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Professional Communities in Alabama, from 1804 to 1861

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Professional Communities in Alabama, from 1804 to 1861 OBJECTS OF CONFIDENCE AND CHOICE: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES IN ALABAMA, 1804-1861 By THOMAS EDWARD REIDY JOSHUA D. ROTHMAN, COMMITTEE CHAIR GEORGE C. RABLE LAWRENCE F. KOHL JOHN M. GIGGIE JENNIFER R. GREEN A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2014 ! Copyright Thomas E. Reidy 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Objects of Confidence and Choice considered the centrality of professional communities in Alabama, from 1804 to 1861. The dissertation highlighted what it meant to be a professional, as well as what professionals meant to their communities. The study examined themes of education, family, wealth patterns, slaveholding, and identities. This project defined professionals as men with professional degrees or licenses to practice: doctors, clergymen, teachers, and others. Several men who appeared here have been widely studied: William Lowndes Yancey, Josiah Nott, J. Marion Sims, James Birney, Leroy Pope Walker, Clement Comer Clay, and his son Clement Claiborne Clay. Others are less familiar today, but were leaders of their towns and cities. Names were culled from various censuses and tax records, and put into a database that included age, marital status, children, real property, personal property, and slaveholding. In total, the database included 453 names. The study also mined a rich vein of primary source material from the very articulate professional community. Objects of Confidence and Choice indicated that professionals were not a social class but a community of institution builders. In order to refine this conclusion, a more targeted investigation of professionals in a single antebellum Alabama town will be needed. ! ii! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take the opportunity to thank those who helped me write this dissertation. Johanna Shields first suggested a study on antebellum professionals during an Old South course at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Shortly after, and independently, George Rable mentioned the same topic during a class at the University of Alabama. I took the bait. Writing dissertations can be a lonely and painful process, and I could not have finished without the help of my committee. In addition to Professor Rable, sincere thanks go out to my committee chair Joshua Rothman, and committee members Jennifer Green, Lawrence Kohl, and John Giggie. Ten years ago, I decided to turn my passion for History into an academic career. I would like to thank longtime UAH Department Head Andrew Dunar for encouraging me to pursue my goals, and supporting me along the way. I was blessed to have outstanding professors at both UAH and UA, none finer than my good friend John Severn. John took time out of his busy days to read earlier drafts of Objects of Confidence and Choice. Similarly, I am indebted to John Kvach of UAH, whose recent book on De Bow’s Review confirms his status as a rising star in the world of antebellum social history. Kudos, too, to the indefatigable Nancy Rohr: your wide-eyed enthusiasm for all things antebellum inspires me. Today’s graduate students have many advantages with online resources, but nothing beats the thrill of rummaging through archival boxes and discovering unpublished material. Special thanks to Ed Bridges and Steve Murray from the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and to Susanna Leberman and her team in the Heritage Room at the Huntsville-Madison County ! iii! Public Library. Visits to the University of Alabama’s Hoole Special Collections, Duke University’s Perkins Library, and the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection, were always productive. Finally, I have a very patient family and for that I am grateful. To my wife, Anne Marie, you are my bedrock, best-friend, hero. Thank you for sharing this and other journeys with me. And to my mother, Clare, who died before I completed this dissertation. Thank you encouraging me to be creative. Your nurturing voice is forever in my ear. ! iv! CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………...……………………………………….ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………………….….iii LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………..vi INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………...…1 CHAPTER ONE…………………………………………………………………………………20 Ordering the Hinterlands: Institution-Building Alabama Professionals, 1803—1819 CHAPTER TWO………………………………………………………………………….……..51 “A State of Ignorance is the Worst of All States”: Creating a Culture of Education in Antebellum Alabama CHAPTER THREE……………………………………………………….……………………..85 “An Aristocracy of the Mind”: The Continuing Education of the Professional Man CHAPTER FOUR………………………………………………………………………...…….125 The Brotherhood: Professional Identities in Alabama, 1820—1860 CHAPTER FIVE…………………………………………………….....………………………153 Alabama’s Urban Slaveholding Professionals and the Peculiar Institution EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………………………..179 Alabama Professionals and the Civil War: A Return to Hinterlands BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………190 ! v! LIST OF TABLES 1. Relative Literacy Rates………………………………………………………………………..81 2. Number of Professional Schools………………………………………………………………91 3. Lawyers in the three largest Alabama cities………………………..………………………..119 4. Percentage of Professional Households in Town…………………………………………….130 5. Total Free population of Alabama, 1820—1860…………………………………………….166 6. Professionals at the 1861 Alabama State Constitutional Convention………………………..178 ! vi! INTRODUCTION In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton described professional men as “impartial arbiters,” eager to promote a cause that “appears conducive to the general interests of society.” Unlike farmers and mechanics, who would make public decisions based on their own self- interests, Hamilton wrote that, “with regard to the learned professions, little need be observed; they truly form no interest in society and according to their situations and talents will be indiscriminately the objects of the confidence and choice of each other, and other parts of the community.”1 Hamilton certainly overstated professionals’ magnanimity. Professionals were not the altruistic, disinterested bedrocks of a burgeoning new nation. From the time they gathered in Philadelphia to draft a federal Constitution, men have pursued professional careers in order to advance their own interests as well as the interests of like-minded neighbors. Yet in other ways, Hamilton had it right. In the pursuit of personal advancement, professionals became the institution builders for the fast growing country. As Americans experimented with representative government, a market economy, and an egalitarian society for white males, professionals provided the sturdy underpinnings that allowed the new nation to thrive. With professionals manning leadership positions in political and civic institutions, the United States population increased from 3.9 million in 1790 to 31.4 million by1860. For a man with a license or degree in hand, almost anything was possible. Of the country’s first sixteen presidents, all but three—George Washington, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor— 1 Found in Federalist Papers #35.Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (New York: Signet Classic, 2003), 211. 1 practiced law at one time or another. Lawyers, physicians and ministers were elected to Congress. Professionals served as governors of states, state legislators, and were selected for boards at universities, colleges, local schools and academies. They became federal, municipal, circuit, and state judges. They were presidents of banks, railroads, and other commercial ventures. Objects of Confidence and Choice examines institution-building antebellum professional communities by focusing on the role professionals played in the development of one slave state, Alabama, from its territorial stage until the Civil War. The dissertation describes men who were engaged in what Hamilton called the learned professions—doctors, lawyers, clergymen, teachers, civil engineers, and others who held advanced degrees or licenses to practice a profession—and looks at the personal and career choices they made. The study explains why these men came to Alabama, and how they built and maintained the courthouses, jails, post offices, schools, libraries, and other social and economic institutions that made towns physically safe and attractive to new immigrants. Further, this dissertation considers the larger question of what it meant to be a professional in the antebellum era, and in what ways the interests of the professional community supported or undercut the interests of planters, merchants, yeomen, and others. Several professionals who appear in this study are widely known. The names of fire- eating politician William Lowndes Yancey, racial theorist Josiah Nott, gynecological pioneer Dr. Marion Sims, antislavery activist and presidential candidate James Birney, Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker, and Senator in both the United States and the Confederate States of America, Clement Claiborne Clay, Jr., to list a few, are found in many books. Other names will be recognizable to those who are familiar with the history of Alabama. Among those are Daniel 2 Bestor, Clement Comer Clay, Noah Cloud, Thomas Fearn, Henry Hilliard, Henry Hitchcock, Basil Manly, Harry Toulmin, John Williams Walker, Henry Watson, and Alva Woods. Each man used his credentials and training as a springboard to a successful public career.
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