An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue

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An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue Page 3

by Don Wilding


  Alabamians wanted politicians who responded to the will of the people, so they set short term limits for most offices and curtailed the power of the executive branch. In antebellum Alabama, governors served for only two years. The governor had veto power, but the state legislature could overturn the veto with a simple majority. In the state legislature, representatives served for only a single year, and senators served for three years.43 In Alabama, people frequently went to the ballot box, so candidates had to campaign incessantly to keep their jobs. For this purpose, they turned to barbecue, which appealed to the rough, egalitarian-minded, freedom-loving Alabama electorate.

  ALABAMA POLITICAL BARBECUES

  Barbecues played a prominent role in campaigns because they mobilized the state’s energetic electorate. Unlike colonial-era political culture that required candidates to host the barbecues, private citizens hosted Alabama’s political barbecues and invited the candidates to come and meet the people. Barbecue, like politics, had become less deferential and more communal, which had implications for the food and for politics.

  As the people rather than the candidates hosted the barbecues, they resembled a potluck with various meats and sides, some of which remain staples of modern barbecues. The people, often farmers, provided whatever they could afford to spare. The meats would likely have included a combination of pork, beef and mutton. People also barbecued other livestock, such as goats, and game animals, like squirrels and deer.44 They prepared the meat in earthen pits over coals. People would have brought side dishes, including traditional European foods, such as custards and cakes, as well as new recipes learned from native inhabitants, such as sweet potatoes, maize and cobblers.

  When people hosted barbecues, they wanted the candidates and as much of the electorate as possible to attend. By hosting barbecues, citizens gained social status by demonstrating their hospitality. On July 28, 1827, John Weaver and John Buzby hosted a barbecue at Weaver’s farm located about ten miles east of Huntsville. A week prior to the event, they advertised the event in Huntsville’s Southern Advocate. They promised a “splendid barbacue” and that “the candidates and others will be expected.”45 By placing the advertisements in newspapers, the hosts reached a wide audience and signaled their intention that as many people as possible come and meet the candidates.46

  If candidates wanted to gain the favor of Alabama’s rowdy, egalitarian electorate, they had to overindulge in food and drink at barbecues, so reformers targeted the barbecues for contributing to immoral behavior and bad politics. A reformer from Huntsville explained the candidates’ precarious position. In a July 1827 column, an anti-barbecue reformer, who wrote under the penname Barbacuensis, asked, “What candidate can be elected unless he goes to the barbacues?” He added, “What voter can judge of a candidate’s claims and qualifications unless he has first ate his board, and drink his cup?—which, being interpreted, means, eaten his bacon and drank his whiskey.”47 In April 1828, the editor of Southern Advocate similarly assessed the candidates’ situation. The editor explained that civic leaders simply had “to cry shote, shote, [a young pig] whiskey, whiskey,” and “the poor candidates” had to “obey the summons, or abandon all hopes of their election.”48 Candidates did not have a chance of winning if they did not attend the barbecues.

  Political barbecues consisted of copious amounts of food and drink. Barbacuensis explained that the whiskey keg “held within its mystic hoops the charm of universal solace” and “was ever flowing, ever full.” According to Barbacuensis, “The law givers of modern days not only minister to these virtuous appetites of their constituents, but they must…evince a hearty fellowship by partaking with them—and that too in no stinted measure.”49 When a person announced his candidacy, the editor explained, the candidate, in effect and without words, had proclaimed to the voters “that he can eat his weight in raw shote, and drink whiskey enough to float a seventy-four,” referring to a seventy-four-gun naval ship.50

  Due to the presence of alcohol and political passion at these events, violence often broke out. In 1843, a posse chased down a barbecue guest over the course of multiple days because he stabbed someone at a barbecue in Coosa County, Alabama. When they found the perpetrator, “he threw open the door and discharged his last load of ammunition, and rushed out and engaged in hand to hand conflict” before the mob killed him.51 At political barbecues throughout the region, including Alabama, guests often succumbed to the forces of alcohol and turned violent.52

