South's Forgotten Fire-Eater

McIlwain Chris

Description

The story of the American Civil War is typically told with particular interest in the national players behind the war: Davis, Lincoln, Lee, Grant, and their peers. However, the truth is that countless Americans on both sides of the war worked in their own communities to sway public perception of abolition, secession, and government intervention. In north Alabama, David Hubbard was an ardent and influential voice for leaving the Union, spreading his increasingly radical view of states rights and the need to rebel against what he viewed an overreaching federal government. You have likely never heard of Hubbard, the grandson of a Revolutionary War soldier who fought under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. He was much more than that stereotype of antebellum Alabama politicians, being an early speculator in lands coerced from Native Americans; a lawyer and cotton planter; a populist; an influential member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama; and a key promoter of the very first railroad built west of the Allegheny mountains. Alabamas Forgotten Fire Eater is the story of Hubbards radicalization, describing his rise to becoming the most influential and prominent secessionist in north Alabama. Despite growing historical interest in the fire eaters who whipped the South into a frenzy, there has been little mention until now of Hubbards integral involvement in Alabamas relationship with the Confederacy. Now historian Chris McIlwain offers Hubbards story as a cautionary tale of radical politics and its consequences.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• History of the Americas
• Civil war
• American Civil War
• États-Unis
• History
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: University of Georgia Press
• Date de parution: 30 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781588384126
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Praise for The South s Forgotten Fire-Eater
Chris McIlwain once again sets his critical eye on another Alabamian who led the state to make a series of disastrous decisions during the mid-nineteenth century. David Hubbard started his political career as a firm supporter of Andrew Jackson, but with each new national conflict he emerged as a more radical and uncompromising defender of a separate Southern nation. Much of his success lay in gaining the votes of the non-slaveholders by over appeals to their fears of slave rebellions and to their resentment of the wealthy. At the time, Hubbard was among those north Alabamians pushing for critical economic changes, including industrialization, which McIlwain details in a particularly significant contribution. In short, The South s Forgotten Fire-Eater is a fresh look at one road to secession-twists, turns, dust, rocks, and all. - G. W ARD H UBBS , author of Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman
Chris McIlwain has become one of the leading historians of nineteenth-century Alabama, and this fine volume will only add luster to that reputation. Deeply researched, provocatively argued, and forcefully written, McIlwain s newest work rescues a significant Alabama fire-eater from obscurity. This book unravels a complex but important story of land speculation, banking, railroads, economic development, partisan intrigue, and sectional politics. McIlwain uses David Hubbard s life to probe the actions of Alabama politicians hurtling toward secession and war. A must-read for anyone interested in Civil War-era Alabama. - G EORGE C. R ABLE , Professor Emeritus, The University of Alabama
No one would have known about north Alabama s David Hubbard without this well-researched and well-rounded exploration of the man and his times. It s a fascinating account offered by Chris McIlwain to the general reader and serious historian alike, one which describes a man of action who greatly influenced the course of events leading up to the secession of the Southern states and how events played out during and immediately after the Civil War. - N ANCY M. R OHR , author of Incidents of the War: The Civil War Journey of Mary Jane Chadick
McIlwain s study of Congressman David Hubbard illustrates the sheer weirdness of the path to secession through one fire-eater s long and varied career. Hubbard went from being one of Andrew Jackson s Indian fighters to a proslavery militant, and his racial animus is the one consistent thing about him. McIlwain provides a troubling look at north Alabama society through the vehicle of this devoted secessionist, a political rebel who lived by the adage, it is good to be shifty in a new state. - M ICHAEL W. F ITZGERALD , author of Reconstruction in Alabama: From Civil War to Redemption in the Cotton South
McIlwain s biography of David Hubbard is much more than an engaging account of an overlooked politician from antebellum Alabama; it is a bold reappraisal of the human factors driving the state s secession movement in the late 1850s. Through strong prose backed by extensive research, the author highlights the crucial role that Hubbard played in transforming the region of northern Alabama from one that generally viewed secession with great reluctance into one that became increasingly more receptive to this radical course of action. In doing so, McIlwain rightly accords Hubbard the same level of prominence and agency in bringing about Alabama s secession that historians have long attributed to the more famous William L. Yancey. This book is an important and original contribution to the history of Alabama during the Civil War era. - B EN H. S EVERANCE , author of A War State All Over: Alabama Politics and the Confederate Cause and Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War
T HE S OUTH S F ORGOTTEN F IRE -E ATER
A LSO BY C HRIS M C I LWAIN
Civil War Alabama
1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace
The Million-Dollar Man Who Helped Kill a President

