![Gabriel Moore, painted by Edna K. Smith in 1912. [Alabama Department of Archives and History]](https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cloudfront.net/alabama-heritage-wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/11151814/Gabriel-Moore.png)
Gabriel Moore, Alabama’s fifth governor, was born in North Carolina’s Piedmont section near the city of Greensboro in 1785. His formal education came at a Greensboro academy known as the “Log College,” and he read law under the tutelage of a local attorney. Moore moved to Huntsville in Madison County (Mississippi Territory) in 1810 and was appointed county tax assessor and collector. He purchased land, built a farm, began a law practice, and was elected to the territorial legislature. In 1817 he became Speaker of the Mississippi territorial assembly and would have run again, but scandal intervened.
Moore’s marriage ended in 1818 when legislators granted his wife, the former Mary Parham Caller, a divorce. Lawmakers also allowed her to resume her maiden name. Bitter relations between the couple led to a duel between Moore and Mary’s brother, but neither man was injured. Surprisingly, this feud did not damage Moore’s career. He was elected a delegate from Madison County to the 1819 Alabama Constitutional Convention, won election to the state senate the same year, and was chosen senate president in 1820.
In the 1820s Moore aligned with the faction in state politics that opposed Madison County’s Broad River group, sometimes known as the “Royal Party,” and was elected to four successive terms in Congress that lasted from 1821 to 1829. Moore won a reputation as the candidate of the common man during his various campaigns. In 1825 he defeated Clement Comer Clay, a leader of the Broad River group, in a heated congressional race that led to lasting enmity between the two.
In 1829 Moore was elected governor without opposition. He concentrated on providing land for citizens who had lost money in the Panic of 1819 and on improving transportation on Alabama’s rivers. As Indian removal occurred in Alabama, public land became readily available to white citizens, and Moore advocated selling plots of forty acres to small farmers. This, said Moore, would stop the westward migration of so many Alabamians. He favored linking the Alabama and Tennessee River systems, which would open a new avenue to the port city of Mobile. He also advocated the creation of a separate state supreme court. Moore strongly supported the state Bank of Alabama and championed the creation of additional branches of the institution, but he was opposed to the extension of the charter of the Bank of the United States.
Near the end of his term as governor, Moore entered the race for the United States Senate and defeated incumbent Sen. John McKinley. Moore resigned the governorship in March 1831 to take his senate seat and proved to be a controversial senator. When he surprisingly voted against President Jackson’s nomination of Martin Van Buren as American Minister to Great Britain, Alabama’s Jacksonian Democrats called for his resignation. He refused to resign, however, and served out his six-year term.
At the end of his senate term, Moore sought election to his old post in the House of Representatives, but he was defeated. Moore had neglected his finances and, pursued by creditors, left Alabama. He died in Texas in 1844.
Photo Caption: Gabriel Moore, painted by Edna K. Smith in 1912. [Alabama Department of Archives and History]
This article was first featured in Alabama Heritage magazine Issue 118.
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.
