ALABAMA GOVERNORS: Samuel B. Moore

When Gabriel Moore resigned as governor in 1831 to take a seat in the US Senate, he was succeeded by the president of the state senate, Samuel B. Moore. (The two men were not related.) The new governor served out the last eight months of the term to which his predecessor had been elected. Born in Franklin County, Tennessee, in 1789, Samuel B. Moore moved with his parents to Woodville in what is now Jackson County, Alabama, while it was part of the Mississippi Territory. A lifelong bachelor, Moore dedicated his life to politics and the practice of law. He had no formal education, but he read law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice in Jackson County in 1819. In 1823 the county’s voters sent him to the state house of representatives, and he was re-elected in 1825 and 1827. In 1828 and 1830, he won election to the state senate, and in the latter year, he was elected president, or presiding officer, of that body. This position made him next in line of succession to the governor.

A democrat in the mold of Andrew Jackson, Moore opposed rechartering the Second Bank of the United States and was strongly against the protective tariffs adopted during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. Moore stood with President Jackson, however, in opposition to South Carolina’s efforts to nullify the tariffs.

During Moore’s brief time as governor, he helped welcome the first students to the University of Alabama in 1831. In a speech on the Tuscaloosa campus, he presented keys to the new school to its first president, Henry A. Woods. Moore also supported efforts to connect the Tennessee River to the port in Mobile, and he added his voice to efforts to build a state penitentiary, but he made little headway on either initiative. He supported a measure to extend the jurisdiction of Alabama’s courts over the state’s Indian population, which was another eff ort by whites to gain control over Native American tribes.

Even before assuming office, Moore announced his candidacy for a full term as governor in the 1831 election, but he ran third in a three-man race that included fellow democrats John Gayle of Greene County and Nicholas Davis of Limestone County. The incumbent governor won only three of the state’s counties, and Gayle was triumphant.

After leaving the governorship, Moore moved to Carrollton in Pickens County and began law practice there, but he could not stay out of politics. He was elected to the state senate from Pickens and Fayette Counties and was chosen as president of the body once again, but he lost re-election to the senate in 1838. Later, Moore was elected County Judge in Pickens County, but he again was defeated when he sought re-election. He died poverty stricken in Carrollton on November 7, 1846, and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1918 the Masonic Society of Pickens County finally erected a monument in his honor.

Photo Caption: In 1918 the local Masonic society erected a modest monument to Governor Moore in the Carrollton Cemetery. [Robin McDonald]


This article was first featured in Alabama Heritage magazine Issue 119.


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.