Taming Alabama
Lawyers and Reformers, 1804-1929
By Paul M. Pruitt; Introduction by G. Ward Hubbs
University of Alabama Press
Taming Alabama focuses on persons and groups who sought to bring about reforms in the political, legal, and social worlds of Alabama. Most of the subjects of these essays accepted the fundamental values of nineteenth and early twentieth century white southern society; and all believed, or came to believe, in the transforming power of law. As a starting point in creating the groundwork of genuine civility and progress in the state, these reformers insisted on equal treatment and due process in elections, allocation of resources, and legal proceedings.
To an educator like Julia Tutwiler or a clergyman like James F. Smith, due process was a question of simple fairness or Christian principle. To lawyers like Benjamin F. Porter, Thomas Goode Jones, or Henry D. Clayton, devotion to due process was part of the true religion of the common law. To a former Populist radical like Joseph C. Manning, due process and a free ballot were requisites for the transformation of society.
A significant contribution to our state’s history that will be of great interest to specialists and lay readers alike.’
—David Alsobrook, Director of the Museum of Mobile
Paul M. Pruitt Jr. is Special Collections Librarian at the Bounds Law Library, University of Alabama School of Law. He is coeditor of Private Life of a New South Lawyer: Stephens Croom’s 1875-1876 Journal, and other volumes in the Occasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library series. Pruitt’s articles have appeared in the Alabama Review, Alabama Law Review, Southern Studies, Alabama Heritage, Journal of Southern Legal History, and other journals.
G. Ward Hubbs is associate professor, reference librarian, and archivist with Birmingham-Southern College, editor of Rowdy Tales from Early Alabama: The Humor of John Gorman Barr, and author of Guarding Greensboro: A Confederate Company in the Making of a Southern Community.
