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.

The first capitol building in Montgomery burned down in 1849, but it was rebuilt on the same site in 1851. The second capitol building, designed by Barachias Holt of Exeter, Maine, remains to the present day.

By 1860, Alabama’s population had increased to 964,201 people, of which nearly half, 435,080, were enslaved African Americans, and 2,690 were free people of color.

Alabama declared its secession from the Union on January 11, 1861.