
  6. Tolnay, Stewart Emory; E. M. Beck (1995). A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930. University of Illinois Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-252-06413-5.
  7. Thomas, James D.; William Histaspas Stewart (1988). Alabama government & politics. U of Nebraska Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8032-9181-2.
  8. Bullock, Charles S.; Mark J. Rozell (2006). The New Politics of the Old South: An Introduction to Southern Politics. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-7425-5344-6.
  9. Bullock and Rozell, The New Politics of the Old South, p. 87.
  10. Prentice, Guy (2003). Southeast Chronicles http://www.kikisweb.de/basteln/basteln.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-11. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. "Alabama". The New York Times Almanac 2004. The New York Times. 2006-08-11. Retrieved 2006-09-23.
  12. Welch, Paul D. (1991). Moundville's Economy. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0512-2. OCLC 21330955.
  13. Walthall, John A. (1990). Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast-Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0552-1. OCLC 26656858.
  14. Townsend, Richard F. (2004). Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10601-7. OCLC 56633574.
  15. edited
    by F. Kent Reilly III and James F. Garber ; foreword by Vincas P.
    Steponaitis. (2004). F. Kent Reilly and James Garber, eds. Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71347-5. OCLC 70335213.
  16. Finger, John R. (2001). Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition. Indiana University Press. p. 19. ISBN 0-253-33985-5.
  17. About North Georgia (1994–2006). "Moundbuilders, North Georgia's early inhabitants". Golden Ink. Retrieved 2008-05-02.
  18. "Alabama Indian Tribes". Indian Tribal Records. AccessGenealogy.com. 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-23.
  19. History of Alabama, for Use in schools By William Garrot Brown and Albert James Pickett, page 56
  20. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Ordinances and Constitution of the State of Alabama
  21. Rogers, ch 12
  22. Walter Lynwood Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (1905) pp 251-4 online edition
  23. Rogers et al. Alabama p 244-45
  24. Rogers et al. Alabama, p 247-58
  25. Wilson Fallin Jr., Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (2007), pp 52-53
  26. Historical Census Browser, 1900 US Census, University of Virginia, accessed 15 Mar 2008
  27. Birmingham's Population, 1880-2000
  28. http://www.slossfurnaces.com/media/pdfs/online_lessons/Alabama_New_South.pdf
  29. George Mason University, United States Election Project: Alabama Redistricting Summary, accessed 10 Mar 2008
  30. Feldman (1999)
  31. Historical Census Browser, 1960 US Census, University of Virginia, accessed 13 Mar 2008
  32. CHANDA TEMPLE and JEFF HANSEN, "Ministers' homes, churches among bomb targets", AL.com, 16 July 2000, accessed 3 February 2015
  33. Mike Cason State to close 5 parks, cut back services at driver license offices Alabama Media Group, September 30, 2015.
  34. Federal Writers' Project (1941), "Chronology", Alabama; a Guide to the Deep South, American Guide Series, New York: Hastings House – via Hathi Trust

Bibliography

Overviews

Pre 1900

  • Abernethy, Thomas Perkins The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815-1828 (1922) online edition
  • Barney, William L. The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860. (1974).
  • Bethel, Elizabeth . "The Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama," Journal of Southern History Vol. 14, No. 1, Feb., 1948 pp. 49–92 online at JSTOR
  • Bond, Horace Mann. "Social and Economic Forces in Alabama Reconstruction," Journal of Negro History 23 (1938):290-348 in JSTOR
  • Dupre, Daniel. "Ambivalent Capitalists on the Cotton Frontier: Settlement and Development in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama." Journal of Southern History 56 (May 1990): 215-40. Online at JSTOR
  • Fitzgerald, Michael R. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890. (2002). 301 pp. ISBN 0-8071-2837-6.
  • Fitzgerald, Michael R. "Radical Republicanism and the White Yeomanry During Alabama Reconstruction, 1865-1868." Journal of Southern History 54 ( November 1988): 565-96. JSTOR
  • Fleming, Walter L. Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama 1905. the most detailed study; Dunning School full text online
  • Going, Allen J. Bourbon Democracy in Alabama, 1874-1890. 1951.
  • Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; ch 12 on Alabama
  • Jordan, Weymouth T. Ante-Bellum Alabama: Town and Country. (1957).
  • Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Response of Alabama Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (1972).
  • McWhiney, Grady. "Were the Whigs a Class Party in Alabama?" Journal of Southern History 23 (1957): 510-22. Online at JSTOR
  • Moore, A. B. "Railroad Building in Alabama During the Reconstruction Period," Journal of Southern History (1935) 1#4 pp. 421–441 in JSTOR
  • Morse, J. (1797). "Georgia Western Territory". The American Gazetteer. Boston, Massachusetts: At the presses of S. Hall, and Thomas & Andrews.
  • Rogers, William Warren. The One-Gallused Rebellion; Agrarianism in Alabama, 1865-1896 (1970).
  • Sellers, James B. Slavery in Alabama 1950. online edition
  • Sterkx, Henry Eugene. Partners in Rebellion: Alabama Women in the Civil War (1970).
  • Thornton, J. Mills III. Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (1978). online edition
  • Wiener, Jonathan M. Social Origins of the New South; Alabama, 1860-1885. (1978).
  • Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881 (1991) online edition
  • Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk. "Alabama: Democratic Bulldozing and Republican Folly." in Reconstruction and Redemption in the South, edited by Otto H. Olson. (1980).

Since 1900

  • Barnard, William D. Dixiecrats and Democrats: Alabama Politics, 1942-1950 (1974)
  • Bond, Horace Mann. Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel 1939.
  • Brownell, Blaine A. "Birmingham, Alabama: New South City in the 1920s." Journal of Southern History 38 (1972): 21-48. in JSTOR
  • Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949 (1999) online edition
  • Feldman, Glenn. "Southern Disillusionment with the Democratic Party:
    Cultural Conformity and the 'the Great Melding' of Racial and Economic
    Conservatism in Alabama during World War II," Journal of American Studies 43 (Aug. 2009), 199–230.
  • Feldman, Glenn. The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944
    (University of Alabama Press; 2013) 480 pages; how the South became
    "solid" for the Democrats, then began to shift with World War II.
  • Frady, Marshall. Wallace: The Classic Portrait of Alabama Governor George Wallace (1996)
  • Grafton, Carl, and Anne Permaloff. Big Mules and Branchheads: James E. Folsom and Political Power in Alabama 1985.
  • Hackney, Sheldon. Populism to Progressivism in Alabama 1969.
  • Hamilton, Virginia. Lister Hill: Statesman from the South 1987.
  • Harris, Carl V. Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 1977.
  • Key, V. O., Jr. Southern Politics in State and Nation. 1949.
  • Lesher, Stephan. George Wallace: American Populist (1995)
  • Norrell, Robert J. "Caste in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama." Journal of American History 73 (December 1986): 669-94. in JSTOR
  • Norrell, Robert J. "Labor at the Ballot Box: Alabama Politics from the New Deal to the Dixiecrat Movement." Journal of Southern History 57 (May 1991): 201-34. in JSTOR
  • Oliff, Martin T., ed. The Great War in the Heart of Dixie: Alabama During World War I (2008)
  • Sellers, James B. The Prohibition Movement in Alabama, 1702-1943 1943.
  • Thomas, Mary Martha. The New Women in Alabama: Social Reform and Suffrage, 1890-1920 (1992) online edition
  • Thomas, Mary Martha. Riveting and Rationing in Dixie: Alabama Women and the Second World War (1987) online edition

Primary sources


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