Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State

Benjamin Fitzpatrick / J. Mills Thornton III

Benjamin Fitzpatrick, 1841–1845 J. Mills tHornton iii benjamin Fitzpatrick,like most of his predecessors in the governor’s chair,was associated with the Jacksonian wing of the Alabama Democratic Party, but he also led a loosely organized faction of the party sometimes known as the “montgomery regency,” whose members were united more around family and personal ties than ideology. Fitzpatrick’s two terms as governor, like those of his three immediate predecessors , were dominated by questions surrounding the state-owned bank of Alabama, which was still teetering on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of the depression that followed the Panic of 1837. Fitzpatrick was born in Greene County, Georgia, on June 30, 1802, the son of William Fitzpatrick, who served as a Georgia state legislator for nineteen years,and Anne Phillips Fitzpatrick .benjamin was orphaned when he was only seven and was reared by his older brothers and sisters. he received little formal schooling and led a rather knockabout youth.When he was just fourteen, he traveled alone to the newly opened former Creek territory of central Alabama,obtained work as a clerk in aWetumpka store, was employed as a deputy sheriff, and, finally, read law under montgomery mayor nimrod e. benson. he was admitted to the bar in 1821 at age nineteen and was immediately elected by the new state legislature as the circuit solicitor for the montgomery area. he was reelected to this position in 1825, defeating future congressman samuel W. mardis. in 1827 Fitzpatrick married sarah Terry elmore,a member of the wealthy benjamin Fitzpatrick 1841–1845 / 55 and prominent family for whom elmore County was later named. between his marriage in 1827 and his wife’s death in 1837,she bore him six sons.This marriage brought Fitzpatrick a large plantation across the Alabama river from montgomery, which caused him to decline reelection as circuit solicitor to devote more of his efforts to cotton planting. his slaveholding grew from 24 persons in 1830, to 50 in 1840, and to 106 in 1850. by 1860 his real estate was valued at $60,000 and his personal property at $125,000. A decade after his first wife’s death, he married Aurelia blassingame of marion and by her had a seventh son. After the death of his first wife, he turned his attention increasingly to politics. in 1837, he was a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination in the Democratic legislative caucus but was narrowly defeated by Arthur P.bagby. in 1840 he served as a Democratic candidate for presidential elector and conducted an impressive statewide canvass for martin van buren. in 1841 the Democrats nominated him for governor, and he was elected over the Whig nominee, taking 57 percent of the vote. During his campaign Fitzpatrick assured Alabama voters that he had never been either a director or a debtor of the bank and promised to approach the financial crisis without any probank bias. Fitzpatrick was by nature a cautious and conservative man, and he initially wanted to save the indebted bank. it was primarily the Jacksonian commitment to inactive government, rather than its hostility to corporate capitalism, that had attracted him to the Democratic Party. in Fitzpatrick’s first message to the legislature, he urged the liquidation of the extraordinarily mismanaged branch at mobile, but he sought merely the reform of the main bank and its three other branches. radical Jacksonians, who hated all banks, joined with Whigs who opposed the state ownership of a bank to produce an incongruous legislative majority for more extreme action. in early 1843 Fitzpatrick reluctantly signed legislation to liquidate all four of the branches and to preserve only the main bank at Tuscaloosa. To Fitzpatrick’s surprise, this action was greeted with widespread popular approbation, and in the summer of 1843 he was reelected to a second term without any opposition. he then moved to a much harder antibank line. When the bank’s charter expired in January 1845,Fitzpatrick refused to support its renewal and signed a bill eliminating the state’s support of the banking system altogether. he continued, however, adamantly to oppose radical Democrat efforts to repudiate the state debt, which had been contracted in large part to keep the banks in operation. When he left the governorship, the legislature chose him as one of the three commissioners to supervise the bank’s final liquidation. 56 / benjamin Fitzpatrick 1841–1845 Although the bank...