the great railway systems of the South tap the mineral regions of the northern part-the Southern, the Mobile and Ohio, the Louisville and Nashville, the 'Frisco lines, the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Central Railroad of Georgia. Through these systems the state has connection with the great trunk lines of the north and west. The People. Since its admission to the Union the population of Alabama has increased steadily, but not rapidly. From 127,900 in 1820 it increased to 309,000 in 1830 and 590,000 in 1840. Thereafter the average increase was about twenty per cent every ten years, bringing the total to 2,138,093 in 1910. Of this total 132,600, or 6.2 per cent, lived in Birmingham, a city which owes its existence to the iron and steel industry. Over eighty per cent of the people, however, live in rural districts, only thirteen cities having more than 5,000 people. After Birmingham, the largest cities, in order, are Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Anniston, Bessemer and Gadsden. Alabama has a large number of negro inhabitants; in 1910 the percentage was 42.5 as compared with 45.2 in 1900. The further development of the great industrial region surrounding Birmingham is bound to lower this percentage still more, for the mills and factories are drawing white people from other states. Alabama has long been notable because it has few foreign-born citizens, but in the decade from 1900 to 1910 their number increased from 14,300 to 51,370. This was partly due to the opportunities offered in factories, but also to those in farming. Germans, English, Irish, Italians, Scotch, Russians and Canadians are the most numerous. Education. The first constitution of Alabama, adopted in 1819, declared that "schools, and the means of education, shall be forever encouraged in this state." This declaration was not put fully into effect at once. For more than twenty-five years the only public schools in the state were in Mobile, and it may safely be said that until after the War of Secession there were no free public schools. Even those schools to which the state contributed were supported in part by tuition, and as late as 1872 it was estimated that one-third of all money received by the schools came from private gifts or subscriptions. Since 1875, when a new constitution was adopted, the public school system has made rapid progress. The permanent school fund, derived chiefly from the sale of lands donated by Congress, now amounts to more than $2,000,000. There is also an annual state tax of thirty cents per $100 for school purposes, and certain license and other fees are also devoted to the same end. All state funds are apportioned among the counties according to the number of children between the ages of seven and twenty-one. Of the children between those ages a few more than half attend school. About twenty-two per cent of the total population and more than fifty per cent of the negroes are illiterate (see ILLITERACY). Secondary and Higher Education. A state law of 1907 permits the establishment of at least one high school in every county, but the operation of the law depends on the governorwhenever, in his judgment, the condition of the treasury permits. There are six state normal schools for whites, at Florence, Troy, Jacksonville, Daphne, Livingston and Moundville. At Montgomery is a state normal for negroes. The state also maintains schools for deaf, dumb and blind children, all at Talladega, the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, and nine agricultural high schools (one in each Congressional district) which are preparatory schools for the University of Alabama (which see). Besides the state university there are a number of private institutions for higher education, including Southern University, at Greensboro, and Birmingham College at Birmingham, both supported by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; Saint Bernard College at Saint Bernard and Spring Hill College at Spring Hill, both Roman Catholic; Judson College for women at Marion and Howard College for men at East Lake, both Baptist; Alabama Synodical College for women (Presbyterian) at Talladega; and Tuscaloosa Female College (Methodist Episcopal Church, South) at Tuscaloosa. Perhaps the most famous school in the state is the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (which see). Government. Alabama has been governed under five constitutions. The one now in force, adopted in 1901, provides an executive department consisting of a governor, lieutenantgovernor, attorney-general, secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer, commissioner of agriculture and industries, and superintendent of education. Each of these officers is elected for four years and is not eligible for reëlection. The governor is not eligible by appointment or election to any office in the state or to the United States Senate during his term of office or within one year of its expiration. The governor may veto any bill passed by the legislature, but if he fails to do so within one week after it has been submitted for his approval it automatically becomes a law. The legislature may pass a bill over the governor's veto by a two-thirds vote. Members of the legislature, which is composed of two houses, are also elected for four-year terms. The senate may not exceed in number one-third of the members of the house; the latter has 107 members and the former thirty-five. The judi- . cial power is vested in the supreme court, a court of appeals, circuit courts, chancery and probate courts, and various local courts. The senate may sit as a high court of justice for the impeachment of any state officer. The unit of local government is the county, but cities may be chartered in various classes according to their population. In the first