The Alabama State Troops’ Failed Encampment of 1891

Abstract

On June 10, 1891, the Alabama State Troops’ (AST) three regiments assembled in Mobile for a two-week encampment. Under the personal command of Governor Thomas Goode Jones, a Civil War hero and former AST regimental commander, fifteen hundred troops from across the state would come together in the biggest gathering of Alabama troops since the end of the Civil War. Newspapers in big cities and small towns hyped the event for weeks before its commencement. Railroad companies arranged special trains to carry the troops to Mobile from across the state. The encampment was an unmitigated disaster. Sanitary arrangements failed. Soldiers from the different regiments fought each other, and there were even reports of militiamen firing live ammunition at each other. Mess halls could barely fit a third of the troops. After a near riot in front of one dining facility, officers from one regiment sent a petition to Governor Jones demanding the discharge of one of his aides, Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Peyton. Jones ultimately ordered the encampment to end two days early, but the disaster continued to the last as troops from Anniston, Alabama, burned Peyton in effigy. This paper will argue that the State of Alabama showed little interest in maintaining a competent state military force, did not institute a system to provide for competent leadership in the AST, and did not prepare its troops to conduct such an encampment. I will review the history of the militia in the late nineteenth century and the history of the militia in Alabama. I will also examine the histories of two of the key players in the events in Mobile, Thomas Jones and Randolph Peyton, to learn if the experiences of these two men show us where the state went wrong in preparing their troops for this event.