The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 63
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Choosing Capitals
The census of 1838 revealed a population of almost 23,000, compared
to under 15,000 for West Florida and only about 9,000 in East Florida.15
At the constitutional convention in 1838, the Committee on the Seat
of Government, chaired by a Middle Florida delegate and otherwise bal-
anced evenly between East and West Florida representatives, proposed
that the capital continue at Tallahassee for five years and then be perma-
nently set by the legislature sometime in the succeeding five years.16 In
the last week of the convention, Tallahassee's Leon County delegates
tried to transfer the final site decision away from the legislature, which
they considered to be malapportioned against them, to "a Convention of
the People," but this was easily defeated by the East and West Florida
members; in fact, most of the Middle Florida delegates (outside Leon
County itself) voted against it."
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida were the easy cases. In Mississippi,
Alabama, and Texas, however, decisions on government seats were far
from settled at the time of the constitutional conventions. Indeed, sec-
tionalism in Mississippi was so bad that the territory split into two parts
in 1817. The eastern half became the territory of Alabama, and the west-
ern half, which had traditionally been the area's population center,
became the state of Mississippi.18 Despite the separation, sectionalism
continued to be almost as fierce as it had ever been at Mississippi's 1817
constitutional convention.19
The territorial capital was originally located at the area's main urban
center, Natchez, in Adams County on the Mississippi River. In the early
18oos, however, the rural area just north and east of Natchez, in
Jefferson County, acquired enough political muscle to wrest the seat of
government away to "a wide place in the road called Washington, six
miles inland."20 In 1817, the Natchez and Washington political factions
still regarded each other with great suspicion, but by that time they had
15 "Census of the Territory of Florida, 1838," in Dorothy Dodd, Florida Becomes a State, with a
foreword by W. T. Cash (Tallahassee: Florida Centennial Commission, 1945), 131-132 The
peninsula of South Florida was nearly uninhabited at the time. The census counted only 1,027
people.
i6 Floida Constitutional Convention, Journal of the Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates to Form
a Constitution for the People of Florida (St. Joseph, Fla.: St. Joseph Tmes, 1839); reprinnted in Dodd,
Florida Becomes a State, 147, 179-180 (cited hereafter as Fla., Journal).
7 Fla.,Journal, 275-276.
18 "An Act to Enable the People of the Western Part of the Mississippi Territory to Form a
Constitution and State Government," Statutes at Large, 3 (1817), "An Act to Establish a Separate
Territorial government for the Eastern Part of the Mississippi Territory," Statutes at Large, 3
(1817); Richard A. McLemore and Nannie P. McLemore, "The Birth of Mississippi," Journal of
Mississippi History, 29 (Nov., 1967), 255-269.
19 W. B. Hamilton, "Mississippi 1817: A Sociological and Economic Analysis," Journal of
Misszsszpp History, 29 (Nov., 1967), 278.
20 Ibid.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/m1/91/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.