In Huntsville a feeling of diligence in preparation was everywhere evident. Our historic little town was not only in the direct line of travel between larger cities, and therefore a natural stopping place for travellers; but, by reason of the many legal and political lights residing there, and because of its being the county seat of one of the most affluent counties in northern Alabama, was, and is, a town of general interest throughout the State. Almost in an unbroken line, the United States Senators of northern Alabama have been citizens of my husband’s native town.
Situate among the low hills that separate the higher points of the Cumberland range, Huntsville smiles up at the sky from a rare amphitheatre, hollowed in the cedar-covered mountains. It is in the heart of one of the most fertile portions of the Tennessee Valley. Within an hour’s swift ride, the Tennessee flood rolls on its romantic way, and as near in another direction is the forked Flint River, every bend along its leafy edges a place of beauty. Up hill and down dale, ride wherever one will, may be seen the hazy tops of mountains, disappearing in the blue ether, and intervening valleys yellow with corn or white with cotton, or green with the just risen grain. In the summer the sweetness of magnolia and jasmine, of honeysuckle and mimosa, scents the shady avenues along which are seen, beyond gardens and magnolia trees, the commodious town houses of the prosperous planters. Among these affluent surroundings a high public spirit had been nourished. Here the first State Legislature of Alabama was convened and that body met which formed the State Constitution. The simple structure in which those early statesmen gathered (being, in general, representatives from the families of Virginia and the Carolinas) stood yet intact in the early part of 1903. The first newspaper printed in Alabama, yclept the Madison Gazette, was published in Huntsville, and Green Academy (taking its name from the rich sward that surrounded it), a renowned institution of learning, was long a famous feature of Twickenham Town, by which name Huntsville was once known.
In the early days of the township’s existence, a hot contest continued for years to wage between the followers of two of its richest settlers as to the future appellation of the pretty place. The friends of Colonel Pope, who had contributed from the very centre of his plantation the square upon which was built the County Court House, for a time overbore the opposing parties and named the town in honour of the birthplace of the immortal poet; but, though this choice was ratified by legislative act, the adherents of the pioneer, John Hunt, refused to yield their wishes. Mr. Hunt had discovered the site of the town while still the valley was part of the Territory of Mississippi. Lured by the deer he was stalking, he had come upon the big spring, gushing with limpid waters. Here he pitched his tent, and, gathering others about him, he fostered the building of the town which, until the contest that arose with the aristocratic Colonel Pope, was known as Huntsville. For two years, until the original name was restored by a second act of Legislature, the little city was known as “Twickingham Town,” and to many of its old families this name remains so dear that among themselves it still continues to be affectionately applied.
Half the youth of Alabama in that early day delved in the classics under the guidance of the studious professors of Green Academy. It was situated in a large plot of ground which commanded a view of the mountain. Its site was given to the town by Judge William Smith (the warm friend of Andrew Jackson) on the condition that it should be used only for a building for educational purposes forever. This distinguished judge was, I think, the only man until Roscoe Conkling to refuse a seat on the Supreme Court Bench of the United States.[[22]]
The charms and fascinations and general winsomeness of the girls of the lovely vale, even in that early period, in a measure may be imagined from the references to them in the following letter, written to Clement C. Clay, Jr., by this time entered at the State University at Tuscaloosa:
“February 2, 1833.
“My Dear Clement: Richard Peete, Jere Clemens, Richard Perkins, Withers Clay, John E. Moore[[23]] and myself are in a class reading Horace and Graeca Majora. Clio is nearly broken up, and I fear it will never be revived, as the members do nothing but walk with the girls, nor do they appear to think of anything else. The girls in this town are the most jealous little vixens that ever breathed. I would advise you as a friend (for I have gone through the fiery ordeal, and should know something of the character of woman) to keep a respectful distance from the fair ones; for, if you mingle with them at all, you will be persuaded to mingle with them more and more. How much I would give if they would never harass me more!”
The roll of Huntsville’s prominent men includes a peculiarly large number of names that have been potent in State and National capitals, in civil and in military life. Scarcely a stone in its picturesque “God’s Acre” but bears a name familiar to the Southern ear. From under the low hill on which the columned Court House and historic National Bank building stand, the Big Spring gushe, which has had its part in swelling the city’s fame. Where its source lies none can say, though myths are plenty that tell of subterranean caves through which it passes, and which gleam with stalactite glories. Trickling freely from the sides of the mountain beyond are numerous medicinal springs, and silver streams thread their way among the valleys; but nowhere within the Tennessee region exists a flow that at all may be compared with Huntsville’s “Big Spring.” If Hygeia still exercises her functions, her modern home is surely here. The flow of clear limestone water as it issues from the rocks is wonderfully full and seemingly boundless. Since the founding of the town the spring has supplied all the needs of the residents, and that of armies camped about it. So late as 1898 its splendid daily yield of twenty-four million gallons influenced the present Government to locate in and about the pretty city, while awaiting the development of the Cuban War, an army of twenty thousand men.
In the sixties the spring was already famous. From time immemorial the pool below it had served the same purpose for the negroes about as did the River Jordan for the earlier Christians, and a baptism at the Big Spring, both impressive and ludicrous, was a sight never to be forgotten. The negroes came down the hill, marching with solemn steps to weird strains of their own composing, until they reached the edge of the stream that forms below the spring. Here the eager candidates for immersion were led into the water, when, doused for a moment, they would come up again shrieking shrilly a fervent Hallelujah! As a rule, two companions were stationed near to seize the person of the baptised one as it rose, lest in a paroxysm of religious fervour he should harm himself or others. As the baptisms, always numerous, continued, the ardour of the crowd of participants and onlookers was sure to augment, until a maniacal mingling of voices followed, that verged toward pandemonium. The ceremony was as strange and blood-curdling as any rite that might be imagined in the interior of the Dark Continent.
Once, upon the occasion of a visit of two New York friends, one candidate for baptism, a black man, a veritable Goliath, broke loose from those who tried to hold him and ran up the hill in his ecstasy, bellowing like a wounded buffalo. The sounds were enough to excite unmixed horror in the unaccustomed listener, but the appearance of the enthusiast to me was more comical than terrifying; for, being in his stockings, and these conspicuous by reason of their enormous holes, his heels, revealed at every step, appeared as they flashed up the acclivity like the spots on a bull-bat’s wings. When this sable son of Anak took the field, the spectators scattering right and left, my friends turned toward me as if panic-stricken. They paused but a brief moment, then, “standing not upon the order of their going,” they, too, fled from the possible charge of the half-crazed enthusiast. It was no uncommon thing at such baptisms for the candidates to suffer from an attack of “Jerks,” a kind of spasm which resulted from their excited imaginations. I have seen the strength of four stout men tested to its utmost to hold down one seemingly delicate negress, who, fired by the “glory in her soul,” was now become its victim, jerking and screaming in a manner altogether horrible to witness.
Above the spring and about the picturesque Square and Court House, in the spring and early summer of ’1, the gay-hearted youth of Madison County, thronging to the county seat, met in companies to drill and prepare themselves for service in the war now upon us. Already, by the early part of June, Alabama had “contributed to the Confederacy about 20,000 muskets and rifles,” though she retained of these, “for her own immediate protection and defense, only four thousand! I hope,” wrote Governor A. B. Moore, in sending this information to Mr. Clay, “that volunteer companies throughout the State will put the rifles and double-barrelled shot-guns in order, and drill them until called into actual service.”