Alabama was central to the Civil War, with the secession convention at Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy, inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic, during January–March 1861, and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabamian constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents, but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods, limited a standing military, and as a final issue, opposed emancipation by any nation, but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury, and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union at the time of the founding of the Confederacy. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.
Even before secession, the governor of Alabama Andrew B. Moore defied the United States government by seizing the two federal forts at the Gulf Coast (forts Morgan and Gaines) and the arsenal at Mount Vernon in January 1861 to distribute weapons to Alabama towns. The peaceful seizure of Alabama forts preceded by three months the bombing and capture of the Union's Fort Sumter (SC) on April 12, 1861.
Alabama was politically divided, voting to secede 61–39%, with most opposition by Unionists in northern Alabama. Citizens would subsequently join Confederate forces, with some Alabamians joining Union forces. Issues of slavery also were divided, with emancipation denied, but slaves protected, allowed trial by jury same as free whites, and African Slave Trade was discouraged in the 1861 Ordinances.
Alabama provided a significant source of troops and leaders, military material, supplies, food, horses and mules. At the southern coast, the Alabama ports remained open (with Union blockades, but guarded by forts, floating mines, and obstacle paths) for almost 4 years using blockade runners, until the Battle of Mobile Bay (Aug 1864) and the Battle of Fort Blakeley (April 1865) forced Mobile to surrender the last major Confederate port.
Secession After the election of Abraham Lincoln from the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1860, plus the prior secession declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida, Alabama delegates also voted to secede from the United States, on January 11, 1861, in order to join and form a slaveholding Southern republic, mostly of the Cotton States. The Alabama Secession Convention invited delegates from the fourteen slaveholding states to join at Montgomery, on February 11, 1861, when seven Cotton States of the Lower South formed the new republic, with Montgomery as Confederate capital and former Mississippi U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederacy.
In December 1860, Stephen F. Hale, Alabama's commissioner to Kentucky, wrote a letter to that state's governor about Alabama's justification for secession. In it, he voiced support for the Dred Scott decision, condemned the Republican Party for opposing slavery, and stated that the state's secession, which would perpetuate slavery, was the only way to prevent prospective African-American freedmen, whom Hale referred to as "half-civilized Africans" from waging a race war (noting the 1804 Haiti massacre):
At the state secession convention in January 1861, one delegate stated that the state's declaring of secession was motivated by slavery:
In an 1861 speech delivered by Alabama politician Robert Hardy Smith, he said that the state of Alabama had left the United States over the issue of slavery. In the speech, he praised the Confederate constitution for its un-euphemistic protections of the right of its citizens to own slaves:
The 1861 Alabama Constitution Ordinance 20 (approved January 28, 1861) insisted the planned Confederacy oppose what it called the "African Slave Trade" and not consider to re-open the issue.
Newspapers in Alabama also supported secession to preserve slavery. According to one newspaper in Montgomery, slavery was a benevolent "religious institution" allowing care of slaves who might perish in other regions.
Upon its secession Alabama adopted a new state constitution. In it, it forbade the emancipation of slaves by the state itself, or by "any other country", such as the United States of America, which Alabama viewed itself as having left, but also the power to oppose the "African Slave Trade":
Alabama joins the war effort Antebellum Governor Andrew B. Moore energetically supported the Confederate war effort. Even before hostilities began in April 1861, he seized U.S. forts on the Alabama Gulf Coast (Morgan and Gaines) and the arsenal in Mount Vernon, in January 1861, sent agents to buy rifles in the Northeast, and scoured the state for weapons. Despite strong resistance in the northern part of the state, Alabama seceded by vote 61–39 and formed the Confederate States of America. Congressman Williamson R.W. Cobb, a Unionist, pleaded for compromise. He ran for Congress, but was soundly defeated (he was subsequently elected in 1863 on a wave of anti-war sentiment, with war-weariness growing in Alabama). The new nation brushed Cobb aside and set up its provisional capital in Montgomery and selected Jefferson Davis as president. In May the Confederate government left Montgomery before the sickly season began and relocated to Richmond, Virginia, after Virginia had seceded in April 1861.
