The Creation of the American States by Burian A. Ward;

Author:Burian, A. Ward; [A. Ward Burian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Statesmen, Leaders and Heroes

The first appointed governor of the Alabama Territory was William Wyatt Bibb. He was born in Amelia City, Virginia in 1781 and attended the College of Willian and Mary, before moving with his family to Georgia upon the death of his father in 1796. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1801 and began his medical practice upon returning to Petersburg, Georgia. In 1803, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican. Having been reelected four times, he was then elected a United States senator in 1813, where he served until 1816. President James Monroe appointed Bibb to be the first governor of the Alabama Territory, when it was formed in 1817. He immediately assumed his duties at the territorial capital of St. Stephens. His first legislative issues were focused on education, infrastructure, and transportation. Also, new counties were established and banks were chartered. In 1818, the legislature petitioned the United States Congress for statehood. The next step was a constitutional convention, held in Huntsville in July of 1819. Bibb appointed a committee of 15 to draft a constitution, and John Walker was elected president of the convention. Their model was the Mississippi Constitution, which provided for executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The Alabama Bill of Rights was modeled after the United States Constitution. Political factions began with the first gubernatorial election in November of 1819. Bibb’s opponent was Marmaduke Williams, who had been a congressman in North Carolina. This immediately established the political parties known as the North Carolina faction and the Georgia faction and the conflicts between northern and southern Alabama. When Alabama became a state in 1819, Bibb was elected its first governor. The two major issues were the location of the first state capital and the method of representation in the legislature. The more-populace North wanted proportional representation, and the South wanted prescribed representation. A compromise called for proportional representation with the capital in the southern city of Cahaba. Bibb was particularly interested in developing roads and water transportation with the state’s many rivers. This was just the beginning of the steamboat era with Robert Fulton’s invention, which was first tried on the Hudson River in New York and then brought to the Mississippi River and other Midwestern waters.

At this time, the great American hero of the Creek Wars and the Battle of New Orleans, Gen. Andrew Jackson, visited the temporary capital in Huntsville. Although the public idolized him, the planters and the well-to-do strongly opposed him. Bibb did not favor Jacksonian democracy and was more aligned with the better-educated and influential citizenry. In July of 1820, Bibb fell from his horse and sustained internal injuries that took his brief life at 38 years old. He was succeeded by his younger brother, Thomas, who as president of the Alabama Senate was automatically elevated to the governorship, where he served for the remaining 18 months of William’s three-year term. Thomas was born in Virginia in 1784, grew up in Georgia and moved to Alabama in 1816.

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