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The United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The law mandated that authorities in free states aid in the return of escaped slaves to their Southern owners. The law also imposed penalties on those who helped slaves escape.

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Although never a major cash crop, watercress was an important commodity in Alabama during the first half of the twentieth century. The watercress industry was centered in Madison County, then known primarily for its textiles and cotton, but at the height of production, the area also was known as the "Watercress Capital of the World." From the early twentieth century through the 1960s, more than 2 million bunches of watercress were grown and harvested in the area, more than produced by any other source in the United States. Today, watercress production continues in Madison County, but on a much-reduced scale.

Watercress

Found throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, watercress is in the same family as the popular garden flower nasturtium, which is also edible. Watercress grows along streams, in ponds, and in damp soils and prefers a cool, shady environment. With its mild climate, abundant streams, and chalky soil, north Alabama is ideal for growing watercress. Watercress is used most often as a peppery garnish and salad component, but it also has been touted as a health food and a medicine. Long used to stave off scurvy for its high vitamin C content, watercress may also help inhibit tobacco-related cancers and other lung diseases. In addition to vitamin C, the plant is rich in vitamins A, B, and E and also contains both calcium and iron. Considered a traditional Southern treat, watercress is used in sauces, sandwiches, soups, salads, stuffing, breads, vegetables, and main dishes.

In 1874, Frank Dennis, as a young entrepreneur, had begun supplying wild watercress to restaurants and hotels around his home in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Demand was so great that his business grew to include a network of farms in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Harsh winters, however, limited production. Through an acquaintance with a farm family in Madison County, Dennis discovered that north Alabama was an ideal area for producing watercress during the winter. So in 1908 Dennis bought and leased a series of ponds and dammed streams in Madison County. The Dennis family maintained a large farm in Martin, West Virginia, as its main office, but Huntsville quickly became the winter headquarters from December to May. Dennis cultivated several varieties of watercress, referred to as Winter, Early Spring, and Late Spring, to maximize production.

During the early years of the Alabama operation, the watercress was grown in shallow ponds and harvested by field workers every four to six weeks. The plants were then tied in bunches and delivered in tubs to a facility where the plants were washed and cooled. At the packing house, the watercress was placed with ice in barrels and shipped by rail to terminal markets and restaurants in Chicago, New Orleans, and New York. The Dennis company owned and operated both the processing and packing facilities near the Huntsville Depot.

Watercress at Huntsville Freight Depot, ca. 1920s

When Dennis died in 1922, his son Charles Edward Dennis took over the business and became a leading authority on watercress, earning the nickname the "Water Cress King." He had a keen interest in watercress culture and introduced several innovations, including shipping the plants in smaller custom-made wooden boxes lined with parchment. Shippers were thus able to deliver these smaller boxes of watercress quickly and cheaply to every state east of the Rockies. He also developed promotional items that advertised the business, including matchbooks, playing cards, wildlife calendars, and recipe books printed with the Dennis logo. Prior to Charles Dennis's death in 1951, the business was incorporated and continued under family control.

Dennis Water Cress, a wholesale business, sold to approximately 750 customers, including commissioned merchants, hotels, restaurants, and steamship and railway companies. Dennis watercress became so widespread that it was even served at the White House. Dennis's biggest breakthrough in expanding its business came during World War II, when watercress earned a place on the Department of Defense Procurement List, which provided guidelines for required items in military commissaries. Grocery stores and supermarkets quickly joined the supply chain. At its peak in the 1950s, the Huntsville branch had expanded to 50 acres of ponds under cultivation and employed as many as 40 people. The Dennis company operated more than 100 acres of watercress ponds in total in the eastern United States.

Watercress Pond in Madison County

The following decade saw a decline in the business. After a bitter lawsuit that dragged on for several years during the 1960s over the poor quality of shipped watercress, Railway Express discontinued shipments of Dennis watercress. Inflation and a series of harsh winters also contributed to the company's move, in 1969, to South Florida to take advantage of a milder climate and better transportation. Most of the ponds in Madison County were sold at this time, except for an area in New Market, which remained successful. The springs there generated 20 million gallons of water per day at an ideal temperature of 68 degrees. In 1973, nearly a century after Frank Dennis began selling wild watercress, the company was taken over by a rival company, B&W Quality Growers, a Florida-based company, owned by Richard Burgoon. His nephew Robert Burgoon now runs the New Market operation.

Important changes have occurred in the transportation and marketing of watercress in the United States. In 1950, during the heyday of Dennis Water Cress and railroad transportation, terminal markets such as New York, Chicago, and New Orleans comprised 70 percent of the distribution. Sales staffs were located at each of these main hubs. By contrast, in 1990, only 20 percent of watercress was shipped to terminal markets. Now it is more efficient for refrigerated express trucks to deliver direct to dealers and marketplaces. Today, watercress from ponds in New Market is shipped via airfreight to international markets that include England, France, Canada, South America, and the Caribbean.
Additional Resources
Lang, Christopher. "Dennis Water Cress in Huntsville." Alabama Heritage 66 (Fall 2002): 44-48.

