Includes index.

"Conceived, written, edited, and designed for original publication in Alabama Heritage magazine, each article both stands alone and supports the overall work." - inside jacket cover.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A long road to becoming a territory / Edwin C. Bridge -- 'More or less arbitrary' : the location of the Alabama-Mississippi border / Mike Bunn -- Land claims and surveying in the Alabama territory / Herbert James Lewis -- Alabama fever rages : migrations to the frontier of early Alabama / Thomas Chase Hagood -- The Alabama territory's cultural landscape / Gregory A. Waselkov -- St. Stephens : the Alabama territory's first capital / George Shorter -- The three sisters : how squash, beans, and corn became southern food / John C. Hall and Rosa N. Hall -- The Alabama territory quarter by quarter / Mike Bunn -- Constitution and crisis : outside the convention hall, Huntsville, Alabama, in the summer of 1819 / Thomas Reidy -- The adoption of the 1819 Alabama Constitution / Herbert James Lewis -- William Wyatt Bibb : Alabama's first Governor / Samuel L. Webb -- The Creek Nation and Alabama / Kathryn H. Braund -- 'Liberty is a jewel too precious for compromise or exchange' : the politics of banking, newspapers, and class in frontier Alabama / Thomas Chase Hagood -- A 'peculiar institution' : slavery in Alabama / Justin A. Rudder -- 'This beautiful and rapid rising state' : architecture of the territorial and early statehood years / Robert Gamble.