NewSouth Books
105 S. Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright 2020 by Chris McIlwain
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc.,
Montgomery, Alabama.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McIlwain, Christopher Lyle, author.
Title: The South s forgotten fire-eater : David Hubbard and North Alabama s long road to disunion / Chris McIlwain.
Other titles: David Hubbard and North Alabama s long road to disunion.
Description: Montgomery : NewSouth Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018836 (print) | LCCN 2020018837 (ebook) | ISBN 9781588384119 (hardback) | ISBN 9781588384126 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Hubbard, David, 1792-1874. | Alabama-Politics and government-To 1865. | Legislators-Alabama-Biography. | Secession-Alabama. | United States-Politics and government-1849-1861. | Legislators-United State-Biography. | United States. Congress. House-Biography. | Kinlock (Miss.)-Biography.
Classification: LCC F326.H77 M35 2020 (print) | LCC F326.H77 (ebook) | DDC 328.73/092 [B]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018836
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018837
Design by Randall Williams
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books
Front Cover: Portrait of David Hubbard.
Alabama Department of Archives and History.

The Black Belt, defined by its dark, rich soil, stretches across central Alabama. It was the heart of the cotton belt. It was and is a place of great beauty, of extreme wealth and grinding poverty, of pain and joy. Here we take our stand, listening to the past, looking to the future.
To my wife, Anna; my children, Christopher and Elizabeth; and my grandchildren, Carter, Claire, Jack, and Hunter.
Contents
Preface
1 Yankee Doodle
2 A Desperate Speculation
3 His Magic Influence
4 Squinting at Nullification
5 The Feast of Reason and the Flow of Soul
6 Changing the Politicks of the Union
7 A No-Account Locofoco
8 A Man of the Masses
9 Northern Fanatics
10 The Alabama Platform
11 Disunion Davy
12 The Viceregent of Old Fogy-Dom
13 I am a Radical Democrat
14 The Race Is Over
15 Epilogue
Endnotes
Image Credits
Index
Preface
T his is a biography of antebellum north Alabama with an emphasis on the events that led to its unique economic and political development up to 1861. It is also a biography of a man, David Hubbard, of whom you have probably never heard. He was a lawyer, land speculator, businessman, and politician whose influence is critically important to understanding why north Alabama moved slowly but surely toward secession and civil war.
This is definitely not an homage to Hubbard, but he is a ready vehicle for studying the troubled birth of Alabama, its intermittent economic development, and its lengthy radicalization process. He was born in 1792, the son of an American soldier in the Revolutionary War. Like so many residents of the Eastern Seaboard states, his family emigrated west, first to Tennessee. There he joined Andrew Jackson s army of militiamen and participated in Jackson s efforts to defeat the British and their Native American allies in the War of 1812, thereby bringing a degree of security to the frontier.
Because the financial history of north Alabama and David Hubbard are of critical importance in understanding what happened, the reader should expect a steady dose of that poor relation in the history world: economics. Increased world demand for cotton, and the availability of Native American land for its production, initially caused the white and slave populations of north Alabama to surge well beyond that of south Alabama. Hubbard was active in the postwar land boom in Alabama, as well as one of the thousands of victims of the long depression in cotton prices that followed immediately thereafter. This depression caused many of the debt-ridden landowning class in the South, as well as the manufacturing interests in the upper South and the Northeast, to elevate sectional interests and goals over national needs. Hubbard entered politics as a staunch Jacksonian Democrat and was elected to the Alabama Senate, where he demonstrated extraordinary political skills and influence and was involved in many of the important issues that confronted the young frontier state.
Hubbard was also a trailblazer in the earliest efforts to industrialize Alabama. Among other things, he initiated construction of the first railroad in the entire South, which ran between Tuscumbia, Alabama, and the Tennessee River. This railroad was later extended to Decatur to provide a means of bypassing the Muscle Shoals, which had been a significant and dangerous impediment to commercial navigation of the Tennessee River in north Alabama for decades.
However, as sectional conflict increased and the sinister influence of South Carolina radicals began to metastasize, Hubbard came to be defined for his uncompromising positions on the rights of the South. This began with his surprisingly vocal public opposition to President Jackson s efforts in the 1830s to use force to put down the tariff nullification movement in South Carolina. As slave populations increased, as a member of Congress, Hubbard s fiery opposition continued against the admission of California as a free state as part of the Compromise of 1850, as well as his subsequent efforts to bring about secession. Like-minded south Alabamians praised him for his consistency, but most of his north Alabama constituents did not until after abolitionist John Brown s famous raid on Harper s Ferry in 1859. With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Hubbard and others succeeded in orchestrating the secession of Alabama and the creation of the Confederacy, which he served in an appointed civilian capacity.
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