In 1810 the “Federal Road,” as it came to be called, was little more than a sandy trail for post riders and Indian traders. Thomas Jefferson, recognizing the importance of New Orleans’s command of commerce coming down the Mississippi River, insisted upon completing negotiations with the Creeks for a mail path through their lands in the Mississippi Territory in 1806.
As the new year broke in 1810, the territory we now call Alabama stood on the knife-edge of empire. White settlers clung to the forts along the Federal Road, because the Indians living in the cradles of the Coosa, Tombigbee, and Black Warrior Rivers were not about to yield their ancestral lands without a fight. Places such as Fort Mims, Tallushatchee, Hillabee, and Horseshoe Bend would soon be carved in local legend. Caught between the declining fortunes of Spanish Florida to the south and British intrigues within their midst, white settlers and increasingly desperate Creeks and Chickasaws faced escalating conflict over the future of the Mississippi Valley.
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Becoming Alabama:
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