class, over 100,000, the commission form of government is required; it is optional for cities between 50,000 and 100,000, but required for cities between 25,000 and 50,000. Birmingham is the only city in the first class, Mobile in the second and Montgomery in the third. Mobile and a number of other cities, including Talladega, Tuscaloosa, Florence and Huntsville, have adopted this system (see COMMISSION FORM OF GOVERNMENT). Suffrage in Alabama is restricted by the constitution to those who can read and write any article of the Constitution of the United States, have worked or been regularly engaged in some lawful business or occupation for the greater part of the year preceding the date of registration, or who own and have paid taxes on property valued at $300 or more. Permitted exceptions are those persons who are physically unable to read, write or work, and those who have served in the army or navy of the United States or of the Confederate States, in war time, and their lawful descendants. History. The first white men positively known to have visited Alabama were Spaniards led by De Soto, who journeyed along the Alabama River and its tributaries in 1539 (see DE SOTO, FERNANDO). The English also claimed this region, but no attempts at settlement were made until 1702, when the French soldier-explorer Iberville founded Fort Louis, on the Mobile River. In 1711 the river floods forced the removal of the settlement to a point twenty miles farther south, on the present site of Mobile. Fort Conde, as it was then called, was the nucleus of the first permanent settlement in Alabama. When the French colonial empire was transferred to England in 1763, Southern Alabama became a part of West Florida, and Northern Alabama was included in the Illinois country, then set aside for the Indians. In 1783, at the close of the Revolutionary War, England ceded the Illinois country to the United States by the treaty of Paris, at the same time giving West Florida to Spain. The boundaries between these sections were already uncertain, and remained in dispute until 1812, when Congress annexed the Mobile Bay district. In 1813 American soldiers took possession of this territory, and thus for the first time gave the United States actual jurisdiction over the entire area now included in the state. For several years the settlers were in constant danger from the Creek Indians, who went on the warpath to help the British, and at Fort Mims, in 1813, several hundred settlers were massacred. In the next year, however, the power of the Creeks was broken and most of their land claims were turned over to the United States. Thus by 1817 it seemed desirable to make Alabama, which had formerly been a part of Mississippi, a separate government; it was therefore made Alabama Territory, and on December 14, 1819, was formally admitted to the Union as the twenty-second state. The years of statehood fall naturally into three periods: (1) before the War of Secession; (2) war and reconstruction; (3) a new era of industrial growth. Before the War. The first half century of statehood was a prosperous period. Unfortunately, however, this prosperity was founded only on cotton, and the cotton crop was the product of slave labor. The people of Alabama, as a whole, favored the extension of slavery into the territories, and in 1848 the ardent supporters of state's rights, led by William L. Yancey, secured the adoption of the "Alabama Platform," in which the Democratic state convention declared that neither the United States government nor any territory possessed the right to interfere with slavery in a territory. The institution of slavery, accordingly, could be only under state control. The Compromise of 1850 inaugurated a decade of bitter political discussion, which came to an end only with secession and war. War and Reconstruction. Even after the election of Lincoln, there was in Alabama a strong minority opposed to secession. The legislature, however, had voted to call a special state convention in the event of a Republican victory, and Governor Andrew Moore, following these instructions, called the convention to meet on January 7, 1861, and on January 11 an ordinance of secession was adopted. The convention also invited the other Southern states to send delegates to Montgomery for the purpose of "securing concerted and harmonious action in whatever measures may be deemed most desirable for the common peace and security." On February 8 a temporary organization was completed by this new convention, and the Confederacy came into official existence (see CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA). During the war Alabama suffered little material damage, but practically the entire body of white men was in the army. In 1863 the Union forces secured the control of a small section in the northern part, and in 1864 Mobile was bombarded. On the whole, however, the state was spared the ruin which war spread over Tennessee and Georgia. But if Alabama was spared in war, it suffered after peace was declared. Under President Johnson's reconstruction policy, a provisional government was at once organized, but was supplanted in 1867 by a military government under the congressional plan (see RECONSTRUCTION). With the support of the soldiers, the negroes and carpetbaggers controlled the state government until 1874, except from 1870 to 1872. In seven years the state debt was increased from $8,000,000 to over $25,000,000, practically all of the increase being spent wastefully. In 1874 the Conservative Democrats succeeded in electing all the state officials and began a thorough reform. The state debt was compromised to $15,000,000, the carpetbaggers were driven from minor offices and a new constitution was adopted in 1875 (see CARPETBAGGERS). A New Era. The end of reconstruction was the beginning