STATE OF ALABAMA

The article below was written in 1885 and makes interesting reading.

Alabama is 330 miles in length, and, on the average, 154 miles in breadth; and has an area of 52,250 square miles, or 33,440,000 acres. In the northeast, the country is rugged and uneven, and the southern extremity of the Alleghany mountains extends thence west, forming the dividing line between the head waters of the Tennessee and the rivers which flow south to the Gulf of Mexico. The slope from this to the south is gradual, with rolling prairies in the centre of the State, and the extreme southern portion is flat, and but slightly elevated above the sea level. There is about sixty miles of sea coast, including Mobile Bay, the finest harbor on the gulf. The Mobile river is formed by the junction -of the Alabama and Tombigbee; and the Chattahoochee, Coosa and Tennessee all have a part of their course in Alabama.

History: Alabama was visited by De Soto in 1541, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century Mobile was founded by the French. In 1763 the entire French possessions east of the Mississippi, which included a portion of Alabama, were ceded to England by the treaty of Paris, but in 1783 that portion south of latitude 31º was retroceded to Spain.

Alabama formed a part of Georgia until 1798, when that State became a member of the Union, and the country now included in the States of Mississippi and Alabama became the Territory of Mississippi. That portion of the gulf coast extending from Pearl river to Perdido Bay, then occupied by the Spaniards and forming part of Florida, was seized during the war of 1812.

The State of Mississippi was formed from the western portion of the Territory in 1817, and the eastern haIf constituted the Territory of Alabama until Dec. 14, 1819, when it was admitted into the Union, having then a population of 120,000. Being a cotton-growing State and entering the Union with a large slave population, which increased with much greater rapidity than the white race, Alabama naturally held very strong views in favor of the "peculiar institution," and when the long-pending struggle reached a crisis it was one of the very first to propose extreme measures. Its representatives withdrew from the Charleston convention in April, 1860, because that body refused to adopt a strong pro-slavery platform. In November following, Alabama sent commissioners to the other Southern States urging their withdrawal from the Union, and the formation of a Confederacy. The ordinance of secession was adopted in convention Jan. 11, 1861, and on February 4 the Confederacy was organized at Montgomery.