John Gayle’s political career spanned forty years. He made his reputation as a Jacksonian Democrat when Pres. Andrew Jackson was revered in Alabama. Gayle eventually broke with the president and spent his last twenty years in a party created to oppose Jackson. Born in Sumter District, South Carolina, in 1792, Gayle was educated in private academies and at South Carolina College. He followed his parents, Matthew and Mary Rees Gayle, to the Mississippi Territory and served in the Creek Wars. He settled at Claiborne in Monroe County, read law, was admitted to practice, and was appointed solicitor (prosecuting attorney). He won election to the territorial legislature, and in 1823 was elected to the state legislature. Gayle then relocated to Greensboro, opened a law office, and served briefly as circuit judge. In 1828 Greene County sent Gayle back to the legislature, and he was thrust into statewide politics in 1829, when colleagues elected him Speaker of the House.
When Gayle ran for governor in 1831, his native state of South Carolina was engaged in a dispute with Jackson because it had threatened to nullify federal tariff laws. Jackson countered that South Carolina had no right to pick which laws it would obey. In his campaign Gayle strongly supported Jackson’s stance and did so again in his inaugural address. He successfully urged legislators to support the state’s first railroad from Tuscumbia to Decatur, which allowed commercial traffic to bypass dangerous rapids on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. He also backed the incorporation of Alabama’s first cotton mill near Huntsville. Gayle was reelected without opposition in 1833, but he was already on a collision course with the Jackson administration.
When Alabama’s Creek Indians ceded most of their tribal land in the state to the federal government, some of it was reserved by treaty for the tribe. White squatters moved onto Creek land, and conflict ensued. The tribe appealed to Jackson, and he sent federal troops to remove the squatters. A local official was killed in the process, and a young soldier was indicted for his murder by a state grand jury. The incident caused a crisis, and though Jackson sent Francis Scott Key to Alabama to diff use the situation, Jackson’s popularity in the state was damaged, and and Gayle was pushed to become an unabashed supporter of states’ rights.
After his second term, Gayle moved to Mobile to practice law and joined the Whig Party, a coalition opposed to various Jackson policies. A Whig presidential elector in 1840, Gayle was defeated as the Whig candidate for the US Senate in 1841, but he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1847. After a term in Congress, he was named federal district judge by Pres. Zachary Taylor in 1849, a job he held until his death in 1859. Gayle fathered six children by his first wife Sarah Ann Haynsworth and, after her death, four more with his second wife Clarissa Stedman Peck. Amelia, a child of his first marriage, married Josiah Gorgas. This couple lived on the University of Alabama campus, and their home still stands as a historic site. The main university library is named the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library.
Photo Caption: John Gayle, painted by Maltby Sykes in 1952. [Alabama Department of Archives and History]
This article was first featured in Alabama Heritage magazine Issue 120.
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.