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This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. writes about the three men who share a unique place in Alabama history.

Three individuals: Israel Pickens, John Gayle and Thomas Seay have progressed from being citizens of Greensboro to becoming Governor of the State of Alabama. Each uniquely affected the political, economic and social position of the state. From Israel Pickens in the formative years to Thomas Seay in the years after Reconstruction, each contributed to the peculiarity of this Deep South state. Individually, these men influenced the state positively and negatively. But each man possessed the common characteristic of claiming Greensboro as his residence at some point in his life.

 

Greensboro History

Greensboro, Alabama, is 90 miles southwest of Birmingham, 35 miles south of Tuscaloosa and 90 miles northwest of Montgomery. Greensboro, located in the area known as the Black Belt, currently hails as the "Catfish capital of Alabama." Greensboro is situated in the north-central portion of Hale County, Alabama, in latitude 32(42' north, longitude 87(35' west, and at an elevation of 220 feet above sea level. The average temperature is 64( and the annual precipitation averages approximately 50 inches. The population of Greensboro in 1860 was estimated at 1600; in 1870 it was 1760; in 1880, 1834; in 1890, 1759; in 1900, 2416; and in 1990, 3248.

There is considerable French influence in and around Greensboro. Several homes were built by people of French descent and there are several families still in the area that are of French descent. The region one mile west of Greensboro was the eastern side of the ruined Vine and Olive Colony granted to French Bonapartist exiles in 1817. In relation to modern towns and landmarks, the lower part of the grant was in the premium segment of the Black Belt, known then and now as the Canebreak. Today, Highway 80 between Demopolis and Faunsdale forms the southern perimeter of the grant. The Black Belt, despite its rich and fertile soil, is unfavorable to many plants. The rich soil and the severe climate strained the grapes and olives. Neither of these crops prospered well for the French. Six miles west of Greensboro, near Sawyerville, there is a tract still known as the French Woods. Just east of the French Woods there is an old burial ground with only two of the graves bearing inscriptions. These two graves are of French people from the area. In Greensboro, one of the old French homes still stands in good condition. It is known as the Noel-Ramsey House (sometimes called the Old French House). This home was built in 1821 by Thomas Noel, a Frenchman from Santo Domingo. Noel was a French refugee who, fleeing the West Indies after an insurrection in the early 1800s, eventually joined the ill-fated Vine and Olive Colony near Demopolis. He was disappointed by the Colony's bad fortune there and Noel and his family moved to New Troy (Greensboro) around 1820.

Greensboro was incorporated on December 24, 1823, by act of the Legislature of Alabama. This Black Belt town grew as swiftly as a boom town, with settlers, ministers, professional men and aspiring planters. Although the soil was not conducive to grapes and olives, it was ideal for cotton and this fact would affect the politics and economy for the first hundred years of the state's existence. The great cotton plantations encompassing Greensboro were developed in the 1830s and Greensboro had a cotton gin at this time. Massive plantations were located to the north, west and south of the town. During the period of time from 1830 to the commencement of the Civil War, Greensboro was the marketing center for these cotton plantations. The Black Warrior River (located about ten miles from Greensboro) was the major mode of transportation for bringing merchandise and supplies in and out of the area. Landings and ports on the Black Warrior River used by the cotton plantations of the Greensboro area included East Port Landing, Erie (near present day Lock 6) and Millwood. Many impressive structures were constructed in and around Greensboro in the 1850s during the zenith of the Greek revival craze.

Life in the bustling, burgeoning town was, of course, altered by the Civil War, with a considerable number of men enlisting to serve the Confederacy. Colonel Allen C. Jones organized a company of men called the Greensboro Guards. The Guards departed to fight in the war in May 1861. When the Union soldiers converged on this section of Alabama near the conclusion of the war, Greensboro was fortunately by-passed. There was no industry essential to the Confederacy here. Thus, though the economy was wounded, the town and its buildings were spared.

