Birth of the Southern Nation In February of , delegates from seven Southern states met in the Senate Chamber of the then ten year old state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama.
Each of these states had declared its independence from the United States and before their meetings in Montgomery were over, they had joined forces in establishing the Confederate States of America. In the words of the Alabama Historical Commission, the Capitol Building is now a "significant monument in American history.
The so far bloodless revolution in the cotton states had begun in December of when South Carolina seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. The election of Abraham Lincoln sparked the greatest constitutional crisis in American history.
South Carolina was quickly followed in her decision to leave the Union by in order Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. Immediately realizing that none of their states stood much chance against the power of the Union alone, leaders from the six states picked centrally-located Montgomery, Alabama, for a meeting of delegates to consider their joint future.
Alabama officials made available the Senate Chamber in their capitol building. The Southern Convention convened on February 4, , as large crowds gathered outside and militia units paraded on Dexter Avenue. Declaring themselves a provisional legislature, the delegates established the provisional government of the Confederate States of America. In just four days they drafted a provisional constitution, completing their work on a final document on March 11, Stephens as its capital city.
The first and second Territorial Legislature met there — the first on the 18th of January, , and the second in November of the same year.
Marker of the first capital of Alabama. Attendance was sparse with twelve members of the House, representing seven counties, and only one member of the Senate conducting the business of the new territory. The second Territorial Legislature met in November of the same year. Alabama Department of Archives and History. Territory of Alabama in Nathan H.
Glick drawing Alabama Department of Archives and History. This same year, Cahaba was made the seat of government, but as there was no town there, and no public buildings, Huntsville was designated as the temporary capital. In Huntsville , on the 5th of July, , a convention assembled to prepare a State Constitution, in which twenty-two counties were represented, viz.
She referred to the latest in technological marvels that can send subsurface signals to detect metal, glass and other objects. Technicians maneuvered the equipment up, down and around the area believed to have been the exact location earlier this month, and results could be available soon. Colored markers have been placed throughout a large field where the first state Capitol was built, and Derry is anxious to study the findings.
Finding the specific location would be a feather in the cap of those who have adopted Cahawba as their own in recent decades as the state moves inexorably toward its bicentennial celebration in Alabama's first capital city was carved out of the wilderness one year after statehood in , but only served as the capital for six years before it was replaced by Tuscaloosa, and then Montgomery in One of Derry's worries is the whole area may have been picked clean of anything significant by pioneering families living in log cabins around the Capitol — a 2,square-foot building rarely used after its completion.
The belief of some is the possibility that flooding from the merged Alabama and Cahaba rivers spelled doom for the Capitol and the site's importance to the state. Derry disputes contentions by some writers and historians that legislators needed boats to get to the second floor of the Capitol because of occasional flooding. What did occur when Tuscaloosa became the capital in was the resurgence of Cahawba as the economic heart of Dallas County, while Selma became the county seat.
That exalted ranking was made possible because of slave labor that not only built the Capitol, but also picked cotton that shipped to markets around the world.
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