With the proverbial stroke of a pen in the nation’s capital, Alabama’s long road to independent territorial status entered its final act on March 3, 1817. The newly designated Alabama Territory, the eastern half of the enormous tract of the American southwestern frontier known as the Mississippi Territory, on that date began its transition to a separate political entity by the terms of an enabling act passed by Congress and signed into law by Pres. James Madison. The act set out the process by which the western portion of the territory, the future state of Mississippi, would enter the Union and organized the eastern section into the Alabama Territory. For the first time since the formation of the Mississippi Territory a generation prior in 1798, the circuitous path towards statehood for the region at last lay clear.
AuthorMike Bunn currently serves as director of operations at Historic Blakeley State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama. This department of Alabama Heritage magazine is sponsored by the Alabama Bicentennial Commission and the Alabama Tourism Department. Archives
October 2019
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