The Alabama State Grange

After the Civil War the widespread and crippling agricultural depression in the South prompted the United States Department of Agriculture to send agents into the devastated region for the purpose of gathering statistical information. One of these agents was Oliver H. Kelley, a clerk in the department, who was determined that the “people North and South must know each other as members of the same great family, and all sectionalism be abolished.”¹ Impressed with the general demoralization, Kelley conceived the plan of an organization for social and educational purposes which would benefit the farmers. As a Mason he thought of an order with a similar ritual of secrecy and fraternity.² After his tour, which included Alabama,³ Kelley returned to Washington and on December 4, 1867 he and six other government employees organized the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry. One writer commented, “There was none to dispute the title, and they enjoyed it alone for the next five years.”⁴

Despite these slow beginnings the Grange, as the movement was popularly called, caught the interest of the Middle West and grew rapidly. By the early 1870’s the order had expanded into the Southern states. Agents or deputies were sent out by the National Grange to organize state and local granges. The destruction of the war, poor agricultural prices, and an uncertain labor system prompted many farmers of the South to join, especially those of Alabama ready for any organization that offered relief.

The first beginnings in Alabama came in 1872, when a deputy from Mississippi organized eight subordinate granges in Pickens and Sanford counties.⁵ Chief credit for the permanent and soon flourishing establishment of the Alabama State Grange belongs to Evander McIver Law, better known by his initials “E. M.” Scion of a distinguished South Carolina family, Law was graduated from the South Carolina Military Academy in 1856, taught school in his native state, and in 1860 moved to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he established and became principal of the Tuskegee Military High School. At the outbreak of the war, Law was commissioned a captain in the Confederate Army. He rose to the rank of major general, achieving a brilliant combat record. He returned to South Carolina after the conflict and, like many of his contemporaries, engaged in planting and railroad ventures. However, in 1872 he again moved to Alabama and began farming.⁶ Because of his prestige and success as a planter he received a commission from the National Grange as deputy for Alabama and on May 17, 1873 he organized Tuskegee Grange No. 9. After this, the number of granges leaped so phenomenally that, when the Alabama State Grange was formed, there already existed 320 subordinate granges, representing fifty out of the state’s sixty-five counties.⁷

Concerted action became the driving mania for Alabama farmers. Dedicated to the notion that “agricultural interests demand an organization of some kind”⁸ the grangers preached the “imperative duty of every farmer . . . to attach himself to this organization.”⁹ Farmers responded with great zeal. With National Master Adams present, 129 delegates met at Montgomery November 27, 1873 and organized the Alabama State Grange.¹⁰ From this beginning the order continued to grow, reaching its probable peak in 1877, at which time it boasted of 678 granges and 17,440 members.¹¹

The organizing convention selected William H. Chambers of Oswichee, Russell County, as master. The decision proved wise, for Chambers was well equipped to lend dignity as well as enthusiasm to the movement. Born in Georgia and able to trace his progenitors back to a leading English family, Chambers had led his class at Emory University and in 1847 had earned a law degree from Harvard. He had moved to Eufaula, Alabama in 1854 and become a successful attorney in partnership with John Gill Shorter, Alabama’s Civil War governor. His career had also included membership in the state legislature, editorship of the Southern Cultivator and service in the Confederate Army. After the war he had retired to his plantation at Oswichee and been elected state [End Page 13...