Alabama History

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.

In antebellum Alabama, wealthy planters created large cotton plantations based in the fertile central Black Belt, 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 wished to continue and expand slavery. Feeling pressured by the Northern states, Alabama declared its secession in January 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America in February. The ensuing American Civil War saw moderate levels of action in Alabama, and 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 and began a controversial and difficult decade of Reconstruction.

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In 1798, the congress of the United States created into a Territory, called "Mississippi," the region between 31° and 32° 28' of north latitude, with the Mississippi river for the western and the Chattahoochee for the eastern boundary. Of this Territory President Adams appointed Winthrop Sargent of Massachusetts the governor. Gov. Sargent repaired to the seat of government, Natchez, on the Mississippi, and assumed authority. In May 1799, a detachment of federal troops relieved the Spanish garrison at Fort St. Stephens, which had been constructed by them twelve or thirteen years before. Below the junction of the Alabama and Tombikbee a defense was erected in July, and christened Fort Stoddart. By proclamation, in June 1800, Gov. Sargent established Washington county, the limits of which comprised all of the territory east of Pearl river as far as the Chattahoochee. The same year congress provided for a legislature for the Territory.

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A provisional convention entered into and made by brigadier general James Wilkinson, of the state of Maryland, commissioner for holding conferences with the Indians south of the Ohio River, in behalf of the United States, on the one part, and the whole Choctaw nation, by their chiefs, head men, and principal warriors, on the other part.

Preamble. For the mutual accommodation of the parties, and to perpetuate that concord and friendship, which so happily subsists between them, they do hereby freely, voluntarily, and without constraint, covenant and agree,

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We the people of the State of Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama.

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