Organized insurgent groups in Alabama included The Ku Klux Klan, the Pale Faces, Knights of the White Camellia, Red Shirts, and the White League.

Reconstruction in Alabama ended in 1874 when Democrats regained control of the legislature and governor’s office through an election dominated by fraud and violence. They wrote another constitution in 1875, passed the Blaine Amendment prohibiting public money from financing ...Read more

By 1903, only 2,980 African Americans were registered to vote in Alabama, despite at least 74,000 being literate. This was a sharp decline from the more than 181,000 eligible to vote in 1900.

After seceding, Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, and the Confederacy’s capital was initially at Montgomery. Alabama contributed about 120,000 soldiers to the war effort, though few battles were fought in the state.

A company of cavalry soldiers from Huntsville, Alabama, joined Nathan Bedford Forrest’s battalion in Kentucky. Their uniforms had yellow trim, leading to them being nicknamed “Yellowhammer,” a name later applied to all Alabama troops in the Confederate Army.

Alabama’s slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Alabama was under military rule from the end of the war in May 1865 until its official restoration to the Union in 1868.

During Reconstruction, Alabama was represented in Congress by three African-American congressmen: Jeremiah Haralson, Benjamin S. Turner, and James T. Rapier.

Tuscaloosa served as Alabama’s capital from 1826 to 1846.

On January 30, 1846, the Alabama legislature announced it had voted to move the capital city from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery. The first legislative session in the new capital met in December 1847.