As a separate territory and state since 1817, Alabama has had five capitals. Saint Stephens, in southwest Alabama, was designated in the Congressional act creating the territory as the temporary seat of government. There, two sessions of the territorial legislature met. In accordance with the enabling act for statehood, the first Constitutional Convention assembled in the north Alabama town of Huntsville in 1819, where the first session of the General Assembly was held in the same year.
The territorial legislature, however, had chosen Cahaba at the confluence of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers, as the site for the capital of the state, so the second session of the legislature met there in 1820. Cahaba also was designated as the temporary seat of government in the Constitution, which expressly gave the 1825-26 legislatures the power to decide upon a permanent site. That session of the General Assembly took the opportunity to select Tuscaloosa for the new capital, deserting the oft-flooded and unhealthy Cahaba site.
Tuscaloosa was a thriving community located on the shoals of the Black Warrior River and had been a strong candidate for the capital site when Cahaba had been chosen for the honor in 1819. Serving as the home for the government beginning in 1826, however, it was increasingly inconvenient as a seat of government for the rapidly growing state. Alabama's population gains concentrated in the state's more eastern counties as Indian lands there opened to white settlement, prompting a clamor for a more centrally located capital.
An amendment approved by the voters of Alabama struck out the section of the Constitution designating the 1825-26 selection as the "permanent" site for the capital, freeing the legislature in 1846 to choose another site from among a number of competing river towns. Montgomery, on the Alabama River, won the ensuing 16-ballot contest in the General Assembly.........
