An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue Read online

  In colonial Virginia, the tidewater planters used barbecue to demonstrate their hospitality and generosity because these qualities testified to elite social and economic status. The tidewater planters created rituals and crafted appearances to separate themselves from most colonists. To these ends, they built great houses capable of hosting large parties. They refined their churches and homes with the finest materials. They also provided food and drink to people at community gatherings, such as court days, horse races, militia musters and election day. At these events, wealthy Virginia gentlemen competed with one another for the affection of the masses. Due to its ability to feed large groups of people, barbecue satisfied these purposes.11

  Political aspirants, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, hosted barbecues to treat voters for their support. At barbecues, politicians nurtured constituents. Such events also provided common people the opportunity to gather and express their freedom through eating and drinking. At these political barbecues, candidates had to walk a fine line and not appear too eager for power. In fact, they did not at all represent the barbecue and alcohol as an enticement to vote or as a reward for voting a certain way. Instead, politicians portrayed the barbecue as part of their obligation to their poor neighbors. George Washington explained, “I hope no exception were taken to any that voted against me but that all were alike treated and all had enough.”12 They insisted that they treated all voters, regardless of their allegiances. To maintain an illusion of distance and disinterest, politicians often had other wealthy gentlemen provide the barbecues on their behalf.13

  The guests ate and drank a lot, which entailed high costs for the hosts. In 1758, two notable candidates for Virginia’s House of Burgesses racked up massive bills in pursuit of political office. Washington procured rum, punch, wine, beer and cider for his guests. Another candidate, Matthew Marrable, treated voters from a militia company to a feast of seven barbecued lambs. He also provided thirty gallons of rum. Despite the lavish feast, or perhaps because Marrable went too far, he lost. In this time and place, Americans organized themselves in a hierarchical, deferential society. As voters started to expect barbecues and alcohol in exchange for support, the tidewater elite had the only true chance to win because only they could afford to demonstrate their hospitality and generosity on such a large scale.14

  BARBECUE ARRIVES IN ALABAMA

  After the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Americans spread out from the eastern seaboard into the Deep South along the Gulf Coast, including Alabama. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, fervent nationalism and economic boom inspired people to settle in the Deep South. From 1810 to 1820, the population of the Deep South doubled as people pursued the lucrative profits that cotton promised. In 1819, Alabama became a state. The settlers of the Deep South and Gulf Coast arrived either voluntarily or by force from other parts of the United States, the Caribbean and Africa, which made the region one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse places in the world. Many of the settlers migrated to Alabama and Mississippi from the older states on the eastern seaboard, including Virginia, Georgia or the Carolinas, but also through Tennessee and Kentucky.15 In these places, barbecue had a strong presence. In their new homes, migrant settlers re-created the cultural norms and resurrected their old institutions. With these settlers, therefore, barbecue arrived in the region.16

  In the early nineteenth century, Americans started to settle the Deep South because the region promised financial wealth and social status. Like many other people, Bishop Nicholas Hamner Cobbs left Virginia and eventually settled in Alabama. Cobbs explained that settlers had heard “marvelous accounts” of “the fertility of those virgin lands.” They believed that “the productions of the soil were commanding a price remunerating to slave labor as it had never been remunerated before.” The region attracted other sorts of people, as well, who “had come out on the vague errand of seeking their fortune, or the more definite one of seeking somebody else’s.”17

  The first settlers of Alabama consisted mostly of men with rough spirits. Cobbs recalled, “The proportion of young men, as in all new countries, was great.” He added, “The proportion of wild young men was, unfortunately, still greater.” He observed that these demographics resulted in a “violent disruption of family ties” and “a sudden abandonment of the associations and influence of country and of home.” As a result, Alabama had a “new and seething population in which the elements were curiously and variously mixed with free manners and not over-puritanical conversation.”18 In Alabama, according to Cobb, “vulgarity, ignorance, fussy and arrogant pretension, unmitigated rowdyism” and “bullying insolence” characterized society. These wild young men embraced barbecue because of its humble, rustic, savage origins.

  With the lack of a unifying ethnic or religious identity, Americans used the barbecues to create and reinforce their national identity, practice democracy, celebrate their nation, reinforce its founding principles and rally electoral support.19 In the earliest years of nationhood, Americans had already adopted barbecue as the main event on Independence Day. As towns grew across the South, people enjoyed barbecue and drinking to celebrate independence. At these events, people toasted the presidents, read the Declaration of Independence, blasted fireworks into the sky and ate and drank as much as possible in an expression of freedom. Often, candidates appeared at these barbecues to make their partisan appeals, just as they had since colonial days.20

  Barbecue had become a major component of democracy and a symbol of the new world order among white, nineteenth-century Americans.21 At barbecues, people made a point to enjoy themselves, often to excess. As barbecue had become associated with savagery, white Americans seemingly embraced the hedonistic nature of the food as a symbol of their freedom and independence.22 They considered these events an outlet for expressing and celebrating liberty and an escape from civilized life. Through barbecue, therefore, common people rebuked the country’s elite, especially candidates like John Quincy Adams, who received his education and acquired his manners in Europe. By the Jacksonian era, barbecue had become an important symbol of liberty and democracy in the United States, especially in Alabama.23

