The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 67
574 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Choosing Capitals
northerners had wanted it at Tuscaloosa, nearer their end of the territo-
ry, but Congress accepted the decision of the territorial legislature, and
in March 1819 gave the state-to-be 1,620o acres of land at Cahaba for its
seat of government.9
Actually, all of this preconvention maneuvering was an effort to lock
the 1819 constitutional convention into choosing Cahaba for the capi-
tal. It worked; the Committee of Fifteen that wrote the original draft of
Alabama's Constitution recommended that the government be seated at
Huntsville for one more session, and then at Cahaba until 1826, when
the legislature could "fix the permanent seat."4 The full convention
ended by making only a few changes. The permanent site would be cho-
sen in 1825, instead of 1826, and it could not "thereafter be changed."
The legislature could not force the issue by building a statehouse any-
where else before 1825, and, in a slap at Governor Bibb, executive
approval of the final location would not be required.
The convention chose the Huntsville-Cahaba compromise for the same
reasons that had motivated the territorial legislature. Slavery-related con-
flicts dominated the convention, pitting the southern cotton-belt coun-
ties against the larger contingent of delegates from the "white" counties
of north Alabama. The southerners wanted the "federal ratio" of appor-
tionment for the new state's legislature-that is, the census would count
three-fifths of their slaves, giving the plantation counties greater political
weight than the white counties. The southern delegates lost this crucial
fight, but their consolation prize was the Cahaba site for the capital.42
In the last week of the convention, the delegates from Tuscaloosa
made a final effort to strike Cahaba from the Constitution and leave the
capital site entirely up to the legislature. This motion was defeated, thir-
ty-five to six, with only four northern delegates supporting the two mem-
bers from Tuscaloosa. A little later, a southern delegate tried to remove
Huntsville's privilege of hosting the first legislative session, but this was
defeated without even a roll-call vote, so the Huntsville-Cahaba compro-
mise remained in the final Constitution.43 It is noteworthy that the
"9 Constitutional Convention of the Territory of Alabama, "The Original Draft of the Alabama
Constitution as Reported by the Comittee [sic] of Fifteen, Clement Comer Clay, Chairman,"
Commercial Register (Mobile), July 6, 8, lo, and 13, 1830o, reprint, Alabama Lawyer, 2o (1959),
5-34; reprint, Malcolm C. McMillan (ed.), Alabama Historical Quarterly, 31, no. 1/2 (1969), ed.'s
note p. 107 (cited hereafter as Ala., "Original Draft"). "An Act to Enable the People of the
Alabama Territory to form a Constitution and State Government," US Statutes at Large, 3, sec. 7
(1819).
40 Ala., "Original Draft," 107.
4 Ala., art. 3, sec. 29.
42 McMillan, Constitutional Development, 25, 36-37.
4 Ala.,Journal, 82-83. When a new constitution was written for Alabama in 1846, the whole of
sec. 29 was stricken.1997
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998, periodical, 1998; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117155/m1/95/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.