Alabama Cotton

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
When arable land grew scarce in Georgia and South Carolina men looked beyond the Appalachians, but were inhibited by conflicting state, federal, and international land claims. After Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from France in 1803, he proposed building a postal road to connect Georgia with New Orleans. Work began in 1810, and the route was redesigned by the army in 1822. [1]

In the first four months, while it still was being built, 3,726 moved west over it. [2] Lydia Parrish reported one traveler on the Federal Road remembered "he was never out of sight of a long line of immigrants" when he was traveling east. [3]

The first lands settled in Alabama were the familiar red clays in the northern part of the state around Huntsville in Madison County. Many of the earliest settlers came south from Tennessee. [4] They soon were joined by families and single men from east of the mountains. [5]

Ruby Pickens Tartt’s father’s family was typical of this wave of settlers. [6] William Henry Pickens was a Huguenot who moved from France to Ireland to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. [7] His grandson Joseph, moved from Pennsylvania to the Ninety-six district in South Carolina. [8] Tartt’s great-grandfather, Joseph William Pickens, relocated to Madison County. [9]

The Black Belt opened in 1816 [10] after the Choctaw ceded lands in the Treaty of Fort Stephens. [11] Cotton was grown for the first time around Montgomery in 1818, although the acreage was limited until 1825. [12] Wilcox County, mentioned in the post on the Oak Grove Church, [13] reported its first crop in 1820. [14]

Speculators became involved as soon as lands were opened because they had resources to buy large tracts to resell. The elimination of the National Bank in 1811 and the use of paper currency to finance the War of 1812 encouraged them. [15] A group who had migrated to Georgia after the Revolution became particularly active in the Black Belt. A class division developed with wealthy men owning better land, and poorer men relegated to the red clays. [16]

The western most part of the Black Belt containing Sumter County was still in Choctaw hands when Andrew Jackson was elected in 1828. The state immediately asserted ownership, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 reified their actions. The Choctaw were forced to vacate by the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. [17] Cotton was grown in the county that summer, [18] even before the Choctaw left in the winter. [19]

The Tombigbee river marked the eastern border of the county. It not only provided a way to move goods to and from Mobile, but the most desirable soils were the first and second bottoms along the rivers, code 4 on the map below. They were like the bend in the Alabama river mentioned in the post for 10 February 2019.

The next best land abutted the bottoms and smaller streams. It mostly was "undulating to rolling uplands." The acreage, marked 2 on the map, had fertile soils good for general crops. That was where Tartt’s mother’s family moved after the Choctaw were removed. [20]

Hiram Chiles came from Caroline County in Virginia to settle around Livingston. [21] Reuben Chapman was born in the same county a few years later, [22] and moved to Madison County in 1824 where he practiced law. He entered politics in 1832, and spent most of his time in Huntsville, supported by his Sumter County plantation [23] located "five miles north of Livingston." [24]

"Rolling, rough and broken uplands," code 1, divided the river drainages. The other areas, code 3, were "gently undulating to gently sloping uplands."

The Panic of 1837 lead to an economic depression that lasted from 1839 to 1844. [25] Land ownership must have been consolidated as the poor lost their lands or left. The white population fell from 13,901 in 1840 to 7,369 in 1850, while the number of slaves increased from 6,036 to 14,881. [26]

Exacerbating farmers’ problems was the cotton worm, which first appeared in 1846 and became a menace between 1849 and 1855. [27] The moths could go through three generations in a single season. [28] The females began laying their eggs on plants in the black lands, then moved outward. [29] The earliest moths destroyed foliage, but the later ones, which coincided with the flowering of the cotton plants, decimated crops. [30]

The moths flew north from Brazil when conditions were right, [31] and there was little cotton growers could do. [32] Those with money may have purchased new seed varieties that had been bred to resist a soil fungus common in Mississippi. [33] By the 1830s, a seed industry had developed in the South that advertized its products in local newspapers and specialist publications like the American Cotton Planter. [34]

Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode suggested these hybrids solved another problem confronting growers, the fact they could grow more than they could pick. The selections had bolls that were easier to remove on stems that often were taller. As a result the productivity of laborers, slave and free, quadrupled. [35]

The white population in Sumter County fell again before the Civil War to 5,919 whites in 1860 while the number of slaves rose to 18,116. [36] The largest owner, Jeremiah Brown, moved from Darlington, South Carolina, in 1834 with at least 60 slaves. [37] He settled in Sumterville, between Emelle and Boyd, where he grew corn, oats, and cotton on 4,600 of his 8,966 acres [38] with 540 slaves in 1860. [39]

The men with the next largest numbers of chattel in the 1860 census were John E. Brown [40] with 180 and William Jones with 176. [41] Chapman reported 106 in the county. Chiles and Pickens had too few to be listed among the patroons. [42]

Maps
1. Flondin. "Alabama Counties Map." Wikipedia Commons. 13 December 2006.