  At barbecues, people gathered across class and generational lines to mingle with one another and with the candidates. Barbacuensis explained that “all who were not rich enough to stay at home, and some I thought were, were feasting and drinking at the barbecue.” He did not understand why people with the means to feed themselves would humble themselves by attending barbecues with the masses.53

  In addition to the rich and poor, the young and old also attended these political barbecues. Barbacuensis observed that the barbecues had not neglected the “rising generation” because “little prattlers just escaped from the nursery” attended these barbecues alongside “the more advance striplings.”54 Although only white adult men could vote, Alabamians attended these barbecues regardless of age, sex or even race.

  Women did not have the right to vote, but they still participated at political barbecues. During the 1820s and 1830s, Alabama barbecues mostly catered to male voters. In the 1840s, women became an increasingly visible presence in national and local politics. The Whigs, who supported many reform movements, including temperance, hoped white middle-class women would identify with these reform movements and persuade their husbands to support their party. So, Whigs specifically targeted these women to attend their barbecues. The presence of women at political barbecues eventually curbed violence and alcohol consumption, as well. They helped legitimize barbecue as an acceptable place for politics and socializing.55

  Enslaved African Americans had a presence at these events as well, serving as pit masters. At the typical barbecue, a white male supervised the barbecue pits while black slaves did the cooking for the white guests. As pit masters, they played a prominent role in the success of these events by infusing the food with their cultural techniques and recipes.56 Despite no voting rights, African Americans not only prepared the food that had become emblematic of American democracy, but they also participated in the festivities.

  While it seems unlikely that enslaved Alabamians frequently attended these events as invited guests, they seemed to have felt inspired by the freedom and liberty exercised at these occasions and enjoyed them from time to time. They may have done the cooking and, therefore, had earned the right to enjoy some food or drink. Or, they simply attended with or without their masters’ approval. Regardless, they attended, which had implications for social order in Alabama. Observing a barbecue in August 1827, Barbacuensis noted that “the joy of the occasion was not confined to the voters exclusively.” The reformer added, “In such an outpouring of liberty and unbounded license, slavery forgot its chain, and the tawny sons of Africa danced, sung, and balloeed [sic] in sympathetic freedom.”57 Much like today, Alabamians gathered across class, generational, sex and racial lines to enjoy barbecue. In the nineteenth century, however, the mixing of the races and sexes at barbecues made them the targets of criticism.

  BARBACUENSIS AND SOUTHERN ADVOCATE

  In late 1820s Madison County, where two decades of class politics had made the transition from traditional to contemporary society especially fraught and tense, an anti-barbecue reform movement took hold in reaction to the perceived threat barbecues posed to political and social order. The reformers criticized the electioneering of the candidates. They also condemned the electorate’s consumption of alcohol, eating habits and licentious behavior.

  At barbecues, candidates competed for votes among the inebriated, gluttonous electorate, which Barbacuensis criticized as part of the anti-barbecue campaign. In July 1827, Barbacuensis explains, “we had seen at the barbacues…some
happy sovereign who had been reveling in all the ecstasies of gratuitous whiskey and enjoying freedom which knew no restraint” and had “fallen asleep in paradise of perfect unconsciousness.”58 At barbecues, “the sun went down, nor ceased the drinking there” while “tumultuous shouting shook the midnight air.” Instead of these drunk men, Barbacuensis believed that power should reside with those who “feel respect for heaven” and “worship whiskey, less than God.” He preferred that men “turn at last from shote and grog” and instead “act the man, and not the hog.”59 Reformers like Barbacuensis tended to believe that power should reside with the sober and industrious, not the masses of people considered inferior because of their social class and perceived immorality.

