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Three Governors from Greensboro, Alabama: Thomas Seay
by Jabe Fincher
Twenty-seven years later, the third citizen from the Greensboro area was elected as governor of Alabama. Thomas Seay was born on November 20, 1846, near Erie in present day Hale County. This area was part of Greene County at the time of his birth to Reuben and Ann McGee Seay. Thomas grew up on a plantation near Sawyerville (west of Greensboro) until age twelve when the family moved to Greensboro. There he attended Southern University (Greensboro) until the outbreak of the Civil War interrupted his studies. In the true Southern spirit, Thomas, though only fourteen years old, took his bodyguard, Old John, and set out to join the Confederate Army. Fortunately, his parents managed to catch him and he was compelled to return home. In 1863, at the age of seventeen, Seay enlisted in the Confederate Army and served with his company around Mobile. While defending Spanish Fort, the key to the defense of Mobile, Seay was wounded in the chest. He was captured at Spanish Fort and imprisoned on Ship Island, off Biloxi, Mississippi. The chest wound, along with the shoddy living conditions at the prison, made Seay susceptible to tuberculosis, which he contracted while at Ship Island. From that time on, he was never physically strong. Seay returned to Southern University after the war, graduating in 1867. He then studied law and practiced as a junior member of Coleman and Seay from 1869 to 1885. Seay also engaged in planting.
Thomas Seay began his political career in 1874 when he ran unsuccessfully for the state senate. He was successful in 1876 and remained in the senate for ten years, serving as president from 1884 to 1886. Seay was elected governor in 1886 and reelected in 1888. This administration is noteworthy for Seay's success in reducing taxes while increasing social services and running state government in the black. An advocate for social welfare programs, the central Alabama native supported crucial legislation.
During Governor Seay's first term the general tax rate was lowered to fifty cents, and the balance in the treasury at the end of his term (1888) was $280,731.53. There was a demand for further reduction in tax rates, to forty cents. Seay was antagonistic towards a further decrease because of the accelerating interest rate on the bonded debt and the larger appropriations for education, the old soldiers and charity work. The Advertiser, a semi-administration component in this period, suggested that if a surplus should accumulate it could very wisely be used to further education in the state.
At the time of Governor Seay's administration, women and children were limited to an eight-hour workday. Pensions were provided for disabled Confederate veterans and their widows. Seay was also supportive (in the context of late 19th century standards) of measures to improve the rights and education of Alabama's black citizens. He was, nonetheless, a paternal, Southern white supremacist, who did not desire segregation but he was liberal in his attempts to provide better education for Alabama's black citizens.
Several new schools were established during Seay's term. Among these were the State Normal School at Troy (now Troy State University) and the State Normal School for Colored Students in Montgomery (now Alabama State University). In Talladega, the Alabama Academy for the Blind was established, removing that responsibility from the Alabama Institute for the Deaf.
Bessemer was founded in 1887 and the iron and steel industry in Jefferson County began to boom soon after. This was beneficial for the State of Alabama but was detrimental for the city of Greensboro. An especially exciting event to occur while Seay was in office was the 1887 visit of President Grover Cleveland to Montgomery.
Other events during Seay's administration were not so jubilant. The convict lease system began and businessmen soon realized the opportunity for exploitation of this work force. There was a conflict between advanced thinkers and humanitarians who insisted upon the humane treatment of criminals at public expense, if need be, and those that took the view that criminals had forfeited all rights and should be so handled as not to become a financial liability to the state. Governor Gayle and Judge B. F. Porter and other humanitarians had to convince the people that the penitentiary system of punishment would be self-supporting before they would abandon the system of whipping and branding. The deep-rooted conviction that the convicts should pay for their upkeep was (and is) a most serious obstacle to prison reform. It led to the atrocious system of leasing or farming the penitentiary to private individuals between 1845 and 1868 and, afterward. When the state began to lease its convicts to industrialists, lumbermen and others, and realized a profit from their labors, the theory took root that the convicts should be handled so as to make money for the state. Governors who handled them so as to make a handsome profit for the state were congratulated on their business acumen.
