Journals of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of Alabama: 1817-, St. Stevens, Thomas Eastin, 1818, followed by other
state printers in other towns and cities, title varied. Prior to its elevation to the status of a separate territory in 1817, Alabama had comprised
the eastern half of the Territory of Mississippi. The latter entity had been created by Congress in 1898 from lands disputed by the State of Georgia,
several native American tribes, and the United States itself. The whole of the sparsely settled Mississippi Territory was governed from Natchez by a
governor appointed under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The territorial years were unhappy ones for the easterners, who were isolated
from the Mississippi territorial government and consistently underrepresented in its legislature. After two decades the conflicting claims to parts of
the larger territory by Georgia had been settled with monetary payments and those of the Native Americans by war. The only question remaining for
Congress was whether to admit the whole of the vast Mississippi Territory as one large state, as the westerners wanted, or as two entities, with Alabama
being separate, as desired by the easterners. Congress went with the second option. In 1917 Mississippi was made a state, and Alabama was severed off
as the Alabama Territory. It was assumed from the beginning that Alabama’s territorial experience would be short. Therefore, rather than establishing a
unique territorial government, the region was governed much as it was during its Mississippi Territory period, with its territorial legislature being
comprised of transplanted Alabama members from the former Mississippi territorial legislature. As with its predecessor, the Alabama territorial
legislature had a House of Representatives and a Legislative Council. These worthies spent most of their energies during the two brief sessions of the
territorial legislature organizing the region for statehood. A constitutional convention was convened in July of 1819, and Alabama was admitted to the
Union as a state in December. The first state capital was at Saint Stevens. (Documents which are part of the Early State Records collection are digitized
from a microfilm copy of title originally held by the Library of Congress, the Alabama Supreme Court Library, Birmingham Public Library, British
Museum, British Public Record Office, and Alabama Department of Archives and History).
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