  The editor of Huntsville’s Southern Advocate also detested the gratuitous eating and drinking present at political barbecues. The editor warned that the quantity of the food and drink consumed would lead to “actual and immediate death” except in some cases of “fire proof and case hardened stomachs.” These people, who always ate and drank to excess, avoided the “awful consequences” of these acts of “suicidal indulgence.” The editor disapproved of the barbecues in part because of their cost. He rejected the “pecuniary sacrifices” annually “offered up at the shrines of gluttony, and debauchery.”60 Like many reformers, the Southern Advocate editor opposed the consumption of alcohol, especially when it intersected with the region’s political process.

  From the perspective of reformers, the electioneering that took place at barbecues signaled a descent into mob rule. In a poem, Barbacuensis described his view of a typical barbecue:

  Did’st ever see a Barbacue? For fear

  You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly:

  A gander-pulling mob that’s common here,

  of candidates and soveren stowed compactly,

  Of harlequins and clowns with feats gymnastical

  In hunting shirts and shirt-sleeves—things fantastical;

  With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing

  And other things which may be had for asking.61

  Barbacuensis did not have a favorable opinion of the people and their behavior at barbecues, and he lamented that upper-class people attended these events alongside their unruly social subordinates. Barbacuensis had expected to see the lower classes partaking in the free food and drink at the barbecue but did not expect wealthier people to humble themselves by attending these shameless, barbaric feasts.62

  Reformers worried that barbecues distracted men from their duties to their homes and families. The reformers lamented the lack of industry displayed by the guests at these barbecues. “At the most hurrying season of the year,” wrote Barbacuensis, barbecue guests “forsake all and follow barbacues for three months at a time, in the infancy of the crops, and when the sands of time are literally golden.” Not only did these people neglect their responsibilities, Barbacuensis argued, they did not care. He wrote, “Not a face was furrowed with care-worn wrinkles for debts unpaid, contracts broken—or wives and children houseless, unfed and unclothed.”63 Similarly, the Southern Advocate editor argued that the “fatal gales of the stormy seas of barbecue politics” turned “strong and staunch” young men into “shattered and shipwrecked” beings. He argued that “gorging upon raw shote” and “swilling a species of liquor little less than liquid fire” resulted in a circumstance “worse than actual and immediate death.”64 When the reformers observed barbecues, they expressed disgust at the amount of food and drink consumed because of its unhealthy effects on the individual and also the community.

  According to reformers, barbecues hurt the individual, but they also damaged the community. The Southern Advocate editor argued, “The time and money that are thus abandoned to the wildest wastefulness,” although disastrous, seemed “dross indeed when one considers the injury, the utter ruin” that barbecues “inflict upon health and morals.” Although reformers probably exaggerated claims of drunkenness and licentiousness, it seems likely that they based these critiques in truth because they all emphasized the excess of liberty at these events. The reformer concluded, “The moral death which results from a regular attendance upon these barbecues, is no less certain and awful than that which merely takes the animal life of the victim.” These events had wider implications for the community. “In some instances,” critics argued, “the whole community feels the pang and writhes in sympathetic agony” due to the lack of morality demonstrated at these events.65 Without a strong moral community of healthy, industrious citizens, many reformers feared that democracy would fail.

  Reformers contended that barbecue culture had led to lower-quality candidates. In one of his critiques, Barbacuensis lamented, “A vast majority of barbacue candidates have as much brains in their stomachs as in their skulls, so that in judging of their merits, there can be nothing lost in making a direct and exclusive appeal to the abdomen.”66 Rather than focusing on mental capabilities of the candidates, Barbacuensis believed that the electorate had new criteria by which to judge the candidates: “Is not the seat of qualification and merit transferred from the hand and heart and confined, exclusively, to the stomach? The question now, is not, what is his mental capacity? but, what are the dimensions of his stomach? Not, does he read and think? But, does he eat and digest?”67

  In other words, the reformer condemned the barbecues because the electorate did not wisely choose their candidates. The electorate wanted someone to act like them instead of superior to them. The reformers wanted candidates to remain above the masses.