A period of inactivity set in after the war and, though Greensboro became the county seat when Hale County was created in 1867, the town's progression was stunted and lethargic. Reconstruction had its adverse effect, and for almost twenty years, very few buildings were constructed in Greensboro. In the 1880s, prosperity began to reestablish Greensboro. Numerous new stores and houses were built. In the latter part of the decade, the "Birmingham Boom" took a great deal of affluence from the town. Some investors "lost their shirts" and another sedentary period of delayed progress set in. In the 1890s, Greensboro recovered from the economic predicament and many of the commercial buildings in present downtown were raised during that time.

In August 1897, Yellow Fever visited Greensboro and, before it departed with the frost on November 18th, it claimed the lives of more than a dozen people. Many people during this time attempted to leave the area but discovered they were hemmed in on all sides--all places having quarantined against Greensboro. Business was almost nonexistent during the months of October and November. Yellow Fever was caused by mosquitoes and the area around Greensboro, especially to the west and the north, had many creeks and lowland. This provided excellent breeding areas for mosquitoes. The deathly disease was, at times, prevalent around cities and towns along the Gulf Coast. Yellow Fever also hit Cahaba earlier when it was the capital of the state of Alabama.

 

The first of the three men from Greensboro who became governor was Israel Pickens, who was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on January 30,1780. Israel was the second son of Captain Samuel Pickens, a gentleman of French descent, who assisted his country in the Revolutionary War against the British and the Tories in the two Carolinas. Israel Pickens received his scholastic education partially in South Carolina but principally in Iredell County, North Carolina, and completed his courses at Washington College, Pennsylvania. He also achieved his jurisprudence education in Pennsylvania. Pickens returned to North Carolina and initiated his law practice at Morgantown. He resided there numerous years and occasionally represented Burke County in the legislature. He was elected to Congress from that district in 1811 and continued to represent it until 1817. Pickens vindicated the War of 1812 and was a strong supporter of all the prominent measures of the Madison administration.

Israel Pickens' arrival at St. Stephens on June 28, 1817, initiated the beginning of definite political alliances and vigorous political battles in Alabama. On March 6, 1817, Israel Pickens was appointed register of the land office east of Pearl River located at St. Stephens, which is located 60 miles north of Mobile, Alabama, on a limestone bluff of the Tombigbee River. Pickens applied for the job of Register of the Land Office to be opened in the Creek cession and received approbatory considerations. While serving in Congress, Pickens had been directed by Alexander J. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury, to make a tour of the lands ceded by the Creeks and report to him on the attributes and appraisal of this territory. Dallas promised to recommend Pickens for the appointment as register of the land office to be opened in the Creek cessation. Soon after Pickens reported on his trip, Dallas relinquished his position as Secretary of the Treasury, and William H. Crawford of Georgia was designated as his successor. When Crawford preferred a Georgia man over Pickens for the register's position in the Creek cession, this caused a political division between Crawford and Pickens.

Pickens was a man of fair complexion and blue eyes. He was six feet tall and slender. His manners were amiable and kind, his temper mild. Benevolence was a strong trait in his character. As a public man, he was very popular and, although mild and gentle in his demeanor, no one was firmer in the discharge of his public duties. He possessed great mechanical ingenuity and a great affection for mathematics, natural philosophy and astronomy.

Israel Pickens was a careful and calculating businessman. While he was in North Carolina, he continued to increase his personal wealth by the development of his plantation near Morgantown. In 1814 at the age of thirty-four, Pickens had started courting Martha Lenoir. Martha was the daughter of wealthy William Lenoir of Ft. Defiance. The two were married on June 4, 1814 and, three years later, he moved to St. Stephens, Washington County, Alabama, to take his position in the land office. Martha, pregnant with another child, remained with her family in North Carolina until the fall of 1817, when Pickens returned for her and the children.

