Bible Encyclopedias
Alabama

Education

Public education for Mobile was authorized by the legislature of 1826, but it was not provided until 1852. Two years later (1854) a school system for the entire state was inaugurated. Its support was derived from public land given by the United States to the state of Alabama for educational purposes in 1819, and special taxes or tuition fixed by each township. The Civil War demoralized the nascent system. An important step in its revival seemed to be made in the constitution of 1868, which forbade any private recompense for instruction in the public schools and appropriated one-fifth of the state's revenue to common schools. But the attempt to teach whites and blacks in the same schools, and the corruption in the administration of funds, made the results unsatisfactory. The constitution of 1875 abolished the one-fifth revenue provision, made the support of the schools, except that derived from the land grant of 1819, and poll taxes, depend upon the appropriation of the legislature, and established separate schools for whites and blacks. Progress has been slow but steady. According to the constitution of 1901 the legislature is required to levy, in addition to the poll tax, an annual tax for education at the rate of 30 to 65 cents on the hundred dollars' worth of property, and practically every county in the state had made in 1906 an appropriation for its schools of a one mill tax on $loo. The school fund in 1900 amounted to $1,000,000, an increase of 37% over the average annual fund of the preceding decade; for the year ending the 30th of September 1907 the amount certified for apportionment by the state was $1,150,261.40, and the total annual expenditure was about $1,600,000; in 1906 the school census showed 697,465 children of school age. The legislature of 1907 voted an increase of $300,000 in the appropriation for the common school fund, and granted state-aid for rural school-houses; but its most important work probably was the establishment of county high schools. The rural schools have an annual term of five to seven months only. The percentage of illiterates declined from 50.97% in 1880 to 41% in 1890, and 34% in 1900, when Alabama ranked third among the states in illiteracy.

There are also a number of institutions for higher education in Alabama. The most important of these are the university of Alabama (co-educational - opened in 1831), at Tuscaloosa, the institution being part of the public school system maintained by the state; the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, a "state college for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts," organized in 1872 according to the United States land grant act for the promotion of industrial education; the Southern University (incorporated 1856 - Methodist Episcopal, South), at Greensboro; Howard College (Baptist), at East Lake (Birmingham); Spring Hill College (1830 - Roman Catholic), near Mobile; Talladega College (for negroes), at Talladega; the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (for negroes), at Tuskegee; and state normal schools at Florence, Jacksonville, Troy and Livingston, and, for negroes, at Montgomery, Tuskegee and Normal.

Public Institutions

Alabama supports various philanthropic and penal institutions: a home for Confederate veterans, at Mountain Creek; an institution for the deaf, an academy for the blind, and a school for the negro deaf, dumb and blind, all at Talladega; a hospital for the insane, opened in 1860, at Tuscaloosa; a penitentiary, established in 1839, at Wetumpka; and a state industrial school for white boys, at East Lake (Birmingham), and a state industrial school for white girls at Montevallo.

These institutions are managed by trustees who are appointed by the governor. In addition to the usual method of employing convicts in the penitentiary or on state farms, Alabama, like other southern states, also hires its convicts to labour for private individuals. Reports of abuses under this system caused the legislature in 1901 to order a special investigation, the results of which led in 1903 to a new system of leasing to contractors, whereby the prisoners are kept under the direct supervision of state officials. In this same year a system of peonage that had grown up in the state attracted wide attention, and a Federal grand jury at a single term of court indicted a number of men for holding persons as "peons." Many similar cases were found later in other southern states, but those in Alabama being the first discovered attracted the most attention. The system came into existence in isolated communities through the connivance of justices of the peace with white farmers. The justices have jurisdiction over petty offences, of which negroes are usually the guilty parties, and the fines imposed would sometimes be paid by a white farmer, who would thus save the accused from imprisonment, but at the same time would require him to sign a contract to repay by his labour the sum advanced. By various devices the labourer would then be kept constantly in debt to his employer and be held in involuntary servitude for an indefinite time. The "peons" as a rule were negroes, but a few white ones were found; and in several instances negroes were found holding members of their own race in peonage. A law forbidding under severe penalties a labourer from hiring himself to a second employer without giving notice of a prior contract, and an employer from hiring a labourer known by him to be bound by such a contract, had aided in the development of the system, though it had been enacted for a different purpose. The Federal authorities, as soon as the existence of peonage became known, took active measures to stamp it out, and were supported by the press and by the leading citizens of the state. Up to 1907 the state licensed the sale of liquor, and liquor licence fees were partly turned over to the public school fund; there was a dispensary system in some counties; and in 1907 one-third of the counties of the state (22 out of 67) were "dry." Besides, saloons had been forbidden within 5 m. of certain churches and school-houses, so that liquor was sold scarcely at all except in incorporated towns, where in many cases local dispensaries were established. In the 1907 state legislature a county local option bill was passed in February, and immediately afterward the Sherrod anti-shipping bill was enacted forbidding the acceptance of liquors for shipment, transportation or delivery to prohibition districts, and penalising the soliciting of orders for liquor in "dry" districts with a punishment of $500 fine and six months' imprisonment with hard labour. In a special session of the legislature in November 1907 a law was passed forbidding the sale of liquor within the state, this prohibition to come into effect on the 1st of January 1909.

