Alabama annexation proposals[edit]

During the course of the century, proposals for ceding the Florida counties west of the Apalachicola River to Alabama were often raised:

In 1811, while Florida was still a Spanish possession, American residents sent a petition to Congress asking to be incorporated into the Mississippi Territory, which at that time included present-day Alabama. (See West Florida article.)

In 1819, the constitutional convention of Alabama asked Congress to include West Florida in their new state.

In 1822, only a year after the U.S. acquired the entire Florida territory from Spain, residents of West Florida sent a petition to the U.S. House of Representatives asking that their section be annexed to Alabama, and Alabama Senator John Williams Walker also promoted the idea.[7]

In 1826, the Pensacola Gazette published a number of letters advocating annexation to Alabama, though the editor remarked that some Pensacolians opposed the idea.[7]

In 1840, a public meeting in Pensacola produced a demand that West Florida be united with Alabama. In the same year, the territorial Legislature notified Congress that it opposed allowing Alabama to annex West Florida, but in 1844, the year before statehood, the Legislature reversed its stance and asked that West Florida be separated.[7]

In 1856, advocates of annexation were able to get a bill passed by the Legislature authorizing a referendum on the issue but the Governor James E. Broome vetoed the measure. The Pensacola Gazette reported that "annexation is desired by a large majority of the people" of the area.[7]

In 1858, the Alabama Legislature unsuccessfully tried to open negotiations with Florida on the subject.
The annexation issue was eclipsed by the Civil War and the war's effects on the region, but in 1868, with Pensacola now connected by the Panhandle's sole railroad line to the

Alabama cities of Mobile and Montgomery, the issue came to a head again and was finally put to a vote of the people. In that year, the Alabama Legislature approved a joint resolution authorizing their Governor to negotiate with the Governor of Florida about the annexation of West Florida. An offer of one million dollars in Alabama state bonds, paying 8 percent interest for thirty years, was included. Both states appointed commissioners to make detailed recommendations on the matter.[9]

On November 2, 1869, a referendum was held in the West Florida counties (except Jackson, which was in the throes of bloody racial violence[10]), with a result of 1162 to 661 in favor of annexation.[6] However, political objection developed in Alabama to the high price, and the Legislature took no action on the results of the referendum.[11]

In 1873, a similar proposal was made in the Alabama Legislature, which the state senate approved, though it did not pass a separate proposal to finance the measure by selling all of Alabama's territory west of the Tombigbee River, including the city of Mobile, to Mississippi.[12] However, nothing came of this action.

In 1901, Alabama made yet another offer when the Legislature appointed a commission to negotiate with Florida about annexation, but this attempt, too, was unsuccessful.

The building of the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad, completed in 1883, finally linked Pensacola and the Panhandle solidly with the rest of the state and ended the region's isolation, although from time to time during the twentieth century there were still occasional calls for annexation that generated some public discussion but no legislative action.