  In the 1820s and 1830s, Andrew Jackson’s supporters turned to the barbecue to rally grass-roots support, and the political barbecue proliferated across the South. For decades, American politicians had barbecued meat for their supporters. Among Jackson’s supporters, however, barbecue became entangled with democratic spirit because the food reminded them of their candidate: grassroots, savage and American.24

  Alabamians came to love politics and barbecue in equal measure. Cobbs recalled that Alabamians had many sources of entertainment, but “the allabsorbing and exciting theme was politics.” In small towns, locals would construct a “rude platform” under “the shade of a spreading tree.” On this platform, the “champions of the Whig and Democratic creeds” stated their positions and challenged one another. According to Cobb, “Folk would come from far and wide to enjoy [politicians’] feats and flights of oratory, in the intervals of which a band would play, while refreshment was provided by a monster barbecue.” These political barbecues attracted rough crowds, who “experienced a sense of incompleteness if the debate and the day did not wind up with a duel.”25 In antebellum Alabama, barbecue fueled democratic traditions throughout the state.

  In the earliest years of statehood, the volunteers of Alabama’s numerous local militias mustered together once a year for a day of drilling and fanfare, and “barbecue was often the temptation to make a full muster.” Politicians appeared at these events and at other, similar occasions.26 Likewise, politicians attended the barbecues hosted by the community.27

  During campaign season, the candidates did not tend to host the barbecues but rather attended them as guests of the people. During the nineteenth century, civic and social leaders in Alabama hosted barbecues and invited local people to attend them with the promise of appearances by all the local candidates. Unlike th
e previous incarnations of the political barbecue, the people hosted the events and expected the candidates to come to them.28 At these barbecues, no single person provided the food to demonstrate their wealth and generosity. Instead, the people in the community each contributed something, although a particular person might serve as the host. Due to the potluck quality of these events, guests often brought whatever they could spare, so barbecues in Alabama consisted of beef, mutton, chicken, oxen, venison or turkeys, depending on local availability.29

  By the nineteenth century, Alabama barbecue, like barbecue elsewhere in the South, had not yet become dominated by pork or chicken or any other specific meat. Instead, hosts of political barbecues served a variety of meats gathered from nearby farmers. At an 1840 barbecue in Autauga County, “the people sent fat mutton, beef, pork, poultry, to the barbecue pits.”30 According to a reporter from the town of Elyton, in present-day Birmingham, cooks prepared the meats for another barbecue on “poles stretched across shallow pits, under the shade of the trees, in which very hot red coals are kept.…Constant turning and seasoning with vinegar and condiments during the baking result in giving them a delicious flavor in no other manner obtainable.”31 At this point, Alabama barbecue tended to look like barbecue in other parts of the American South, but it did have a unique political significance.

  Without an established planter class, Alabamians voted and held office regardless of property, and they often ousted incumbents in local elections. The state was more democratic and liberal compared to other southern states. Alabamians crafted a state constitution with a liberal and democratic character, which reflected the concerns of small farmers. Alabamians scrutinized the work of legislators and governors in search of any sign of tyranny.32 To mobilize these energetic voters, barbecues played a prominent role in Alabama’s campaigns. In fact, they played such an important role in politics that some people worked to eliminate barbecues.

  CHAPTER 2

  “FREEDOM WHICH KNEW NO RESTRAINT”

  The Madison County Anti-Barbecue Reform Movement, 1820–1840

  In the early nineteenth century, Americans lived through an era of immense change as traditional politics and society, which had ordained deference to a natural aristocracy, gave way to an emerging sociopolitical order emphasizing individual liberty, democracy and popular sovereignty. During this period of change, American national and local politics became feisty as people advocated on behalf of one worldview over another.

  In national politics, these divisions energized the electoral contests between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. In the 1820s, politicians like Adams, the son of President John Adams, fell out of favor with a lot of people. To many Americans, Adams and his ilk seemed bookish, elitist and out of touch. Instead, politicians like Andrew Jackson, a military hero, became popular as common white men gained more political power. In the 1824 presidential election, Jackson earned more votes, but Adams became president because the Federalist Party controlled the House of Representatives, which determined the winner when no candidate secured a majority in the Electoral College. In 1828, Jackson finally won election to the presidency, which to many people signaled the triumph of a new democratic era. The adherents of the traditional social and political order, however, launched reform movements to curtail the effects of freedom and democracy on society.33

  In 1824, John Quincy Adams defeated Andrew Jackson in a disputed election. He served one term before Jackson defeated him. As America became more democratic, politicians like Adams fell out of favor with the rough, rugged American public. Library of Congress.

