Southern History Series: The Settlement of Southeast Alabama

Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress.

In Southern History Series: Race War! The Form Mims Massacre, we saw how the Red Sticks faction of the Creek Indians launched a genocide against White settlers during the War of 1812. The Creek War of 1813-1814 ended badly for them when General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and forced them to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson.

The Treaty of Fort Jackson ceded to the United States most of the land that became southeast Alabama which is the region south of the Old Federal Road and which is roughly bounded today by Highway 80 from Phenix City to Montgomery and I-65 from Montgomery to Mobile.

After the Creek Indians officially lost their claim to southeast Alabama in 1814, the region was opened up to White settlement. Alabama joined the Union as a state in 1819.

This part of Alabama south of the Black Belt is known as the Wiregrass or the Piney Woods. In the Old South, it was what was called a White Belt, which is to say it was populated mainly by White yeoman settlers rather than large slave plantations. Even today, the Wiregrass is whiter than the rest of the state because its red clay soil was less suited for cotton plantations.

The Piney Woods or Wiregrass gets its name from the combination of longleaf pines and tall wiregrass which used to dominate the entire area. When Europeans arrived in the Wiregrass region, they were struck by this park like topography that made it so easy to traverse.

Geologically speaking, Southeast Alabama is roughly synonymous with the Dougherty Plain, the Southern Red Hills and the Chunnenuggee Hills. The Black Belt to the north is the Black Prairie. South Alabama, South Georgia and the Florida Panhandle used to be a sea of longleaf pines.