Born in North Carolina in 1780, Alabama’s third governor, Israel Pickens, became a major political figure in his native state before moving to Alabama. Pickens attended college in Pennsylvania, read law, and entered law practice in Burke County, North Carolina, where he was elected to the state senate. Voters elevated him to the US House of Representatives in 1811, where he aligned with the “War Hawk” faction that helped push the Madison administration into the War of 1812. Twice re-elected, Pickens served until 1817. Pickens was attracted to the Alabama territory by the availability of fertile public land. After his last term in Congress, he moved to Alabama and was appointed register of the land office at the territorial capital of St. Stephens in Washington County.
Pickens got his land office job through the patronage of Alabama’s dominant political faction, a group of ex-Georgians led by the Bibb family. When an economic depression hit Alabama in 1819, producing massive discontent, this faction was blamed. The Georgians had heavily invested in a Huntsville bank that many people believed had cheated them by refusing to honor its notes with “hard money,” or gold. An uproar over the bank’s actions led to a popular movement against the Georgia faction. Pickens broke with his old allies and joined their opponents, earning a reputation as an opportunist. Pickens and his supporters adopted a new political “style” that was precursor to the Jacksonian politics that engulfed Alabama in the late 1820s and 1830s. Th is style of campaigning claimed to represent “the people” against evil “moneyed interests.” Pickens, writes historian A. B. Moore, “appeared in the role of the people’s advocate,” leading to his growing popularity. He ran for governor in 1821, winning on a platform providing for a new publicly owned bank operated by the state. Pickens argued that the bank would furnish a stable currency available to average people and would not be run by an elite.
Pickens encountered strong opposition to his bank plan, but after his re-election in 1823, legislators passed a bill creating the bank, which would be managed by a president and board of directors chosen annually by the legislature. The bank needed an initial capitalization of $200,000. Pickens got legislators to put up half that amount and sold bonds to get the rest. Though initially a success, new economic difficulties in the 1830s assailed the state, and the public lost confidence in the bank’s leaders. Pickens is also remembered for receiving and entertaining the Marquis de Lafayette on his 1825 trip through Alabama, an event that cost the state a considerable sum of money.
In 1826 Gov. John Murphy appointed Pickens to a vacant US Senate seat, but the new senator was very ill and bedridden throughout most of the 1826 session. Pickens resigned after less than a year as senator and traveled to Cuba in an effort to regain his health, but his condition worsened, and he died on the island on April 24, 1827. Though not well remembered by the general public, Israel Pickens was one of Alabama’s most significant and popular antebellum governors.
Photo Caption: Israel Pickens as portrayed by Elizabeth Tinker Elmore in 1930. [Alabama Department of Archives and History]
This article was first featured in Alabama Heritage magazine Issue 116.
About the Author
Samuel L. Webb, a native of York, Alabama, holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Alabama School of Law and a PhD in history from the University of Arkansas. He taught history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1988 to 2009 and is now an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama.