of a new prosperity for Alabama. The agricultural districts gradually readjusted themselves to the new conditions and made steady progress. In the north the founding of Birmingham in 1871 was followed by the development of the surrounding region. Coal had been discovered as early as 1834, but not until the last two decades of the nineteenth century was it extensively mined. Blast furnaces were erected and Birmingham by 1895 was one of the world's greatest centers of pig-iron manufacture. The first coke furnaces were erected in 1881, and the first steel mills in 1897. This development of manufactures has sometimes seemed to injure agricultural development, notably for a few years after 1890, when the Populists, with the aid of the Republicans, nearly carried the state. Since 1900, Alabama, like many other states, has been visited by a wave of prohibition sentiment, which reached the high-water mark in 1908, when the legislature passed a state-wide prohibition act. This has been called "the most drastic prohibition act ever passed by any state"; it was bitterly fought, but in 1909 a prohibition amendment to the constitution was defeated by a large majority. This reaction was followed in 1911 by the adoption of a local option system in which the county is the unit. Finally, in 1915, the legislature adopted a statewide prohibition law which went into effect on June 30, 1915. Other Items of Interest. Alabama may be broadly divided into four great production regions. Farthest north is the cereal region, which includes the Tennessee valley and the land to the northward; next is the mineral region; then comes the cotton belt or black belt with its rich black soil; and finally, along the Gulf of Mexico and extending inward for 150 miles, is the timber belt with its poor and sandy soil. The turtle is called the "Alabama gopher." It was in Alabama that Aaron Burr's final arrest for treason occurred. Alabama has had four capitals. In 1817, when the territory was organized, the capital was located at Saint Stephens. Three years later it was removed to Cahaba, and in 1826 to Tuscaloosa. Not until 1846 was it permanently located at Montgomery. The "peonage" cases occurred not only in Alabama, but in other states of the South as well, and it is only because they first came to light there that they are more intimately connected with the history of that state. See PEONAGE. The highest point in the state is Mount Cheaha, 2,407 feet above sea level. The first discovery of coal in Alabama was made in 1834. The clause which excepts from suffrage restrictions the descendants of those who have served in time of war in the United States or the Confederate army is known as the "Grandfather Clause." See GRANDFATHER CLAUSE. Birmingham is known as the "Pittsburgh of the South." Perdido Bay, at the boundary line between Alabama and Florida, was formerly the resort of pirates and filibusters. Even the fertile "cotton belt" land has shown signs of exhaustion, so constant has been the raising of cotton; and alfalfa and cow-peas have been grown of late years over wide areas, to enrich the soil. Many of the negroes who are serving long terms in the penitentiary are employed in mining coal. Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederate states. Alabama was one of the very early states to introduce railways, indeed, it had the first railroad west of the Alleghanies-a forty-mile line connecting the town at either end of the Muscle Shoals. To-day this would scarcely be considered worthy the name railroad, as its rails were of bar iron and its trains were drawn by mules. W.F.Z. central part of the state. From Montgomery it follows a winding southwesterly course to a point about fifty miles north of Mobile, where it unites with the Tombigbee to form the Mobile River. It is navigable from its mouth to Montgomery, a distance of 320 miles. In earlier days the river was the chief commerce carrier of the state, a large part of whose products were sent to Mobile for shipment, and in spite of the more recent development of railways it still carries extensive traffic in cotton, wheat, oats and other products of the section. ALABAMA, THE, the most destructive and consequently the most famous of the Confederate privateers which preyed on Federal merchant vessels during the War of Secession. The Alabama was built at Birkenhead, Eng Bessemer Birmingham Appalachian Mountains Cumberland Mountains ALABAMA, a river of Alabama which flows through the most fertile farm lands and the richest forests of the state. It is formed by the junction of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa rivers six miles north of Montgomery, in the THE FAMOUS "ALABAMA" land, in 1862, under circumstances so suspicious that the United States minister, Charles Francis Adams, called the British government's attention to the vessel. Contrary to international law and Queen Victoria's proclamation of neutrality, it was allowed to sail, and made its way to the Azores Islands, where it took on guns and stores from another vessel. Captain Raphael Semmes, who named the vessel, took command on August 24, 1862, and for two years made his name and the name of his ship the terror of Federal merchantmen. In two years the Alabama captured sixty-five ships, and destroyed property valued at $4,000,000. For two years Federal cruisers sought for the Alabama on all seas, and finally on June 11, 1864, it was compelled to take refuge in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. The United States Kearsage, Captain John A. Winslow commanding, entered the harbor a few days later, and gave battle on June 19, 1864. Within an hour the Alabama was sunk, in sight of hundreds of spectators who crowded the shores. During the War of Secession and for several years after its close, the Alabama Claims. |