Alabama Fever

In the shadows of the hundreds of thousands of migrants flowing on to the southern frontier engaging in what one North Carolinian called the "Alabama Fever". Alabama Fever was the land rush that occurred after Andrew Jackson and the Creek War led to the loss of Native American land. After 1817, settlers and speculators moved in to establish land claims in the territory and U.S. State of Alabama as Native American tribes ceded territory. It came to be characterized as a movement of farmers and the enslaved, creating further movement west to new slave states and territories in the pursuit of fertile land for growing cotton.^{[1] [2] [3]} It was one of the first great American land booms until superseded by the California Gold Rush in 1848.^[4]

The term Alabama Fever was used as early as 1817, during the Alabama Territory period (1817–1819).^{[5] [6]} This expansion was made possible by the Creek War; the defeat of the Creek Nation created massive land loss of the Native Americans.^[7] This led to The Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814, where Native American land was taken, resulting in open land. Roughly over 23 million acres of land were open for settlement in Alabama. Settlers came primarily from the seaboard Old South states such as Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and eastern Georgia. Settlers brought enslaved people from these states to Alabama since the land fertility there had declined to a point that cotton cultivation had become difficult.^[5] The movement of enslaved people to Alabama contributed to the rapid expansion of cotton and soon the South. Alabama had a population estimated at under 10,000 people in 1810, but it had quickly increased to more than 300,000 people by 1830.^[5] Most Native American tribes were completely removed from the state within a few years of the passage of the Indian Removal Act by the United States Congress in 1830.^[8] By 1860, the population had increased to a total of 964,201 people, of which 435,080 were enslaved African Americans and 2,690 were free people of color.^[9]

The open land quickly gained traction as white settlers brought the enslaved down from the seaboard Old South states to Alabama. The previous states' land was worn out, but Alabama had nourish filled land. The land fertility and demand for cotton had skyrocked as cotton cultivation took off. Slavery had expanded at the same rate that cotton had.^[10] White settlers saw the open land as an opportunity to make profit. The untouched land was ideal for cotton cultivation with its nutrient-filled soil. Slaveholders poured into Alabama, causing a rapid population growth. Specifically in Madison County, Alabama, the total population was made up of over half enslaved by 1820.^[10] The expansion was centered around slavery, with a population rise of over 19,000 enslaved people from 1809 to 1820 in Madison County, Alabama. Without the modern machinery cotton was centered around labor intensive slavery.

As the population rose, the cotton cultivation rapidly emerged into a cotton kingdom. By 1819, cotton cultivation expanded over one-third out of the sixty thousand acres of land, and over 4 million pounds of cotton were shipped out during that year in Madison County. Alabama soon became a state of cotton that was the staple to the economic engine of the South. Alabama quickly grew into one of the nation's wealthiest states, with huge fortunes created.^[11] 915,000 bales of cotton were produced by the eve of the Civil War, making up for 3.7 percent of the national total of cotton production. Before the civil war, cotton had made up almost 60 percent of U.S. exports.^[12] Some of the leading counties in Alabama for producing cotton include, Tuscaloosa (73,561), Dallas (35,275), and Marengo (32,295).^[7] Millions of pounds of cotton were shipped out, leading to a rapid profit for slaveholders; however, the profit was only increasing because of enslaved labor.^[10] By 1821, Alabama had exported an unprecedented three million dollars' worth of cotton. The cotton was exported from the Port of Mobile in Mobile, Alabama. This port was easily accessible in Alabama, making it one-half of all U.S. cotton export locations by 1839.^[11]

Global demand for cotton, spurred on by new industrial textile manufacturing processes, made its cultivation extremely lucrative. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were producing half of the cotton in the United States by 1834. Along with Georgia, this had grown to 78% by 1859.^[4] Cotton cultivation quickly exhausted most soils, causing cotton yields to dwindle within a few decades. In an era before inorganic fertilizers, this made a continually expanding frontier necessary so that settlers and their slaves could relocate further westward in an effort to keep production as high as possible. Cotton tycoons even looked at the possibility of conquering and annexing territory in the Caribbean and Central America for future cotton cultivation, due to increased northern resistance to the expansion of slavery in the United States and the arid regions of the west being unsuited for cotton production.^[1] Due to the large amount of damage done to the land, erosion became a widespread issue throughout Alabama. Deforestation and erosion became a serious problem caused by the state economy's reliance on cotton cultivation during the 1800s.^[13] Poor and fast farming practices exposed fertile topsoil to wind and water, causing the topsoil to be washed or blown away, leaving only the infertile subsoil. Cotton cultivation caused a negative impact on the environment; thus, soil exhaustion led to another land rush.^[13]

Regardless of other crops raised, cotton became Alabama's lifeblood in agriculture and was responsible for aspects of the state's society. Settlers brought enslaved people from Old South states to Alabama because of the decline in soil nutrients leading to a decline in cotton cultivation. Because of this, Alabama's soil had become ruined and lacked the nutrients needed for successful cotton farming. This decline caused another land rush leading settlers to seek more fertile and nutrient-rich land.^[14] Between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War, the California Gold Rush was sandwiched between historical events that altered much of what we know now, today.^[15] Two-thirds of California's population was made up of white Americans by 1849. The non-native population had peaked, at over 100,000 people. While an accurate count is impossible, historians claim that close to 200,000 slaves traveled the frontier from 1830-1860. Gold quickly became a vice to new settlers and began a new pipeline to wealth and economic growth. The gold mining industry was heavily influenced and was worked by immigrants. The conditions were dangerous and labor was intensive; the workers faced much isolation reaching the fortune.^[16] Some settlers migrated enslaved people over from cotton cultivating states. Settlers brought enslaved people to California, in hopes for labor opportunities and stable income. The Alabama Fever land rush had left the Southern states' soil and land depleted of nutrients. These environmental conditions and mass cotton farming forced settlers out, causing them to move West. California entered the Union in 1850, making it a free state; however, both Native Americans and African Americans continued to work. This continued until the beginning of the Civil War on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

Overall structure, economic differences, and political views created tension between the North and South prior to the Civil War. This tension was built around politics and slavery, which expanded drastically in the early 1800s.^[17] The North and South viewed slavery and political issues very differently during this time. The North focused on factory work which included waged labor, while the South focused on agricultural work that was dependent on enslaved labor. The abolitionist movement began to move throughout the North, while the South was fully dependent on enslaved labor. The North had begun manufacturing, and the slave labor was replaced with immigrant labor from across Europe. The North was focused on industrialization and developing major cities. The economic and cultural differences between the North and South sparked the Civil War.^[18]

• Alabama real estate bubble of the 1810s
• Creek War
• History of slavery in Alabama
• Andrew Jackson and slavery
• Civil war
• Port of Mobile
• Madison County, Alabama
• Western Expansion
• Antebellum Slavery
• Antebellum South

• Clark, Christopher (2006). Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

• History of Alabama
• Agriculture in Alabama
• Agriculture in the United States
• History of United States expansionism
• Slavery
• Alabama
• Cotton industry in the United States

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata