Makers and Romance of Alabama History

Embracing Sketches of the Men Who Have Been Largely Instrumental in Shaping the Policies and in Molding the Conditions in the Rapid Growth of Alabama—Together With the Thrilling and Romantic Scenes With Which Our History is Resplendent
By B. F. RILEY, D.D., LL.D.
Author of the History of Conecuh County; Alabama, As It Is; History of the Baptists of Alabama; History of the Baptists of the Southern States East of the Mississippi; History of the Baptists of Texas, and The White Man’s Burden; Ex-President of Howard College, and sometime Professor of English Literature and Oratory in the University of Georgia.
“History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.”—Lamartine.
“All history is but a romance, unless it is studied as an example.”—Croly.
“Biography is the only true history.”—Carlyle.
To The Women of Alabama—
The Mothers, Wives, Daughters, and Sisters, without the fidelity, kindness, and devotion of whom this proud commonwealth could not have attained its present magnificent proportions, and on whose future loyalty must largely depend the perpetuation of the grandeur of Alabama; who though not conspicuous in the glare and tumult of the struggles which have eventuated in the erection of Alabama into a giant state, have yet made possible the successes of others by the quiet and wholesome force of our home life; to these, our worthy women of the past and present, this volume is most cordially dedicated by
The Author.

The present volume is intended to be a substantial contribution to the history of Alabama, by giving expansion to the recorded lives of its foremost citizens—men who alike on the field and in the forum, on the bench and in the sphere of commerce, in the lecture room and in the pulpit, on the farm and in the court, in the field of development as well as in the ordinary walks of life, have shared conspicuously in the erection of one of the proudest of the American commonwealths.
The distinction achieved by these eminent citizens in various orbits are worthy of perpetual record, and their respective deeds and accomplishments deserve more than a bare reference in the current chronicles of the state. Along the successive eras through which Alabama has passed, first as a territory, then as a state, for a period exceeding a hundred years, each of these worthies made a contribution to the construction of a mighty commonwealth, and sheer justice requires that the specific task so worthily wrought by each should be a matter of permanent record. The effort is here made not to follow the beaten path of chronological biography, so much, as to seize on the salient points in the life of each eminent leader, show who and what he was, and that which he did. By means of a method like this, these distinguished men become reflectors of the period in which each lived and wrought.