  A series of nineteenth-century religious developments changed standards of behavior for the emerging middle class, which set out to improve the morality of the nation and its citizens. During the Second Great Awakening, which reached the Tennessee River Valley in the 1820s, evangelical converts viewed themselves and society as potentially perfect, which served as the underlying premise of reform movements. As part of the conversion process, evangelicals often condemned their past behaviors and lamented the lack of morality they saw in one another. As a result, reformers started the abolition and temperance movements, among others.34

  The nationwide struggle between reform and democratic spirit played out in a local movement in Madison County, Alabama, to eliminate barbecue. Alabamians reveled in the era’s political barbecues, where candidates campaigned for votes as the people ate and drank. But the mixture of politics, food and especially alcohol raised the ire of nineteenth-century reformers, particularly in Madison County, who condemned political barbecues as an insult to democracy and good government.

  In 1829, Andrew Jackson took the oath of office and became president of the United States. His supporters had hosted barbecues to generate enthusiasm and mobilize voters. Library of Congress.

  In 1834, cartoonist Henry R. Robinson portrays Jackson being barbecued over the fires of public opinion. As his supporters had used barbecues to make him wildly popular with the public, they now used the same method to criticize him after his unpopular decision to destroy the Bank of the United States. Library of Congress.

  THE SETTLEMENT OF MADISON COUNTY

  Although Alabama became a territory in 1817, Americans had already started settling in that part of the Mississippi Territory. Before large-scale migration to the area began, cattle herders settled along the Tombigbee River near Spanish-controlled Mobile, and squatters settled along the Tennessee River in present-day Madison County.

  In pursuit of promising rumors of wild game and a valuable water source, a few Tennesseans migrated to the area and became the first white settlers of present-day Madison County. Among these settlers, John Hunt built the first cabin on the banks of Big Spring. Soon, a few families took a similar southward journey and settled the area. They lived here for a few years without any legal claim to the land.35

  In 1809, when land became available for sale, only a third of the original squatters purchased their land and legally remained. John Hunt returned to Tennessee. Instead, wealthy planters acquired the best land in Madison County and moved their families from Virginia and Georgia to Alabama, where they hoped to improve their political and social power.36

  When the wealthy planters arrived in Alabama, they intended to take control of government. In Virginia and Georgia, these planters had become politically powerful. Upon their arrival in Alabama, they set out to dominate politics there as well.37 According to planter George R. Gilmer, these wealthy families formed a “most intimate friendly social union.”38 They married within the group, thus creating a tightknit community of elites. Although these wealthy planters had the best land, the most money and useful connections, the remaining Tennessee-born homesteaders bought the rest of the land and became the area’s majority, which made them politically powerful.

  POLITICS IN ALABAMA

  Immediately, the wealthy planters and homesteaders became embroiled in class-based political conflict as they competed to remake the town of Hunt’s Springs to suit their group’s needs. They formed separate factions: the Royal Party and the Castor Oil Party. Leroy Pope, a wealthy planter, led the Royal Party, which consisted of the rest of the planting class. The homesteaders named their party in honor of John Hunt, who reportedly ran a castor oil shop before moving back to Tennessee. Although Hunt had moved away, the small farmers continued to invoke Hunt’s name to claim that they, not the wealthy planters, truly controlled the area.39 The power struggles between the two classes defined the region’s politics for decades.

  In 1814, Leroy Pope, known to many as the “Father of Huntsville,” built this stately home on present-day Echols Avenue just outside downtown Huntsville in the Twickenham neighborhood. At one point, Pope led an effort to change the name of the town from Hunt’s Springs to Twickenham. Library of Congress.

  After settling the area, the wealthy planters attempted to erase any memory of the squatters from the local landscape and gain control of the county’s representation in the territorial legislature. Pope, a desc
endant of English poet Alexander Pope, changed the name of the town from Hunt’s Springs, after John Hunt, to Twickenham, the poet’s hometown. When Madison County residents gained representation in the territorial legislature of Mississippi, the wealthy planters nominated members of their tightknit group to take the seats.

  Instead of deferring to the social and financial elite, the homesteaders nominated their own candidates to take the seats in the territorial legislature. They nominated Hugh McVay, an original squatter in the area, and Gabriel Moore, who had served as a tax assessor.40 They won. When they took their seats, they successfully changed the name from Twickenham to Huntsville in honor of John Hunt, thus winning the hearts of most of the Madison County electorate. They continued to win election to the legislature, and they both eventually became governors of Alabama. Moore also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although the homesteaders had the most political success in the territorial period, some wealthy planters eventually did earn seats in the legislature. They became especially powerful as Alabama neared statehood.41

  Upon joining the Union in 1819, Alabamians protected the power of the small farmers by ratifying the most liberal state constitution of the period. In Alabama, all white men could vote regardless of property or wealth. They did not set any property qualifications for holding office, either. As a result, Alabama had an energetic and large electorate, who used their right to vote often and without deference.42