Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State

Thomas Seay / Robert David Ward

Thomas Seay, 1886–1890 robert dAvid WArd For those Alabamians who believed in signs and portents, 1886 did not begin auspiciously. it rained in Alabama, and kept raining, and the state’s rivers rose to unprecedented heights. The bridge at Wetumpka was swept away.reginald h.Dawson,president of the board of Convict Commissioners , was fearful for the safety of some of his charges and rose from his sickbed to paddle to the rescue of convicts perched on the roof of a flooded building. braxton bragg Comer, later one of Alabama’s most notable governors , survived a series of misadventures in flooded waters and observed the rare sight of five rabbits lined up on a tree limb as he paddled a canoe into downtown montgomery.The waters receded, and if it was not catastrophe that marked the next few years, it was at least a time when change and turmoil were abroad in the land. Alabama’s governor during the four years from 1886 to 1890, when anger at bourbon rule began to boil over, was Thomas seay. born to reuben and Ann mcGee seay on november 20, 1846, the future governor spent his boyhood days on a plantation in Greene (later hale) County. in 1858 his family moved to Greensboro, where he began his higher education at southern University (which later merged with birmingham College to create birmingham-southern College). secession and war interrupted his studies. in 1863 sixteen-year-old seay enlisted and served as a private in the Confederate army. he saw action in skirmishes 134 / Thomas seay 1886–1890 around mobile and had the ill fortune of being captured and imprisoned on ship island near Alabama’s port city. having survived war and brief captivity, young seay returned to his studies at southern University and was graduated in 1867. he read law, was admitted to the bar, and settled down to the dual pursuits of a southern gentleman—practicing law and growing cotton. in 1874, at the age of twenty-eight,he was defeated in a race for the state senate,but two years later he was elected to that body, where he remained for ten years and served as its president from 1884 to 1886. he married ellen smaw of Greene County in 1875, and she bore him two children before her death in 1879.Two years later he remarried, this time to Clara de lesdernier, by whom he had four more children. by the time the Democratic convention met in June 1886, delegates confronted a four-man race for the governorship.Private Thomas seay was a dark horse who nonetheless had support among the politicians and industrial interests of birmingham, Anniston, and sheffield. After the tenth ballot seay gained strength, and on the thirtieth ballot the other candidates withdrew, and seay was nominated for governor by acclamation. The divisive Democratic convention revealed a growing factionalism within the party between the state’s industrial-planter interests and the small farmer. seay was elected governor with 145,095 votes against 37,118 for republican Arthur bingham and 576 for the Prohibition candidate, John T. Tanner. Although seay’s political views did not differ substantially from those of his recent predecessors , his nomination was reported to be a “victory for the young men of the convention” against the older and more famous bourbon “Generals.” he earned the same $3,000 salary his predecessors had received,making the Alabama governor’s salary the lowest in the south along with those of north Carolina and Georgia. There were signs that the times were changing and that the new governor represented a more flexible approach to public affairs.seay compiled an interesting and sometimes ambiguous record.he took an aggressive stance against lynching, angering the sheriff of lauderdale County with his protest of an incident there. he opposed the prohibition movement and asserted that the issue was a moral one that should not be politicized. in another area seay appeared not so much bourbon as ineffective. in 1887 senator Daniel smith of mobile led a legislative fight endorsed by seay that enacted a law regulating the labor of women and children under age eighteen to eight hours a day, the first such act passed by a southern state. legislators in the next session exempted two textile mill counties from the act,and in 1894 the neverenforced bill was repealed. seay was the first Alabama governor to loosen Thomas...