Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/276

AKRA  2em  Akra. See.

Alabama.—The twenty-second State admitted into the Federal Union of America. It lies north of the Gulf of Mexico, and is known as one of the Gulf, or South Central, States.

It is bounded north by Tennessee, east by Georgia, south by the Gulf and by Florida, and west by Mississippi. It lies between the parallels of 30° 15′ and 35° north latitude, and the meridians of 84° 56′ and 88° 48′ west of Greenwich. From north to south it is 336 miles; and east to west, from 148 to 200 miles. It has an area of 52,250 square miles, of which 710 is water surface and 51,540 land surface. Its area in acres is 33,440,000. It has about 2,000 miles of navigable rivers, and Mobile is its only seaport. The State may be roughly divided into the Tennessee Valley on the north, highly productive of corn, cotton, cereals, and fruits; the mineral region; the cotton belt; the timber and the coast regions. The vegetation in the north belongs to the temperate zone, while in the south it is semi-tropical. Fine hardwood, as well as ordinary timber, are to be found well distributed over the entire State. The climate of the State is equable, and the extremes of heat and cold are rarely experienced. Animals and birds, usual in the West and Southwest, are to be found. The streams abound in fish of almost every variety. The principal crop is cotton, the yield in 1905 being 1,249,685 bales, giving the State the third position in cotton production. Corn, wheat, oats, hay, and all other farm and garden products are profitably grown in considerable quantities. Alabama has, in the last quarter of a century, taken very high rank as a mineral State. The following are the statistics for 1905: iron ore, 3,782,831 tons; coal, 11,900,153 tons; coke, 2,756,698 tons; pig iron, 1,604,062 tons. In addition to the items just named, clay, bauxite, cement, graphite, marble, sulphur, and pyrites, silver and gold are mined in paying quantities. The growth of the mineral interests has quickened the laying out of cities, the multiplication of railroad lines, and the development of manufactures. In 1905 there were in the State 1,882 manufacturing establishments with a capital of $105,382,859, employing 3,763 officials, and 62,173 wage earners, and turning out a product valued at $109,169,922. The eleven leading industries in 1905 were: car construction, 16 plants; coke, 24; cotton goods, 46; fertilizers, 19; foundry and machine shops, 78; blast furnaces, steel works, and rolling mills, 29; lumber and timber products, 590; lumber-planing-mill products, 67; oil, cotton, and coke, 58; printing and publishing, 241; and turpentine and rosin, 144. The following are the statistics of railroad mileage, 1905: 4,227.70 miles of main track; 1,317.36 miles of side track; total value of main line, side track, and rolling stock, $53,706,025.93. The public debt of the State is $9,057,000. The State tax rate cannot exceed sixty-five cents per annum on the hundred dollars.

.—The territory now included in the State was for hundreds of years the home in part of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indian tribes. It is not possible to place any approximate limit to their occupation, and their early history is involved in obscurity. Certain it is that the aboriginal inhabitants, first encountered by European explorers in this region, were the direct ancestors of the tribes named. In the early years of the sixteenth century daring sailors doubtless touched the shores of Mobile Bay; and survivors of the ill-fated Narvaez expedition are believed to have passed across the lower part of the State. In 1540 De Soto traversed the State, entering near Rome, Ca., and passing out not far from Columbus, Miss. On the 18 of October of that year he fought the great battle of Mauvila, the most sanguinary of Indian conflicts on the American Continent. He made no settlements, and his expedition was of no value further than for the record left by his chroniclers concerning the Southern Indians. In 1560 a Spanish colony was located at Nanipacna, believed to be in the present Wilcox county, Ala., but it was short-lived and no details are preserved. A century and a half pass, and a dark veil of obscurity covers the land. In 1697, or 1698, three Englishmen, coming overland from the Carolinas, descended the Alabama River to the village of the Mobilians on the Mobile River. La Salle had in the meantime (1682) taken formal possession of the Mississippi, and named the country Louisiana. Entering the Gulf of Mexico in 1699, Iberville explored the southern coast of what is now the United States, and made temporary settlement at Old Biloxi, near the present Ocean Springs, Miss. In January, 1702, he transferred his colony to 27-Mile Bluff, Mobile River, in the limits of what is now Alabama, and gave it the name of Fort Louis. This was the first attempt at a permanent settlement on the Gulf Coast, and was the site of Old Mobile. It is an interesting fact that in 1707 a number of the colonists went down to Dauphin Island, where they settled and planted small crops, thus becoming the first farmers in this territory. In 1711, the site of Fort Louis proving unsatisfactory, the whole colony was removed to the present Mobile, and this town was, until 1720, the residence of the governors and the capital of the Province of Louisiana. In 1714, Fort Toulouse, at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, was planted as a remote outpost for Indian trade and as a buffer to the English advance from the South Atlantic settlements; in 1721 the first African slaves were landed at Mobile; in 1736, Fort Tombeckbé was built on the Tombigbee River in the heart of the Choctaw country, to keep that tribe under French control; on 18 February, 1763, France ceded all her possessions east of the Mississippi, excepting the Island of Orleans, to Great Britain; by treaty of 30 November, 1782, marking the close of the contest of the colonies with the mother country, Great Britain ceded to them all her claims north of latitude 31°; and on 27 October, 1795, Spain relinquished to the United States her claims to West Florida, south of line 31°. Mississippi Territory was created by Act of Congress, 7 April, 1798, and under this and subsequent Acts of enlargement the present States of Alabama and Mississippi constituted one Territory until 1817. The Creek Indian War of 1813 and 1814, fought largely in Alabama, and which started General Andrew Jackson on his long public career, temporarily retarded the growth of the Territory. On 1 March, 1817, Alabama Territory was formed, and after the