Transportation difficulty
Some idea of the severe logistical problems the Confederacy faced, with the capital city at Montgomery, can be seen by tracing the difficult journey into Alabama which Jefferson Davis made to the Confederacy's provisional capital from his home in Mississippi, the next state over, to assume the presidency on February 16, 1861. From his plantation on the river, he took a steamboat up the Mississippi to Vicksburg, boarded a train to Jackson, where he took another train north to Grand Junction, then a third train east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a fourth train southeast to Atlanta, Georgia. Yet another train took Davis west, back to the Alabama border, where a final train took him to Montgomery. He was in a hurry, but it took five days.William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (2010). pp. 352–53. A few months later in April 1861, the Fall of Fort Sumter took place. This event resulted in four more southern slave holding states, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy and its war effort. The Fall of Fort Sumter also marked the beginning of fighting in the American Civil War. As the war proceeded, internal transportation became much more difficult. The Union seized the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, burned trestles and railroad bridges, and tore up track; the frail Confederate railroad system faltered and virtually collapsed for want of repairs and replacement parts. For example, The Mobile and Ohio Railroad connected the main port at Mobile to points north, ending in Columbus, Kentucky. Historian James Doster reports that when the war ended, "Only a fourth of the rolling stock remained, and that was in bad condition. The repair shops were ruined. The 184-mile roadway from Okolona to Union City was damaged by decay and destruction of bridges, trestlework, crossties, and water stations".James F. Doster, "Were the Southern Railroads Destroyed by the Civil War?." Civil War History 7.3 (1961): 310–320 at p. 313–14. The port of Mobile was blockaded by the U.S. Navy, but some small, fast blockade runners got through at first, carrying out cotton and bringing in luxuries, food and munitions.Arthur W. Bergeron Jr, Confederate Mobile (LSU Press, 2000) ch 9
Weakening economy At the outbreak of war, the state's economy was weak; during the war it declined further. Before the war, most people worked in agriculture. The largest industry was the railroads, followed by gristmills then sawmills. Perhaps 17% of the state's White population was in military service, but this was skewed to a much larger percentage of the economically valuable young men. The full crops planted in 1861 were harvested by those left behind, but the 1862 planting was smaller. Further, many counties suffered a drought in 1862, which further reduced harvest production.
In Coosa County, corn production was down by 150,000 bushels from 1861. Twenty counties (of 67) were unable to produce any surplus of corn. This brought hunger to families left behind by many Confederate soldiers. Wartime conditions made it difficult to move food from areas of surplus to those that were suffering.
Poverty became widespread as shortages drove up food prices. During the war, the legislature provided almost twelve million dollars in poverty relief funds. However, as the state government alleviated these needs by printing paper money not backed by any assets, the resulting massive inflation only made economic hardship worse. In 1861, the state recorded 7% of White families as indigent. In 1862 the figure was 34%, it rose to 39% the following year.
Harsh conditions at home encouraged many soldiers to desert. A November 1864 list shows some 7,994 men had left their units.
Later, bread riots hit Mobile in both April and September 1863. By 1864, roving bands of "corn women" wandered the state begging and stealing.
Due to the naval blockade of southern ports, salt began to be in short supply. The State of Alabama constructed salt works in Clarke County to harvest salt from the local salt springs. The salt was shipped to Mississippi, Georgia, and used in Alabama by the military and civilians.
Military endeavors About 10,000 slaves escaped and joined the Union Army, along with 2,700 white Alabamian men who joined Union forces. The state raised five regiments for the U.S. Army, four of them Black regiments of the United States Colored Troops.
On the opposing side, there were Confederate troops in sixty-five infantry regiments, plus sixteen cavalry and three of artillery that fought for the Confederacy. A large number of irregular and militia units were also organized locally.
Alabama was shielded by geography and Confederate troops against most major military operations, except the Battle of Mobile Bay (August 1864) and final conflicts of the War at Spanish Fort and Fort Blakeley (April 9, 1865), the last major battle of the Civil War. The state contributed about 120,000 Confederate troops, nearly all the white population capable of bearing arms. Most were recruited locally and served with men they knew, which built esprit and strengthened ties to home.
Medical conditions were severe; about 15% of Alabama's Confederate forces died of disease, and 10% from battle. Alabama had few well-equipped hospitals, but it had many women who volunteered to nurse the sick and wounded. Soldiers were poorly equipped, especially after 1863, and often resorted to pillaging the dead for boots, belts, canteens, blankets, hats, shirts and pants.
Thousands of slaves performed forced labor for the Confederate side; they took care of horses and equipment, cooked and did laundry, hauled supplies, and helped in field hospitals. Many slaves were tasked with building defensive installations, especially around Mobile, with at least five hundred dying from harsh working conditions. They graded roads, repaired railroads, drove supply wagons, and labored in iron mines, iron foundries and even in the munitions factories. As they were enslaved, their labor was involuntary, their unpaid labor was forcibly impressed from the slaveholders, many of whom resented having their slaves assigned to the war effort.