The convict lease system proved susceptible to many abuses. The dispersion of convicts to many camps made supervision and health entirely insufficient. Under the system, it had been impossible to protect the prisoners from physical injury, moral degradation or even from murder. The lease of county convicts was even more deplorable than the state system. The prominent educator and social reformer, Julia S. Tutwiler from the Greensboro area, said in 1893 that the lease system had been "well described as one that combines all the evils of slavery without one of its ameliorating features."
As economic conditions improved in the 1880s, agitation increased for a more fundamental revision of the road law. Some proposed that convict labor be utilized to work on public roads, while others emphasized the necessity of imposing road taxes to pay hired hands or, at least, to purchase adequate tools and equipment. Considerable work had been done in Jefferson, Madison and a few other counties whose revenues allowed them to finance some road building without exceeding the constitutional tax limit. In 1890, Governor Seay stated, "We continue to work the public roads as our ancestors fought the savages." Seay also predicted that Alabama schools would lack local tax support, a source from which schools in other states derived the major portion of their revenue. This situation did not improve until Alabama had a new constitution in 1901.
Governor Seay recommended placing a greater degree of control over quarantine in the hands of the state board of health. Yellow fever was a problem in the state at this time. The legislature, however, would not empower the board fully. In 1887, it passed an act giving the governor power, upon the recommendation of the board of health, to proclaim a quarantine anywhere in the state. The legislature appropriated $5000 to carry out the intent of this act. The law specifically stated, however, that such action should not prevent the establishment of local quarantines by towns and counties. Seay's recommendation for greater control over quarantines to the board of health was instrumental. One year after his death, in 1897, an epidemic of yellow fever hit his hometown of Greensboro.
In his last message (1890), Seay reported the state's finances to be "in excellent condition." The money in the treasury was sufficient, he said, for "the demands of the government economically administered." He warned against reducing the tax rate because of the growing needs of the schools, the war veterans and the wards of the State.
In 1890, Seay was defeated by James M. Pugh in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat. Thomas Seay did not run for office again, although he helped Thomas G. Jones in his campaign for governor against Populist Reuben Kolb.
Seay married Ellen Smaw of Greene (later Hale) County on July 12, 1875. She bore him a son and a daughter before her death in 1879. In 1881, he married Clara de Lesdernier, of New Orleans, by whom he had four more children. Governor Seay returned to Greensboro in 1890 to practice law and enjoy his family. The home that Seay grew up and lived in with Clara is still standing and is known now as the Reuben Seay-Williams House. It is located at 804 Seay Street, in Greensboro. Seay practiced law in what is now the Hale County Library. Seay died of tubercular meningitis at the age of 49 on March 30, 1896 in Greensboro.
Thomas Seay was the last Alabama governor in the period known as Bourbon Democracy. The period ending with Seay's governorship was known as Bourbon Reconstruction. Conservative Democrats had completed an eighteen-year reign that had no serious challenges. The party had achieved its definition of "redemption," but the word Bourbon rather than Redeemer became a more frequent synonym for Democrats. In the same fashion as the House of Bourbon was restored in France after the defeat of Napoleon, so were white conservative Alabamians returned to power in 1874. A white Alabamian could be a Bourbon without being a reactionary, but the connotation of Bourbonism was never in doubt. Republicans used the word in its pejorative sense but, to those who proudly wore the label, it meant honesty and efficiency in government and adherence to white supremacy.
Conclusion
The three men who at times called Greensboro their home and who went on to become Governor of the state of Alabama, each contributed to this state in various ways. Each of these three gentlemen from Greensboro distinguished himself while he was in the gubernatorial office. From Pickens in the formative days of the state of Alabama to Seay's administration after the Civil War and Reconstruction, each impacted the state of Alabama's political, economical and social climate. These men have been instrumental in the history of this "Deep South" state. They have impacted the history of this state.
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