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Three Governors from Greensboro, Alabama: John Gayle
by Jabe Fincher
Four years after Pickens' death, another citizen of Greensboro was elected as Alabama's seventh governor. John Gayle was born on September 11, 1792, in Sumter District, South Carolina. He graduated from South Carolina College in 1813 and migrated to Monroe County, Alabama, in that same year. He read law under A.S. Lipscomb and was licensed to practice law in 1818. Gayle served as a member of the Alabama territorial legislature and, in 1819, was elected solicitor of the first judicial circuit. In this same year, he was married to Sarah Ann Haynesworth of Clarke County, at Sheldon Plantation on the Alabama River in Clarke County. From 1822 to 1823, he represented Monroe County in the Territorial Legislature of Alabama. In the 1820s, Gayle and his first wife Sarah moved to Greensboro. He built his own house having knowledge of architecture and contractor. In 1828, Gayle was appointed to succeed Judge Webb on the 3rd Judicial circuit of the Alabama Supreme Court, but he resigned in 1829 to represent Greene County in the legislature. He served as Speaker of the House until 1831 when he was elected the sixth governor of Alabama.
At the time of the election Gayle was a planter who aligned himself with the Democrats in opposition to the Whigs. When elected, he was a strong pro-Jackson man and the state's "most eloquent spokesman" against nullification, which was a major issue in the 1831 election campaign. John Gayle made the doctrines of state sovereignty relevant to the small farmer. Gayle supported the Whig party during the latter 1830s but, at the advent of his governorship, he had no connection with the opposition. (His position changed due to the later situation with the Indian removal in east Alabama.) It was ironic, therefore, that his actions had the effect of popularizing states' rights ideas. He reinforced the Nullifiers' case in opposition to the Democracy but, by the time he himself was willing openly to declare himself a Whig in 1840, his former allies, the Jacksonians, had become the principle exponents of strict construction. Gayle thus became a victim of the historical movement, which he helped to set in motion. Gayle supported the state bank and state funded internal improvement programs. During his administration, the state bank was enlarged, and branches were established in Montgomery, Mobile, Decatur and Huntsville. The first railroad was completed in the state during his administration and Gayle proposed a canal to join the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers. The state's first textile mill, the Bell Factory, was incorporated in Madison County and nine new counties were created during Gayle's term of office.
John Gayle was elected as a supporter and friend of President Andrew Jackson. This ended in 1833 when Gayle clashed with the President concerning Indian removal, white settlement and state's rights. In 1832, the U.S. Government and the Creek Indians signed the Treaty of Cusseta, which granted the Creeks new land west of the Mississippi River. The treaty also allowed individual Indians to remain in the ceded territory if they wished. After the completion of a land survey, the Indians would be granted land plots. The treaty stipulated that all illegal white settlers must be removed from the area to complete the survey. Violence resulted in 1833 when federal marshals attempted to remove some white settlers from the area. In this same year, Lieutenant Rains, Disbursing Agent for the Choctaws, informed General George Gibson that since the beginning of the fall, approximately 1/5 of the 3000 Choctaws near the Choctaw Agency in Indian Territory had died from the climate, the flood on the Arkansas River and no scientific medical care. This same year, Gayle and his wife Sarah, moved to Tuscaloosa, which was the location of the capital at the time.
The feeble efforts of the federal government to keep its promises to the Indians provoked the increased hostility of the white people. A man named Hardiman Owen, who had cruelly beaten the Indians, driven them from their lands and killed their hogs and horses, defied and threatened the marshal. When arrested in July 1833, about twenty miles from Fort Mitchell, he promised to leave and was released. He then went to his house, mined it with gunpowder, invited the marshal in and disappeared through the back door. The marshal was about to enter when he was stopped by the warning of an Indian and in a few seconds the house was blown up. The soldiers pursued Owen, surrounded him and killed him when he attempted to shoot one of them.
The killing of Owen created great excitement and Governor Gayle demanded that the federal government withdraw the marshal and commit the Indians to the tender mercies of the state courts for redress of their grievances, also claiming for the white people of the state title to most of the Creek land by virtue of the notoriously larcenous contracts which the Indians had been induced to sign.
Governor Gayle staunchly supported the settlers' right to remain on the land and denounced the Treaty of Cussetta, claiming that the state had priority in negotiations concerning land in its territory. Gayle also denounced the removal policy, labeling it "an unconstitutional interference with our local and internal affairs." During the midst of the controversy, Gayle won a landslide re-election victory in 1833. In late 1833, the U.S. Government sent Francis Scott Key to Alabama to negotiate with Gayle. Key was able to settle the issue, but the controversy ended the friendship and alliance between Gayle and Jackson and led to a realignment of the state's political parties. After 1835, states' righters and unionists in both the Whig and Democratic parties competed for leadership positions. John Gayle left the Democratic Party and became Alabama's champion of the states' rights faction of the Whigs.
In 1836 and 1840, Gayle served as a presidential elector and, in 1847. he was elected to the Mobile District of the U.S. Congress. In 1839, he was married to Clarissa Stedman (Beck) of Greensboro. Gayle and Clarissa moved to Mobile where Gayle practiced law. In 1849, Gayle was appointed as a federal district judge, a position he held until his death in 1859. Gayle was interred in Magnolia cemetery, located in Mobile, Alabama.
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