| The Annotated Pickett's History of Alabama: And Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period Contributor(s): Pickett, Albert James (Author), Pate, James P. (Editor), Pate, James P. (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1588380327 ISBN-13: 9781588380326 Publisher: NewSouth Books OUR PRICE: $54.00 Product Type: Hardcover Published: October 2018 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - South (al,ar,fl,ga,ky,la,ms,nc,sc,tn,va,wv) - History | Native American |
| Dewey: 976.1 |
| LCCN: 2018956007 |
| Physical Information: 2" H x 7.5" W x 9.25" (3.30 lbs) 736 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Native American - Chronological Period - 17th Century - Chronological Period - 18th Century - Chronological Period - 1800-1850 - Geographic Orientation - Alabama - Cultural Region - Southeast U.S. - Cultural Region - South |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Albert James Pickett's History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period first appeared in Montgomery bookstores in September 1851. The buyers of his two-volume work paid $3 and the demand caused Charleston publisher Walker and James to issue a second and third edition before year's end. William Gilmore Simms, the South's most prolific writer, referred to the publication as "one of the prettiest specimens of book making ever done in America." Newspapers in Alabama and literary journals in New York, Charleston, and New Orleans commended Pickett for his "absolutely enchanting" fresh writing style, for using "great care" throughout his book, and for "his important service to his state." While some reviews questioned his narrative style, his sources, or his focus on facts, others credited Pickett for producing "a very valuable" chronicle for the people of Alabama and urged him to produce a third volume for "rising generations." Pickett opens volume one with Hernando de Soto's explorations from Florida to Arkansas, encounters with native people, and discovery of the Mississippi River. He shifts from the early chiefdoms of the protohistoric period to the Natchez and smaller tribes in the coastal plain and then to the major Indian nations of the interior into the late eighteenth century. While the struggles of French Louisiana with the Natchez dominate the first volume, Pickett establishes the English presence with the founding of Oglethorpe's Georgia colony and ends with the surrender of the French forts Tombecbé and Toulouse to the British. In volume two, Pickett traces the English push into present-day Alabama and Mississippi and the Revolutionary War era, the Spanish occupation of East and West Florida, the intrigues of Alexander McGillivray and William Bowles, and Georgia's Yazoo land sales. He devotes several chapters to the Mississippi Territory, Aaron Burr, and the Indian unrest that led to the massacre at Fort Mims, the Creek War of 1813-14, and Andrew Jackson's campaigns to destroy the Red Sticks and defeat the British in the Gulf South. Pickett concentrates his final chapters on the emergence of Alabama as a territory and state, including biographical sketches of early state leaders, the state constitutional convention, and Alabama's first governor, William Wyatt Bibb, who died in 1820. Despite Pickett's failure use his firsthand knowledge to bring his History chronologically beyond 1820, his work continues to be a relevant study of the state's protohistory, colonial, territorial and early foundations. His work and his papers in the state archives are cited by all serious scholars who study Alabama's colonial and territorial eras. While he sought all the available printed primary sources and manuscripts for volume one, his second volume was principally informed by the memoirs, reminiscences, letters, and oral interviews of the participants in the events that shaped the development of Alabama from the pre-Revolutionary era through the 1840s. Although recent literary deconstruction of Pickett and his History has been critical of his motivation and writing, Harper Lee, Alabama's most consequential writer in the twentieth century, asserted in 1983 that he "deserves a place in American literature" and assessed his History as a "unique treasure" that "should be in every high school library" in Alabama. More recently, historian Leah Rawls Atkins declared Pickett to be the writer made the "most historical contribution to Alabama" in the antebellum period. This new edition is the first to provide general readers and scholars with a readily available hardbound, fully indexed, and annotated version of Pickett's History. |
Contributor Bio(s): Pate, James P.: - James P. Pate is an independent scholar/writer and an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of West Alabama where he served as a department chair, dean, and vice president for academic affairs (1967-1995). He also served as Dean of Arts and Letters at Southeastern Oklahoma State University (1995-1998), vice president for academic affairs at Northeastern State University (1898-2005), and campus dean at the University of Mississippi (2005-2014). He is a graduate of Delta State University and earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Mississippi State University. He edited The Reminiscences of George Strother Gaines, "When this Evil War Is Over" The Correspondence of the Francis Family, 1860-1865, and Cherokee Newspapers, 1828-1906: Tribal Voice of a People in Transition by Cullen Joe Holland. He has received grants for his research and historic preservation work, including archaeological investigations at the Fort Tombecbé/Fort Confederation site (1736-1797). He negotiated the transfer of this eighteenth century French-British-Spanish site to the University of West Alabama in 1986. Dr. Pate completed post-doctoral study in Harvard University's Institute for Educational Management (1985) and in the Price-Babson College Fellowship Program for Entrepreneurship Educators (2001). He has received numerous honors and recognitions for his professional and civic activities. He and his wife Betty live in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. They have three children and eight grandchildren.Pickett, James Albert: - "Albert James Pickett, Alabama's first historian, was born on 13 August 1810 in Anson County, North Carolina, and settled with his parents - William Raiford and Frances Dickson Pickett - in Autauga County, Alabama Territory in 1818. His father started with a trading post and became a prominent landowner and successful planter, eventually serving in both houses of the Alabama legislature. As a youth, he encountered Creek Indians, Indian countrymen, slaves, Loyalists and patriot participants of the Revolutionary War. His father's career in business, farming, and state politics exposed him to the unique social and cultural milieu of early Alabama. Pickett's formal education included local field schools, two years at Virginia's Harwood Academy, and tutelage in law for two years by his brother William Dickson Pickett, judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit. However, he never practiced law and gravitated to journalism instead -- writing articles for the Alabama Journal and the Planter's Gazette. Pickett's History was his only book-length publication. With a completed book manuscript by Christmas 1850, Pickett traveled to New York City in February 1851 where an engraver completed the illustrations for his book and to Charleston in March where he worked with his publisher Walker and James through June 1851. Upon publication, his History of Alabama received high praise and only a modicum of criticism from the state's newspapers and literary journals in New York, New Orleans, Charleston and elsewhere. Pickett aggressively promoted his book as a speaker and lecturer before a variety of audiences in subsequent years, focusing on the "hardest work of my life" and fulfilling his "duty" to his History. The work is Pickett's magnum opus and remains one of the most significant documenting the early settlment of the state of Alabama and the Deep South. Albert Pickett died in 1858." |