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.

Cahaba in Dallas County was Alabama’s first permanent state capital from 1820 to 1825.

The “Alabama Fever” land rush occurred when settlers and land speculators poured into Alabama to take advantage of fertile land suitable for cotton cultivation after the state was admitted to the Union.

The economy of Alabama’s Black Belt region was built around large cotton plantations whose owners’ wealth grew mainly from slave labor. Southeastern planters and traders from the Upper South brought slaves with them as the cotton plantations in Alabama ...Read more

Alabama’s population increased from under 10,000 people in 1810 to more than 300,000 people by 1830.

Most Native American tribes were completely removed from Alabama within a few years of the passage of the Indian Removal Act by Congress in 1830.

Huntsville served as Alabama’s temporary capital from 1819 to 1820.