ALABAMA 



129 



ALABAMA 



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 ap- 

 proval 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, 

 also elected for four-year terms. The sen- 

 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 Talla- 

 dega, Tuscaloosa, Florence and Huntsville, 

 have adopted this system (see COMMISSION 

 FORM OF GOVERNMENT). 



Suffrage in Alabama is restricted by the con- 

 stitution 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 regis- 

 tration, 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 

 , 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 Ala- 

 bama River and its tributaries in 1539 (see 

 .SOTO, FERNANDO). The English also claimed 

 this region, but no attempts at settlement were 

 made until 1702, when Ihe French soldi* 

 plorer Iberville founded Fort Louis, on the 

 Motulr Kiv.r In 1711 id, !, r floods forced 

 removal of the settlement to a point t\\ 

 * farther south, on the present site of 

 Mobile. Fort Conde, as it was then call|. 

 was the- nucleus of the first permanent settle- 

 in Alabama. 



When the French colonial empire was trans- 

 ferred 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 be- 

 tween these sections were already uncertain, 

 and remained in dispute until 1812, when Con- 

 gress 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 en- 

 tire 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 Ala- 

 bama, which had formerly been a part of Mis- 

 sissippi, a separate government; it was there- 

 fore made Alabama Territory, and on Decem- 

 ber 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. Unfortu- 

 nately, however, this prosperity was founded 

 only on cotton, and the cotton crop was the 

 product of slave labor. The people of Ala- 

 bama, 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, accord- 

 ingly, could be only under state control. Th<> 

 Compromise of 1850 inaugurated a decade of 

 bitter political discussion, which came to an 

 end only with secession and war. 



II ar 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 , 