While attending to his public duties, Pickens did not neglect his personal affairs. On July 31, 1817, he purchased 2,424 acres of land from the government and supplemented this with the purchase of 475.30 acres on September 24, and 159.6 acres on October 3, 1817. On February 18, 1818, he requisitioned an additional 404 acres. Thus, he acquired over 3000 acres while at St. Stephens. As a man of affluence and as a government official, he won the confidence of the business section of the St. Stephens area and, in September 1818, he became the first president of the Tombeckbe Bank of St. Stephens, chartered by the first session of the Alabama Territorial Legislature.

In his position as president of the bank, Pickens demonstrated a keen business mind in managing the bank's affairs during the depression of 1819. He obtained specie for the bank and maintained its solvency by organizing a gigantic cotton pool in which an agent of the bank marketed three-fourths of the cotton produced in its trade area. Had this scheme failed, the bank would not have been able to meet its obligations to the United States Treasury, for which it was a depository, and thus might well have suffered the same fate as The Planters and Merchants Bank of Huntsville, in North Alabama.

While president of the Tombeckbe Bank, Pickens became increasingly encompassed in Alabama politics. He was appointed as a delegate to the 1819 convention and functioned as a member of the elite Committee of Fifteen that designed the state's first constitution. Pickens, along with Henry Hitchcock, another delegate, was in alignment with the "Georgia Machine" that was directed in Alabama by such gifted politicians as Governor William W. Bibb and Judge John W. Walker.

However, by 1820 Pickens recognized that the "Georgia Machine" was generally perceived as the party of special privilege and was forfeiting the confidence of many of the state's voters. Party leaders in North Alabama were intimately associated with the Planters and Merchants Bank of Huntsville, an institution that, through unsound management, had to suspend specie payments. Many Alabamians came to mistrust LeRoy Pope, the bank's president, and to consider the actions of most "Georgia" politicians as motivated by concern for the bank.

Pickens had been a participant in the drafting of the 1819 Alabama Constitution. The 1819 Constitution did not allow for Blacks, free or slave, to vote. It restricted governors to two-year terms and governors could not be elected for more than two terms. Constitutions are usually the products of their time and Alabamians were sharply aware of the land speculation and bank failures that marked the panic of 1819. The Alabama Constitution of 1819 was a liberal document for its time. It established universal white male suffrage without any property, tax paying or militia requirements for voting or for holding office. The Alabama governor was elected by the people, not by the legislature, and the basis of apportionment was white. The bill of rights section on freedom of religion did not dictate any belief in God, as those in many of the older states did, and the provisions protecting slaves were unusual when compared to other Southern constitutions. Although slavery was sanctioned, the slaves were to be treated "with humanity" and provided with "necessary food and clothing" and owners were "to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life and limb." One who killed a slave would suffer the same punishment as if the offense had been "committed on a free white person," a clause limited only by deaths occurring during an insurrection. Toward the close of the convention, Thomas Bibb and Israel Pickens tried but failed in an effort to give the legislature power to enfranchise (citizenship) free blacks. The most conservative feature of the constitution was one of the most fundamental: the document adopted at Huntsville on August 2, 1819, was never submitted to the people for ratification.

The 1821 gubernatorial election was largely a battle between the "Georgia Faction" (or Royal Party) and the "North Carolina Faction," with state banking and reapportionments as the main issues. Despite Pickens' ties to private banks, the effects of the depression of 1819 had convinced him of the need for a state bank. Pickens' opponent, Dr. Henry Chambers, supported private banking and was backed by the "Georgia Faction" of William H. Crawford, Charles Tait and John Williams Walker. Many new settlers to the state viewed the Georgia men as too aristocratic and elitist, while Pickens was seen as the "spokesman for the have-nots." Pickens won the election by a vote of 9,114 to 7,129.

Israel Pickens was inaugurated as Alabama's third governor on November 9, 1821. In his first message to the state's General Assembly, he urged the passage of a reapportionment law and state-banking act. During the third session of the Assembly, held November-December 1821, the legislators quickly passed a reapportionment bill with none of the controversy experienced during earlier attempts. Pickens' attempts to establish a state-supported bank were thwarted by the legislators who preferred a state bank controlled by private interests. Pickens was successful in gaining approval of the sale of university lands to fund a state bank.