==Finance==One-half of the income of the state is derived from general taxes, the other sources of revenue being licences, a special school tax, poll tax and the lease of the convicts. The state debt, for which legislative corruption in the years 1868-1872 was largely responsible, amounted on the 1st of October 1906 to $9,057,000. Measures for its refunding, but not for its extinction, have been taken. The constitution of 1901 prohibits the increase of the debt for any other purposes than the suppression of insurrection or resistance to invasion, and the assumption of corporate debts by cities and towns is also restricted. All banks, except national banks, are subject to examination by a public official, and their charters expire within twenty years of their issue.

History

The first Europeans to enter the limits of the present state of Alabama were Spaniards, who claimed this region as a part of Florida. It is possible that a member of Panfilo de Narvaez's expedition of 1528 entered what is now southern Alabama, but the first fully authenticated visit was that of Hernando de Soto, who made an arduous but fruitless journey along the Coosa, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers in 1539. The English, too, claimed the region north of the Gulf of Mexico, and the territory of modern Alabama was included in the province of Carolina, granted by Charles II. to certain of his favourites by the charters of 1663 and 1665. English traders of Carolina were frequenting the valley of the Alabama river as early as 1687. Disregarding these claims, however, the French in 1702 settled on the Mobile river and there erected Fort Louis, which for the next nine years was the seat of government of Louisiana. In 1711 Fort Louis was abandoned to the floods of the river, and on higher ground was built Fort Conde, the germ of the present city of Mobile, and the first permanent white settlement in Alabama. Later, on account of the intrigues of the English traders with the Indians, the French as a means of defence established the military posts of Fort Toulouse, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and Fort Tombecbe on the Tombigbee river. The grant of Georgia to Oglethorpe and his. associates in 1732 included a portion of what is now northern. Alabama, and in 1739 Oglethorpe himself visited the Creek. Indians west of the Chattahoochee river and made a treaty with them. The peace of Paris, in 1763, terminated the French occupation, and England came into undisputed possession of the region between the Chattahoochee and the Mississippi. The portion of Alabama below the 31st parallel then became a part. of West Florida, and the portion north of this line a part of the "Illinois country," set apart, by royal proclamation, for the use of the Indians. In 1767 the province of West Florida was extended northward to 32° 28' N. lat., and a few years later, during the War for Independence, this region fell into the hands of Spain. By the treaty of Versailles, on the 3rd of September 1783, England ceded West Florida to Spain; but by the treaty of Paris, signed the same day, she ceded to the United States all of this province north of 30, and thus laid the foundation for a long controversy. By the treaty of Madrid, in 1795, Spain ceded to the United States her claims to the lands east of the Mississippi between 31° and 32° 28'; and three years later (1798) this district was organized by Congress as the Mississippi Territory. A strip of land 12 or 14 m. wide near the present northern boundary of Alabama and Mississippi was claimed by South Carolina;, but in 1787 that state ceded this claim to the general 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 the Mississippi Territory were extended so as to include all of the Georgia cession. In 1812 Congress annexed to the Mississippi Territory the Mobile District of West Florida, claiming that it was included in the Louisiana Purchase; and in the following year General James Wilkinson occupied this district with a military force, the Spanish commandant offering no resistance. The whole area of the present state of Alabama then for the first time became subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. In 1817 the Mississippi Territory was divided; the western portion became the state of Mississippi, and the eastern the territory of Alabama, with St Stephens, on the Tombigbee river, as the temporary seat of government. In 1819 Alabama was regularly admitted to the Union as a state.

