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
relunding, 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 n'as
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 undisouted 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 deg. 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 31 deg. ,
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 deg.
and 32 deg. 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 campaign 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 setrled, it engendered a feeling that the
policy of the national government might not be in harmony with
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
pvevailed 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 `i 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
