CHAPTER V - EXPERIENCE OF ALABAMA

Summary

“And if these sorts of men surprise less by their wandering, as for the most part, without wandering, the business of their life was impossible; of those again who dedicate their life to the soil, we should certainly expect that they at least were fixed. By no means! Even without possession, occupation is conceivable; and we behold the eager farmer forsaking the ground which for years had yielded him profit and enjoyment. Impatiently he searches after similar, or greater profit, be it far or near. Nay, the owner himself will abandon his new grubbed clearage so soon as, by his cultivation, he has rendered it commodious for a less enterprising husbandman; once more he presses into the wilderness; again makes space for himself in the forests; in recompense of that first toiling a double and treble space; on which also, it may be, he thinks not to continue.”

–Meister's Travels. GOETHE.

The territorial Government of Alabama was established in 1816, and in 1818 she was admitted as a State into the Union. In 1820, her population was 128,000; in 1850, it had increased to 772,000; the increase of the previous ten years having been 30 per cent, (that of South Carolina was 5 per cent.; of Georgia, 31; Mississippi, 60; Michigan, 87; Wisconsin, 890). A large part of Alabama has yet a strikingly frontier character.