One of the first problems of the new commonwealth was that of finance. Since the amount of money in circulation was not sufficient to meet the demands of the increasing population, a system of state banks was instituted. State bonds were issued and public lands were sold to secure capital, and the notes of the banks, loaned on security, became a medium of exchange. Prospects of an income from the banks led the legislature of 1836 to abolish all taxation for state purposes. This was hardly done, however, before the panic of 1837 wiped out a large portion of the banks' assets; next came revelations of grossly careless and even of corrupt management, and 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, and these form a part. ($3,445, 000) of its present indebtedness.

The Indian problem was important. With the encroachment of the white settlers upon their hunting-grounds the Creek Indians began to grow restless, and the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who visited them in 1811, fomented their discontent. When the outbreak of the second war with Great Britain in 1812 gave the Creeks assurance of British aid they rose in arms, massacred several hundred settlers who had taken refuge in Fort Mims, near the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, and in a short time no white family in the Creek country was safe outside a palisade. The Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians, however, remained the faithful allies of the whites, and volunteers from Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, and later United States troops, marched to the rescue of the threatened settlements. In the camf aign that followed the most distinguished services were rendered by General Andrew Jackson, whose vigorous measures broke for ever the power of the Creek Confederacy. By the treaty of Fort Jackson (9th of August 1814) the Creeks ceded their claims to about one-half of the present state; and cessions by the Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws in 1816 left only about one-fourth of Alabama to the Indians. In 1832 the national government provided for the removal of the Creeks; but before the terms of the contract were effected, the state legislature formed the Indian lands into counties, and settlers flocked in. This caused a disagreement between Alabama and the United States authorities; although it was amicably settled, it engendered a feeling that the pulicy of the national government might not be in harmony wD.h the interests of the state - a feeling which, intensified by the slavery agitation, did much to cause secession in 1861.

The political history of Alabama may be divided into three periods, that prior to 1860, the years from 1860 to 1876, and the period from 1876 onwards.

The first of these is the only period of altogether healthy political life. Until 1832 there was only one party in the state, the Democratic, but 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, also, there arose, chiefly in those counties where the proportion of slaves to freemen was greater and the freemen were most aristocratic, the Whig party. For some time the Whigs were nearly as numerous as the Democrats, but they never secured control of the state government. The State's Rights men 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 introduction of slavery into the territory acquired from Mexico, Yancey induced the Democratic State Convention of 1848 to adopt what is known as the "Alabama Platform," which declared in substance 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 on these questions. This platform was endorsed by conventions in Florida and Virginia and by the legislatures of Georgia and Alabama. Old party lines were broken by the Compromise of 1850. The State's Rights party, 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, while the Whigs, joined by the remaining Democrats, formed the party known as the "Unionists," which unwillingly accepted the Compromise and denied the "constitutional" right of secession. The "Unionists" were successful in the elections of 1851 and 1852, but the feeling of uncertainty engendered in the south by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the course of the slavery agitation after 1852 led the State Democratic convention of 1856 to revive the "Alabama Platform"; and when the "Alabama Platform" failed to secure the formal approval of the Democratic National convention at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1860, the Alabama delegates, followed by those of the other cotton "states," withdrew. Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, Governor Andrew B. Moore, according to previous instructions of the legislature, called a state convention on the 7th of January 1861. After long debate this convention adopted on the i 1 th of January an ordinance of secession, and Alabama became one of the Confederate states of America, whose government was organized at Montgomery on the 4th of February 1861. Yet secession was opposed by many prominent men, and in North Alabama an attempt was made to organize a neutral state to be called Nickajack; but with President Lincoln's call to arms all opposition to secession ended.

In the early part of the Civil War Alabama was not the scene of military operations, yet the state contributed about 120,000 men to the Confederate service, practically all her white population capable of bearing arms, and thirty-nine of these attained the rank of general. In 1863 the Federal forces secured a foothold in northern Alabama in spite of the opposition of General Nathan B. Forrest, one of the ablest Confederate cavalry leaders. In 1864 the defences of Mobile were taken by a Federal fleet, but the city held out until April 1865; in the same month Selma also fell.

