Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State

Thomas H. Watts / Henry M. McKiven

Thomas H.Watts, 1863–May 1865 Henry M. McKiven Although Thomas hill Watts refused to campaign for governor in 1863, he agreed to serve if the people of Alabama elected him.he remained in richmond during most of the campaign, performing his role as the Confederacy ’s attorney general,and won a landslide victory over the unpopular incumbent , John Gill shorter. Watts was born in the Alabama Territory on January 3, 1819, to a prominent planter family. he grew up in butler County in south Alabama and returned there after graduating with honors in 1840 from the University of virginia. young Watts actively supported Whig candidate William henry harrison in the 1840 election. in 1841 he began to practice law in Greenville, and a year later he made his own initial foray into politics when he won election to the state house as aWhig,representing butler County. he served in that capacity through 1845.in 1848 he moved his law practice to montgomery, where he began to acquire considerable holdings in land and slaves. montgomery County citizens elected him first to the lower house of the legislature and then, in 1853, to the state senate. Watts’s position on sectional issues in the early 1850s differed little from that of mainstream southernWhigs.he supported the Compromise of 1850, believing that continued agitation of the slavery issue would certainly disrupt the Union and ultimately lead to the destruction of the south’s “pe- 88 / Thomas h.Watts 1863–1865 culiar institution.” This moderate Unionist posture served Watts well over the short term, but this middle-ground position ultimately destroyed the Whig Party in Alabama and across the nation. in 1855 Watts ran as a Knownothing candidate for Congress but lost this bid. Although several Alabama districts elected Know-nothing representatives, Watts could not overcome skillful manipulation by his Democratic opponent of the ongoing crisis in “bleeding Kansas,” where conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces had openly erupted. As late as 1860 Watts still held a relatively moderate position on southern rights.in the election of 1860 he supported the Constitutional Unionist candidate ,John bell,notyancey’s candidate,southern Democrat John breckenridge . After lincoln and the republicans won, however,Watts began to advocate immediate secession.he andyancey both ran as montgomery County secessionist delegates to the Alabama secession convention,andWatts received more votes thanyancey.As a leader of the immediate secessionists at the convention ,Watts, to no avail, attempted to forge an accommodation between the yanceyites and the cooperationists. later that summer Watts was a late entry into the governor’s race but was defeated by John Gill shorter in the gubernatorial election of 1861.he then lost his bid for a seat in the Confederate senate to secessionist Clement Claiborne Clay. During both campaigns, his opponents raised questions about Watts’s devotion and loyalty to the Confederate cause. Watts helped to organize the seventeenth Alabama regiment and served in its ranks until Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed him attorney general in April 1862. in his brief tenure in that office,Watts helped to organize the Confederate supreme Court and wrote opinions defending increased centralization of government authority in richmond.As attorney general he reversed an earlier decision and allowed the Confederate president to appoint officers from within state regiments to Confederate positions, a controversial and legalized version of impressment of state soldiers into Confederate service. of more importance,Watts upheld the constitutionality of the Confederate Conscription Act of 1862. Watts, the former Unionist Whig, easily defeated incumbent governor shorter in the 1863 gubernatorial race. Given Watts’s role in the expansion of Confederate government power, it is ironic that his campaign benefited from discontent over shorter’s similar interventionist policies within the state. Watts also received support from war-weary voters who thought he shared their desire for a quick end to the fighting. During his single term in office, however, Watts railed at those in the state who advocated immediate peace Thomas h.Watts 1863–1865 / 89 and reconstruction at any cost and dispelled any doubts about his commitment to the Confederate cause. “let us prefer death to a life of cowardly shame,” he told the legislature. he assured citizens of Alabama that he was a “war man all over,” and he spent much of his term struggling with an obstructionist “Peace Party” clique within the legislature.his conflict with this group limited Watts’s ability to strengthen...