---. "Dennis Water Cress." In Cornbread Nation 4, the Best of Southern Food Writing, edited by Dale Volberg Reed and John Shelton Reed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008.

---. "The Huntsville Depot and Dennis Watercress." Huntsville Historical Review 31 (Winter-Spring 2006): 34-50.

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Although never a major cash crop, watercress was an important commodity in Alabama during the first half of the twentieth century. The watercress industry was centered in Madison County, then known primarily for its textiles and cotton, but at the height of production, the area also was known as the "Watercress Capital of the World."

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Bell Factory was among the earliest textile mills established in the State of Alabama and Madison County, being incorporated by an act of the Alabama Legislature in Dec. of 1832 for $100,000. Patton-Donegan & Company purchased 100 acres of land on 1 Mar 1834 from Preston and Agnes N.

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Notes: * "Coltart, Samuel, pioneer, came to America from Gate House upon Fleet, Scotland, and spent his life in Huntsville, where he died in 1873. He was one of the founders and earliest settlers of Huntsville. He was a devout Presbyterian and is commemorated by a marble tablet in the church at Huntsville.

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Leroy Pope Walker (1817-1884) was a member of one of the most politically powerful families in early Alabama. He was a staunch supporter of states' rights and secession and served in a number of legislative, judicial, and political positions, including secretary of war of the Confederate States of America. Notably, he also served as the defense attorney for infamous outlaw Frank James, brother of Jesse James.

Leroy Pope Walker

Walker was born in Huntsville, Madison County, on February 7, 1817, to John Williams Walker and Matilda Pope Walker. Leroy Pope Walker was named after his maternal grandfather, LeRoy Pope, a founder of the town of Huntsville. His father and grandfather were among the early settlers in Alabama called the Broad River Group, which exerted a powerful influence over state politics. Two of Leroy Pope Walker's seven siblings, Percy Walker and Richard W. Walker, were also distinguished in Alabama politics. (Novelist and essayist Walker Percy is a descendant.)

Walker grew up in Huntsville. He attended the University of Alabama from 1833 to 1835 and then the University of Virginia. He was admitted to the bar in 1837 and practiced law. Walker married twice, first to a Miss Hopkins, with whom he had two sons, Clifton and John Percy. After the death of his first wife, Walker married Eliza Pickett of Montgomery in 1850, and the couple had two daughters and a son: Matilda Pope, Eliza Pickett, and Leroy Pope Jr.

Walker was an important figure in state offices, in Democratic politics, and in secession. During the 1840s, Walker served in the state House of Representatives, representing Lawrence County and later Lauderdale County. His peers elected him Speaker of the House in 1847 and 1849. He served as president of the 1848 Alabama Democratic Convention. In 1856, Walker served the Democratic Party as an elector pledged to candidate James Buchanan in the 1856 presidential election.

In the later 1840s and 1850s, Walker became increasingly pro- slavery and secessionist in his politics. In 1846, he served as a member of the Russellville Convention, which adopted a resolution that demanded protection for slavery in any new U.S. territories. This language was later included as part of what has been called the Alabama Platform. When the Compromise of 1850 was adopted and California admitted to the Union as a free state, Alabama states' rights advocates selected Walker as a delegate to the Nashville Convention of 1850-51, where southern secession was debated as a possible response. In 1860, Walker led the Alabama delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Charleston. When the national Democratic Party refused to support the protection of slavery in new territories in its platform, Walker and the other Alabama delegates walked out, splintering the Democratic Party. This set the stage for Abraham Lincoln's election and Alabama's subsequent secession. Walker did not serve as a delegate to the Alabama Secession Convention, but his pro-secession views were widely known.

After the establishment of the Confederate States of America (CSA), new president Jefferson Davis, then living in the new CSA capital of Montgomery, began looking for an Alabamian for his cabinet so that all southern states would be represented. William Lowndes Yancey, a rabid secessionist, and Clem e nt Comer Clay, a moderate secessionist, declined Davis' offer. When Yancey recommended Walker for Secretary of War, Davis offered Walker the position.

First White House of the Confederacy

During the Confederate government's stay in Montgomery, Walker made two declarations that would return to haunt him. In a speech in Montgomery, Walker dismissed the possibility of a long and bloody war and offered to sop up all the spilled blood with a handkerchief, implying that the Confederacy would be victorious quickly and with little bloodshed. And in a public speech after the firing on Fort Sumter, Walker allegedly declared that the Confederate flag would soon be waving over the White House and possibly even Faneuil Hall in Boston. Walker later denied making such a claim. Walker was both badly out of step with Davis's policy and dangerously ignorant of the realities of the situation that the Confederacy faced.