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, the legislature was at once recognized by the National government, and the inauguration of the governor-elect was permitted after the legislature had, in December, ratified the thirteenth amendment. But the passage, by the legislature, of vagrancy and apprenticeship laws designed to control the negroes who were flocking from the plantations to the cities, and its rejection of the fourteenth amendment, so intensified the congressional hostility to the presidential plan that the Alabama senators and representatives were denied their seats in Congress. In 1867 the congressional plan of reconstruction was completed and Alabama was placed under military government. The negroes were now enrolled as voters and large numbers of white citizens were disfranchised.' A Black Man's Party, composed of negroes, and political adventurers known as "carpet-baggers," was formed, which co-operated with the Republican party. A constitutional convention, controlled by this element, met in November 1867, and framed a constitution which conferred suffrage on negroes and disfranchised a large class of whites. The Reconstruction Acts of Congress required every new constitution to be ratified by a majority of the legal voters of the state. The whites of Alabama therefore stayed away from the polls, and, after five days of voting, the constitution wanted 13,550 to secure a majority. Congress then enacted that a majority of the votes cast should be sufficient, and thus the constitution went into effect, the state was admitted to the Union in June 1868, and a new governor and legislature were elected.

The next two years are notable for legislative extravagance and corruption. The state endorsed railway bonds at the rate of $12,000 and $16,000 a mile until the state debt had increased from eight millions to seventeen millions of dollars, and similar corruption characterized local government. The native white people united, formed a Conservative party and elected a governor and a majority of the lower house of the legislature in 1870; but, as the new administration was largely a failure, in 1872 there was a reaction in favour of the Radicals, a local term applied to the Republican party, and affairs went from bad to worse. In 1874, however, the power of the Radicals was finally broken, the Conservative Democrats electing all state officials. 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 guaranty of the previous constitution that no one should be denied suffrage on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude, and forbade the state to engage in internal improvements or to give its credit to any private enterprise.

Since 1874 the Democratic party has had constant control of the state administration, the Republicans failing to make nominations for office in 1878 and 1880 and endorsing the ticket ' The enrolment was 104,518 blacks and 61,295 whites.

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 then merged into the Populist party. In 1894 the Republicans united with the Populists, elected three congressional representatives, secured control of many of the counties, but failed to carry the state, and continued their opposition with less success in the next campaigns. Partisanship became intense, and charges of corruption of the ignorant negro electorate were made. Consequently after division on the subject among the Democrats themselves, as well as opposition of Republicans and Populists, a new constitution with restrictions on suffrage was adopted in 1901.

The following is a list of the territorial and state governors of Alabama: - Governor of the Territory. Bibliography. - For an elaborate bibliography of Alabama (by Thomas M. Owen) see the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1897 (Washington, 1898).

Information regarding the resources, climate, population and industries of Alabama may be found in the reports of the United States Census, and in the publications of the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Geological Survey, the Bulletins of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (published at Auburn, from 1888), the Bulletins and Reports of the Alabama Geological Survey (published at Tuscaloosa and Montgomery), and in the following works: - B. F. Riley's Alabama As It Is (Montgomery, 1893), and Saffold Berney's Handbook of Alabama (2nd ed., Birmingham, 1892).

Information concerning the history of the state may be obtained in William G. Brown's History of Alabama (New York, 1900); Newton W. Bates's History and Civil Government of Alabama (Florence, Ala., 1892); Willis Brewer's Alabama: Her History, Resources, War Record and Public Men (Montgomery, 1872); A. Davis Smith's and T. A. Deland's Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical 1 William Wyatt Bibb died in 1820, and Thomas Bibb, then president of the state senate, filled the unexpired term of one year (1820).

2 In 1837 Governor Clay was elected United States Senator, and Hugh M`Vay, the president of the state senate, filled the unexpired. term.

Until 1845 the term of state officials was one year; from then until 1901 it was two years; since 1901 it has been four years.

(Birmingham, 1888); Albert J. Pickett's History of Alabama (5th ed., 2 vols., Birmingham, Ala., 1900), which contains a valuable compilation of the "Annals of Alabama from 1819 to 1900," by Thomas M. Owen; and Walter L. Fleming's Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905).

In addition, W. G. Clark's History of Education in Alabama (Washington, 1889); W. E. Martin's Internal Improvements in Alabama (Baltimore, 1902; Johns Hopkins University Studies, series 20, No. 4); and W. L. Martin's Code of Alabama (2 vols., Atlanta, Ga., 1897) may be consulted.

Information concerning the aboriginal remains in the state may be found in two papers by Clarence B. Moore, "Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Tombigbee River" and "Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Alabama River," published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, series 2, 'vol. ii. (Philadelphia, 1900).