The 1822 General Assembly was unable to provide an acceptable bank bill, but Pickens' power was increased when the Assembly elected two "North Carolina Faction" men to the U.S. Senate. William R. King was re-elected and William Kelly replaced retiring John William Walker.

The 1823 election confirmed the demise of the "Georgia Faction." Dr. Henry Chambers once again lost to Pickens by a vote of 6,942 to 4,602. Pickens' victory was overshadowed by the death of his wife, Martha, followed in November by the death of a baby, William James. Evidence exists that Julia, Pickens' daughter, moved to North Carolina to live with Martha Lenoir (Pickens') family. In all Pickens had three sons and one daughter by Martha.

This time banking was the only issue, and Pickens' victory was seen as a mandate to proceed with a state-banking bill. On December 20, 1823, the General Assembly passed a satisfactory banking bill and by July 1824, the state bank had begun operation in the state capital of Cahaba.

Once the banking issue was settled and the "North Carolina Faction" was firmly established in power, Alabama politics settled down for the remainder of Pickens' term. The state was a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson during the 1824 presidential election and 1825 was marked by a visit from Marie Joseph Paul, the Marquis de Lafayette. General Lafayette traveled through the Creek Indian country of eastern Alabama and reached Montgomery on April 3, 1825. Here he was honored with a banquet by the town and welcomed by Governor Pickens. Lafayette traveled down the Alabama River stopping in Cahaba and Mobile before continuing to New Orleans. Lafayette's visit was the event of the year and cost the state $15,715.18, $4000 more than the amount in the state's contingency fund.

Pickens had his sight firmly focused on the junior Senate seat, which became open upon Chamber's death, January 25, 1825. Alabama Governor John Murphy facilitated his advancement to this office when he removed a cause for misunderstanding with Senator William Rufus King. King had helped the commissioners who had obtained bank fund loans in New York and, in Pickens' words, had given "his active and assiduous attention as their agent, in effecting the negotiations." After the misunderstanding was cleared up, Pickens, having been given an interim appointment, set out for Washington in March 1826.

In 1826, Pickens stopped at Ft. Defiance, en route to Washington, to see his daughter Julia and members of his wife's family. Pickens became ill and was confined to his bed for thirteen days. Prior to this event, Pickens had not been strong but this was the first time he had totally succumbed to the symptoms of tuberculosis and he was never to see another well day. Upon his arrival, Pickens learned for the first time that he had been appointed Federal district judge for Alabama. Quickly he sought to have the appointment filled by his friend. Almost immediately after taking his Senate seat, Pickens became severely ill and, for the remaining weeks of the session (until May 22), was scarcely in the Senate chamber. He traveled north, seeking better climate and health, but found none. He then traveled back to Fort Defiance and bid a fond farewell to Julia. He departed Fort Defiance in mid-October, accompanied by his two sons, and arrived home in early November.

Pickens was considered a successful and able governor. "He was a man of exceptional capability, vision and compassion." After handpicking his successor for governor, Pickens was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Dr. Henry Crawford. Pickens served a short time and retired to Cuba due to ill health where he died on April 24, 1827. His body was returned to Greensboro and was buried at "Greenwood" (built around 1821), the old Pickens' place two miles south of Greensboro.

Israel Pickens was a strong leader who arrived early in Alabama and for that reason perhaps had a greater influence than he would have later. He was a superb politician, one who fought for his convictions, but also one who knew the value of patience and compromise. Probably his greatest fame flows from the deathblow he and his friends gave to the "Georgia Machine." Pickens' shrewd calculations in establishing and nourishing the state bank were major political achievements, which had a long-range influence on the state of Alabama.

 

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.

 

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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The following Web sites were also consulted for this paper. They are located at the Alabama Department of Archives and History web sites and links.
Magnolia Cemetery (site no longer available)
Israel Pickens
John Gayle
Thomas Seay