Alabama in The American Civil War - Alabama Joins The War Effort

Alabama Joins The War Effort

Antebellum Governor Andrew B. Moore energetically supported the Confederate war effort. Even before hostilities began in April 1861, he seized Federal facilities, sent agents to buy rifles in the Northeast, and scoured the state for weapons. Despite some resistance in the northern part of the state, Alabama joined the Confederate States of America. Congressman Williamson R. W. Cobb, a Unionist, pleaded for compromise. He ran for the First Confederate Congress, but was soundly defeated (he was subsequently elected in 1863 on a wave of anti-war sentiment, with war weariness growing in Alabama). The new nation brushed Cobb aside and set up its temporary capital in Montgomery and selected Jefferson Davis as president. In May the Confederate government abandoned Montgomery before the sickly season began and relocated in Richmond once Virginia seceded.

Some idea of the severe internal logistics problems the Confederacy faced can be seen by tracing Davis's journey from Mississippi, the next state over. From his plantation on the river, he took a steamboat down the Mississippi to Vicksburg, boarded a train to Jackson, where he took another train north to Grand Junction, then a third train east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a fourth train to Atlanta, Georgia. Yet another train took Davis to the Alabama border, where a final train took him to Montgomery. As the war proceeded the Federals seized the Mississippi River, burned trestles and railroad bridges, and tore up track; the frail Confederate railroad system faltered and virtually collapsed for want of repairs and replacement parts.