Harry Toulmin (Unitarian Minister) - Life in Alabama

Life in Alabama

Toulmin supported President Thomas Jefferson's re-election bid in 1804. Following his victory, Jefferson appointed Toulmin to succeed Ephraim Kirby as Superior Court Judge for the Tombigbee District of the Mississippi Territory in 1804. Because Kirby only served six months and never held court in the present-day state of Alabama, Toulmin is regarded as the first U.S. federal judge on Alabama soil.

Toulmin and his family relocated to Fort Stoddert, just north of the border between the United States and the Spanish territory of West Florida. Toulmin's district was large – by his estimate, 340 miles long and 330 miles wide – and he served as minister, physician, judge, postmaster, and diplomat for the area. He published both the Mississippi Magistrate’s Guide and The Laws of Mississippi in 1807.

The residents of Tombigbee District objected to Spanish control of Mobile Bay, which prevented them from accessing the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans. In 1805, he formally petitioned Congress to intervene, but they did not. Although he personally favored U.S. annexation of West Florida, he defended it as an independent nation until the annexation occurred. In 1807, he arrested former Vice-President Aaron Burr; Burr had been accused of conspiring to create an independent state in the Southwest that would belong to neither the U.S. nor Spain. In 1810, he arrested Reuben Kemper and two other members of a group styled the "Mobile Society" following an unsuccessful attempt to "liberate" Mobile and Pensacola. Toulmin's actions were seen as supportive of Spain, and a Baldwin County grand jury charged him with acting on behalf of Spain. A congressional investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing in May 1812. Toulmin was less successful in preventing residents of his district from entering the Creek War between to rival factions of Creek Indians.

In 1817, Alabama Territory was formed from part of Mississippi Territory. When the state of Alabama was created from part of the Tombigbee District in 1819, Toulmin was chosen to represent Baldwin County at the state's constitutional convention in July 1819. He served on the Committee of Fifteen that drafted the first Constitution of Alabama. The document was influenced by the Kentucky Constitution of 1800, which contained more democratic provisions than some of the older state constitutions.

After the constitutional convention, he was elected to the Alabama Legislature. In 1821, his fellow legislators chose him to write a digest of the state's laws. The final product, Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama, was published in 1823. It comprised over 1,000 pages and contained the laws of Mississippi and Alabama territories as well as the acts passed by the Alabama Legislature to date.

Toulmin maintained a cotton plantation in Washington County, Alabama. Although he was opposed to slavery when initially arriving in the United States, and he advocated for provisions in the Alabama Constitution that permitted the eventual emancipation of slaves, nevertheless he eventually came to be a slave owner himself. In his will, he provided for one of his slaves to be freed, deeming him "fit for freedom which few negroes are."