As secretary of war, Walker was ill prepared for the magnitude of the task he faced. He was a poor administrator, and he had no appreciable military experience. In the summer of 1861, Walker was blamed for the supply and organizational problems of the Confederate military. In September, after a disagreement with President Davis over the Confederate violation of Kentucky's neutrality, Walker resigned and was given an appointment as a brigadier general the next day.

Walker commanded garrisons at Mobile and then Montgomery, but lacking any substantial body of troops, he resigned his commission in 1862. He returned home to his Huntsville law practice and defended Alabama Unionists charged with treason. Walker had been an ardent secessionist, but he had parted with the Davis administration and believed that north Alabama Unionists deserved their day in court. In 1864, he was commissioned as a colonel for a military court, serving until the conclusion of the war.

After the war, he was influential in bringing down the rule of the Republican Party in Alabama during Reconstruction. He served as the president of the Alabama Constitutional Convention, which ended Reconstruction in Alabama in 1875. In 1883, he served as the defense lawyer for outlaw Frank James, who was being tried for a robbery at Muscle Shoals, and gained his acquittal. Walker died on August 23, 1884, and is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville.
Additional Resources
Davis, William C. A Government of Our Own. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Harris, William C. Leroy Pope Walker, First Secretary of War of the Confederacy. Master's thesis, University of Alabama, 1959.

Thornton, J. Mills. Politics and Power in a Slave Society. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.

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Leroy Pope Walker (1817-1884) was a member of one of the most politically powerful families in early Alabama. He was a staunch supporter of states' rights and secession and served in a number of legislative, judicial, and political positions, including secretary of war of the Confederate States of America.

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John Hunt Morgan

Alabama native John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864) was a merchant and military officer who served in the U.S. Army and Kentucky Militia during the Civil War. He earned the nickname "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy" as he raided from Tennessee into Kentucky and Ohio between the spring of 1862 and the summer of 1864, taking prisoners and equipment and disrupting Union supply lines. Men under his command engaged in pillaging on several occasions, and he was suspended from command in August 1864 shortly before he was killed while evading capture by Union forces.

Morgan was born June 1, 1825, in Huntsville, Madison County, the oldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. After Calvin's pharmacy failed, the family relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1831, where Henrietta had roots. Morgan's maternal grandfather, John Wesley Hunt, was an early founder of Lexington and later a wealthy businessman. Morgan grew up on one of the Hunt farms, where he learned to shoot and ride horses. He obtained his early education at home and at nearby schools, and he attended local Transylvania College from 1842 to 1844 but was expelled for challenging a fraternity brother to a duel. He became a Freemason in 1846 and shortly thereafter enlisted in Capt. Oliver P. Beard's company of Col. Humphrey Marshall's Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Mexican-American War. He later was elected first lieutenant and fought at the Battle of Buena Vista, in Coahuila, Mexico, in February 1847. After his return to Lexington on November 21, 1848, he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce; the couple would have one child who died at birth. Morgan then acquired land, purchased slaves, opened a clothing factory with his brother Calvin, and became prosperous manufacturing hemp rope and bagging.

In a practice common to men of his high social standing, Morgan raised a militia artillery company in 1852 that the state legislature disbanded two years later. In 1857, he raised an infantry company known as the "Lexington Rifles." Morgan backed Kentuckian and Vice President John C. Breckenridge, the Southern Democrat candidate, in the 1860 presidential election and did not initially support Kentucky's secession. However, he flew a Confederate flag above his factory in Lexington after the attack on Fort Sumter, which marked the start of the Civil War. He attended to his ailing wife until she passed away on July 21, 1861. The following September, his militia company joined the Confederate Army at Camp Boone in Tennessee. Morgan was given the rank of captain and sworn into the Confederate Army on October 27, 1861. He hoped to bring Kentucky into the Confederacy.

Morgan's Raiders

Morgan was promoted to colonel of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, known as "Morgan's Raiders," on April 4, 1862. Two days later, his unit, along with the Texas Rangers Cavalry, participated in a charge at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee and engaged Union forces again at Fallen Timbers along the Corinth Road on April 8. Soon attached to Gen. Joseph Wheeler's division under Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of the Tennessee, Morgan began a three-week raid on July 4 with 900 soldiers that covered 1,000 miles into Kentucky. Bragg hoped Morgan would serve as the rearguard and draw Union cavalry to assist in concealing the movements of his invasion of Kentucky.By August 1, the raiders had destroyed telegraph and railroad lines and captured 1,200 Federal soldiers and some 300 hundred horses, as well as medical stores, tents, weapons, and ammunition. On September 4, 1862, Morgan, now in command of a brigade, raided into northern Kentucky in support of a major Confederate offensive. On October 7, the unit attacked a Union garrison at Hartsville, Tennessee, and overwhelmed a Union encampment at Ashland, Kentucky, on the morning of October 18, where it captured and paroled 290 Union soldiers.

