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Alabama Migrations and mine were right in the midst of it.
http://www.archives.state.al.us/teacher/settle.html
After the
Revolutionary War, the U.S. Government established laws to survey
and sell land gained from Britain. The area that became Alabama was
originally part of the Mississippi Territory from 1798 to 1817. Many
settlers arrived in the area before government lands had been
surveyed. Unable to buy, they simply picked a location, built a
cabin, cleared fields, and put in crops. Such families were called
squatters. Land laws were passed to provide legal title to land for
settlers who already lived on the land. Some settlers claimed land
by British or Spanish land grants, and others were squatters who
claimed land by right of pre-emption....Starting in 1804, U. S. Land
Offices were established to sell land in the area which would become
Alabama. By law federal land was sold to the highest bidders at
public auctions. Alabama sales attracted men from all over the
nation, many of them speculators. Groups of speculators bought large
tracts, sometimes for as little as $10 an acre, then resold at $20
to $100 an acre. When an auction ended, poorer migrants could buy
less desirable land for as little as $2 an acre. The smallest amount
one person could buy was 160 acres. Under the Land Law of 1800 a
purchaser could put one-fourth down and pay the rest off over three
years. But when the price of cotton fell to eighteen cents a pound,
few could meet payments on land bought at inflated prices. By 1820,
Alabama owed the federal government $11 million--more than half of
the national land debt. In 1820 and 1821 Congress passed new laws to
deal with this problem. The Land Law of 1820 required future buyers
to pay the entire amount in cash but lowered the minimums to $1.25
an acre and 80 acres. Those already in debt were aided by the Relief
Act of 1821 which permitted them to keep part of their land and
return the rest to the government or buy it all on the installment
plan at reduced rates. Introduction to the Settlement Unit: The
defeat of the Creek Indians opened the heartland of Alabama to white
settlement and caused Alabama fever to sweep the nation. Pioneers by
the thousands left Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia
seeking fertile land for growing cotton. Mississippi territorial law
was in place, but when Mississippi became a state, Congress created
the Alabama Territory in 1817. Congress designated St. Stephens as
capital of the Alabama Territory and approved a legislature of
Alabama delegates already elected to the old Mississippi territorial
legislature. William Wyatt Bibb, a Georgia physician who had served
in the United States Congress and had powerful friends in
Washington, was named Territorial governor. He was also elected as
the first governor when Alabama became a state December 14, 1819. He
helped establish the government, pass laws and administer justice.
The following documents deal with cost of government, land
speculation, cotton, and law as settlers poured in the area during
the early settlement of Alabama.At the start of the 19th century,
Indians still held most of present-day Alabama. War broke out in
1813 between American settlers and a Creek faction known as the Red
Sticks, who were determined to resist white encroachment. After
General Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee militia crushed the Red
Sticks in 1814 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in central Alabama,
he forced the Creek to sign a treaty ceding some 40,000 sq mi
(103,600 sq km) of land to the US, thereby opening about
three-fourths of the present state to white settlement. From 1814
onward, pioneers, caught up by what was called "Alabama fever,"
poured out of the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky into what Andrew Jackson called "the best unsettled country
in America." Wealthy migrants came in covered wagons, bringing their
slaves, cattle, and hogs. But the great majority of pioneers were
ambitious farmers who moved
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