
On December 14, 1819, mere days before the first state legislative session in Huntsville formally closed, Pres. James Monroe signed the long-awaited congressional resolution proposing Alabama’s formal admission into the union. With that signature, a moment over two decades in the making finally arrived, and Alabama officially became the United States of America’s twenty-second state. A pivotal era of transition, bridging the lengthy metamorphosis from backwoods frontier to dynamic heart of the antebellum Deep South, immediately began.