2. G. A. Swenson, et alia. "Sketch map showing topographic divisions of Sumter County." Soil Survey of Sumter County, Alabama. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, May 1941. 3. The Livingston soil was classed as Cahaba Fine Sandy Loam and described as an "excellent agricultural soil" on page 25.

End Notes
1. Kevin Harrell. "Federal Road in Alabama." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 22 December 2010; last updated 7 July 2014.

2. Harrell.

3. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. 94.

4. J. Mills Thornton. "Broad River Group." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 26 March 2007; last updated, 29 August 2016.

5. Wikipedia. "Alabama Fever."
6. Tartt was introduced in the post for 23 January 2019.
7. "William Henry Pickens." Wikitree website. 10 March 2011.
8. "Joseph Pickens." Ancestry website.
9. Liz Nelan. "Joseph William Pickens + Salina Brazelton." Nelan/Pickens website.
10. Thornton.

11. Greg O’Brien. "Choctaws in Alabama." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 18 June 2007; last updated 23 January 2017.

12. John Henry Comstock. Report Upon Cotton Insects. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, 1879. 380.

13. Oak Grove was discussed in the post for 10 February 2019.
14. Comstock. 380.
15. Wikipedia. "Panic of 1819."

16. Thomas Chase Hagood. "Territorial Period and Early Statehood." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 23 May 2008; last updated, 13 February 2017.

17. Greg O’Brien. "Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 2 April 2013; last updated 28 May 2014.

18. Comstock. 381.
19. O’Brien, Treaty.
20. The post for 23 January 2019 had more on Chiles.
21. Hiram Chiles was born in Caroline County, Virginia in 1794. [43]
22. Reuben Chapman was born in Caroline County, Virginia, in 1799. [44]

23. John Mayfield. "Reuben Chapman (1847-49)." Encyclopedia of Alabama website. 13 May 2008; last updated 30 September 2014.

24. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 157.

25. Wikipedia. "Panic of 1837."
26. Willis Brewer. Alabama. Montgomery: Barrett and Brown, 1872. 626.
27. Comstock. 51.
28. Comstock. 442.
29. Comstock. 429.
30. Comstock. 442.
31. "Alabama argillacea." Bayer Crop Science website.

32. The pest was controlled in the 1870s when the USDA began recommending "the use of Paris green or other arsenical compounds" in the 1870s. [45]

33. The Rot first appeared in Mississippi in 1811. [46] The Phymatotrichopsis omnivora (Duggar) Hennebert fungus lives in the soil where it can survive for years. [47]

34. Paul W. Rhode. "Biological Innovation without IPRs: Cotton Breeding in the Antebellum American South." Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, annual conference, July 2012.

35. Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode. "‘Wait a Cotton Pickin’ Minute!’ A New View of Slave Productivity." University of California, Davis, website. April 2007.

36. Brewer. 626.

37. T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith. Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical. Birmingham: Smith and Deland, 1888. 219. Brown owned "more than sixty field hands and a very large tract of land" when he graduated from South Carolina College in 1823.

38. James Benson Sellers. Slavery in Alabama. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1950. 34.

39. Sellers. 33. He was identified as Jeremiah H. Brown in official publications. The census taker make have abbreviated his first name. Tom Blake listed him as Jerrett Brown. [48]

40. John E. Brown’s name appeared in documents from the period, but none gave any information about him.

41. The entry read: "JONES, Wm. Jr., J. J. Wendham agent for." This suggests he was an absentee owner. [49]

42. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website.

43. "Hiram Chiles." Ancestry website.

44. "Chapman, Reuben, (1799 - 1882)." Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress website.

45. W. D. Hunter. The Cotton Worm or Cotton Caterpillar. (Alabama argillacea Hubn.) Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology, 18 May 1912. 2.

46. J. F. H. Claiborne. Mississippi, as a Province, Territory, and State. Jackson: Power and Barksdale, 1880. 41.

47. S. R. Uppalapati, C. A. Young, S. M. Marek, and K. S. Mysore. "Phymatotrichum (Cotton) Root Rot Caused by Phymatotrichopsis omnivora: Retrospects and Prospects." Molecular Plant Pathology 11:325–334:2010. Abstract.

48. Blake.
49. Blake.