From the Confederacy's first capital at Montgomery to America's first "space capital" at Huntsville, Alabama has successfully spanned a century that began in sectional conflict but ended in a dedication to man's quest to bridge the universe. The drive from the business center of Birmingham to the heart of the Cotton Kingdom surrounding Montgomery and Selma is less than 100 miles, but these miles mark one of the transitions between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Harnessing the Tennessee River made it possible to control floods and turn the eroded soil into bountiful crop land. The river became the South's most important waterway, and giant Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dams brought electric power and industrialization to once bypassed cities. They also gave northern Alabama nationally renowned water recreation areas.

Cotton, the traditional wealth of Alabama's rich Black Belt, fed the busy port of Mobile until the 1870s, when Birmingham grew into an industrial center. TVA brought the other great shift in the 1930s, culminating in new hydroelectric and steam plant power production in the 1960s.

Cotton and river waterways were the combination on which the Old South was built. The Cotton State supreme by the 1850s, Alabama built river towns like Selma, the old capital of "Cahawba," and Montgomery, the new capital and "cradle of the Confederacy." The red iron ore in the northern mountains was neglected, except for isolated forges operated by individuals, until just before the Civil War.

On January 11, 1861, Alabama became the fourth state to secede from the Union. Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as president of the Confederacy in Montgomery the following month, and on April 12 he ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard to fire on Fort Sumter. The Confederate capital was moved to Richmond on May 21, 1861.

Alabama's troops fought with every active Southern force, the state contributing between 65,000 and 100,000 men from a white population of 500,000. At least 2,500 white soldiers and 10,000 black soldiers went north to support the Union. When Huntsville, Decatur, and Tuscumbia fell to Union forces in 1862, every male from 16 to 60 was ordered to the state's defense. Little fighting took place on Alabama's soil and water again until Admiral Farragut's Union fleet won the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, though the city of Mobile did not fall. Full-scale invasions by Wilson's Raiders occupied several important cities in the spring of 1865.

Reconstruction days were made bitter by carpetbaggers who supported the Republican Party. The state refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and military law was reinstated. But by the 1880s, recovery was beginning. Birmingham had weathered the national panic of 1873 successfully and was producing steel in earnest.

Historic attractions are plentiful. There is the birthplace of Helen Keller at Tuscumbia (see SHEFFIELD); the unusual Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman (see), an inspiring work of faith by one Benedictine monk who built scores of miniature religious buildings; and the museum and laboratory of the great black educator and scientist, George Washington Carver, at the Tuskegee Institute (see TUSKEGEE).

On Alabama's Gulf Coast, the port city of Mobile makes a splendid entry to the whole Gulf strip between Florida and New Orleans. Mobile is famous for the Bellingrath Gardens and Home, the annual Azalea Trail and Festival, and its own Mardi Gras celebration.

For golf enthusiasts, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail has 18 championship golf courses offering a total of 324 holes located at 7 sites: Anniston/Gadsden, Auburn/Opelika, Birmingham, Dothan, Greenville, Huntsville, and Mobile (phone toll-free 800/949-4444 for more information).