  In the new political culture, from the perspective of reformers, candidates and voters often did not have a personal relationship with one another. According to Barbacuensis, candidates often picked out a single voter “to entertain him with some very affectionate inquiries about his subliminary affairs” but instead revealed total disinterest in voters’ lives.68 Barbacuensis had a nostalgic, romantic view of politics in previous decades. In an era of deferential politics, he believed, politicians and their constituents had a personal, often paternalistic relationship. Now, from his perspective, democracy worked like a machine with each candidate providing favors, including alcohol, to secure as many votes as possible.

  Despite the attempts of local reformers to eliminate barbecues, they continued in Alabama throughout the antebellum period and beyond. For the most part, candidates who refused to participate in these events often suffered defeat on election day. In Alabama, especially, barbecues proved more popular than the candidates who opposed them. In Madison County, candidate Josef Leftwich took a stand against barbecues by refusing to attend them; he finished seventh out of nine candidates in the race to serve as tax collector.69 Alabamians would rather get rid of their politicians than their barbecues.

  CHAPTER 3

  OLD-FASHIONED BARBECUE

  Alabama Barbecue in the Eras of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Redemption, 1850–1890

  By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, more than 600,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians had died. When the war ended, more than 4 million enslaved people gained their freedom because of the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which eliminated slavery throughout the land. In the wake of the war, Americans ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which protected the citizenship rights of African Americans and black men’s voting rights.70 The Civil War changed almost everything.

  As soon as the war ended, Americans went to work trying to memorialize their respective causes and define the meaning of the deadly conflict. African Americans emphasized the war’s role in ending slavery. For them, the Civil War served as a beginning of a new era for the black race, in which they would eventually attain equality. Meanwhile, white southerners romanticized and mythologized the Old South. They pined for the days preceding the sectional crisis and the war. They disseminated images of gallant gentlemen and southern belles.71 In the postwar period, black and white Americans, including Alabamians, appropriated barbecue
for their respective causes.

  From the 1850s to the end of the nineteenth century, barbecue remained a vital component of Alabama’s political culture, but as politics changed, so did barbecue. In many ways, barbecue as a food and a social event seemed unchanged. Alabamians continued to cook a variety of meats and gather with one another around a common table for community and political purposes. As they ate, political speakers took the stage and debated important topics, just as they had done in antebellum days. These postwar barbecues, however, differed in one noticeable way: black men, who now had the right to vote, attended these events with their families and friends as invited guests, or they held their own events.

  At F.M. Gay’s annual barbecue in Eufaula, Alabama, black and white southerners dine together, yet separately, on barbecue and white bread. Library of Congress.

  Additionally, black and white Alabamians imbued new meaning on barbecues. For white Alabamians, barbecues provided an opportunity to reflect on the past and honor it. The barbecue reminded them of an imagined idyllic past. They used these events, therefore, to raise money for monuments to the Confederacy. Black Alabamians used barbecue, or even admonished it, to uplift their race and build a better future.

  BARBECUE AND THE ROAD TO CIVIL WAR

  In the middle of the nineteenth century, Alabamians continued to love their politics and their barbecue. At political barbecues, candidates debated one another and reached out to the electorate. In 1860, Alabamians debated the most important issue facing the country: secession from the Union.

  In Alabama, journalist and politician William Lowndes Yancey led the secession movement. As a member of the Fire-Eaters, he vigorously defended slavery and advocated for Alabama’s secession from the Union. In 1860, he embarked on a speaking tour of the state to argue his perspective. In July, Yancey spoke at a barbecue staged at Bethel Church near Montgomery. He argued that southerners should “throw off the shackles, both of party and of the Government,” and “assert their independence in a Southern Confederacy.” A week later, he spoke at a barbecue in Benton, Alabama. In this speech, he advocated for the creation of the States League and a Central Southern Congress of the Leagues.72 Near Montgomery, white Alabamians tended to favor secession, but not all Alabamians supported the creation of a new nation.

 

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