John and Mattie Morgan

Morgan was promoted to brigadier general on December 13 and would take command of a cavalry division. The following day, he married Martha "Mattie" Ready, the daughter of Charles Ready, a former congressman from Tennessee. Confederate president Jefferson Davis and other dignitaries attended the wedding. The couple would have a daughter, Johnnie Hunt Morgan, who was born after his death. From December 22 to January 5, Morgan and 4,000 soldiers patrolled the Green River region in south-central Kentucky, disrupted the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and Union supply lines, defeated Union forces at Elizabethtown, Tennessee, on December 27, and destroyed the Big South Tunnel north of Gallatin, Tennessee. This venture came to be known as the "Christmas Raid." Morgan returned a hero and received a congratulatory vote from the Confederate Congress on May 17, 1863, for his exploits.

Morgan then was ordered to undertake an ambitious campaign that became known as "Morgan's Raid." The endeavor had several purposes, including diverting Union forces away from Gen. Robert E. Lee's offensive into the North and from their siege of Confederate forces hemmed in at Vicksburg, Mississippi, distracting Union attention from Bragg's withdraw, and determining the Union response to a Confederate invasion of the North. Morgan departed McMinnville, Tennessee, with 2,462 cavalrymen and a battery of light artillery on June 11, 1863. The force captured two steamboats in Brandenburg, Kentucky, that it used to transport troops across the Ohio River to Mauckport, Indiana. In July, the force engaged in a skirmish at Corydon, Indiana, and the Confederate troops looted county and city treasuries in Versailles, Indiana. But when Morgan learned that some of his men stole jewels from the local masonic lodge, he intervened, recovered the stolen property, and returned it the following day. Morgan's raiders captured and paroled nearly 6,000 Union soldiers and damaged some $10 million worth of property. On July 19, 750 of his men were captured at Buffington Island, Ohio, while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. After the Battle of Salineville in Ohio, Morgan and his remaining 350 cavalrymen were captured on July 26 at nearby West Point, Ohio. It was the farthest incursion of any uniformed Confederate troops into Union territory during the war. However, the raid had violated orders to avoid crossing the Ohio River. Ultimately, it has been seen as a failure, as Lee's army was roundly defeated at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 3 and Vicksburg surrendered the following day.

Ohio Penitentiary

Morgan and his officers were imprisoned in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, where he was placed in solitary confinement and reportedly nearly starved to death. On November 27, 1863, he and six of the officers escaped their cells by tunneling into the inner prison yard, from where they climbed over the prison wall, aided by an improvised rope made by Morgan. He and three other officers donned civilian clothes and boarded a train bound for Cincinnati, Ohio, but jumped off before reaching the depot. They escaped across the Ohio River into Kentucky aboard a skiff operated by southern sympathizers. Morgan reunited with his wife in Columbia, South Carolina,before traveling to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. There, Morgan was honored with a parade and praised by the Virginia legislature.

The following spring, Morgan assumed command of the Military Department of Southwest Virginia to defend salt works and lead mines. Some of his soldiers conducted raids throughout the summer into east Tennessee and Kentucky, essentially pillaging and inflicting numerous civilian casualties. On June 8, 1864, soldiers robbed a bank in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, of $72,000. Throughout August 1864, Morgan attempted to clear his name from an impending court-martial for not investigating the robbery and, on August 30, he was suspended from command by the Confederate War Department. Nonetheless, on September 3, Morgan and his men arrived in Greeneville, Tennessee, where they established headquarters.

John Hunt Morgan Memorial

In the early hours of September 4, 1864, Federal cavalry raided the town, and Morgan was shot as he resisted capture in a garden outside the house. His death was lauded in the North and lamented in the South. Union soldiers abused his corpse and paraded it to their headquarters. The following day, his body was transported under a flag of truce to his wife in Abingdon, Virginia, where his first funeral was held. A week later, thousands of mourners attended a state funeral in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. In 1868, Morgan's brother transported his body back to Lexington, where nearly 2,000 people attended a third funeral at Lexington Cemetery on April 17, 1868.

Morgan's legacy has been preserved by historic markers, statues, and landmarks as well as through historic trails, school mascots, and in song. In 2009, the Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated a grave marker in the Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville. Morgan's birthplace, the Hunt-Morgan House in Huntsville's Twickenham Historic District, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and also bears a historic marker; it houses a Civil War museum. