Alabama: The History of a Deep South State, Bicentennial Edition

What a great project. I am a relatively new comer to the state of Alabama and as a part of the thinking about the history of the state and bicentennial of the entry of Alabama into the US I have read some 10 history books of history ranging from the pre-Colombian era of Indian occupation and competition through the European eras to the American eras. These authors set themselves the task of covering it all, and to a depth that was intellectually satisfying, education, interesting and useful. It is a 650 page volume and is very well organized, structured, and readable for the layman and professional historian both. The coverage of the developing culture of the state as the Spanish, French and English competed for influence with the Native American populations for hundreds of years is fascinating. It is interesting to know that by the Colonial era of America many Indian tribes where headed by mixed race men. Men whose fathers , or mothers, were European, and yet they were raised and lived as Indians. The massive competition between Indian tribes, all the time was a constant long before the Europeans arrived, and for hundreds of years the growing European populations on the coasts rarely influenced the Indian tribes and their ways of life, except for the growing trading of European and Indian goods. Over time the growing European populations cased inevitable conflict over the use of the land. It was esencially economic conflict. Slavery was always present. The Indians practiced slavery long before the Europeans and their black slaves arrived. Some Indians actually bought black slaves from Spanish slave traders. The whole history is larger and more complex than most of America reaslizes. The complexity of Alabama's entry into the Civil War was much greater than simply slavery. Only 6% of the land owners in Alabama at the time of the Civial war owned slaves, and if anyone owned more that 20 slaves they were exempt from service in the military. Almost half of Alabama counties votes to remain with the Union. Fascinating history, and it is largely told with a very professional hand.A professional historian has a very important duty. The historian is to be a forensic scientist; using all the tools available to determine, what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and why it happened in the text of the times in which we are considering. The book is in three parts, buy different authors with 34 chapters, and it is the product of professional historians, until the last 3 chapters by Wayne Flint. Until those last three chapters, which were largely the opinion of Mr. Flynt, and not the result of careful historical analysis, the book is a must read for any serious historian of Alabama. If I were teaching the history of Alabama in any Alabama school, this is the book I would use, except the last three chapters. The last three chapters should be deleted by the editor from future editions of the book, or rewritten by a more careful historian, and it will be a classic.

The authors set out with hubristic ambition to cover everything related to Alabama from pre-Columbian native society to Kay Ivey ... and they succeed. While thorough, this books is never quite plods, probably because it crosses such diverse ground: economics, politics, religion, race relations, the status of women, education, the arts, etc. The most fun was learning about the characters who have largely faded from our collective memory, like William Yancey, Daniel Pratt and Dr. Jerome Cochran. The most salient and troubling part of this book is the realization that our current orgy of political corruption has plenty of historical precedent.

General history reading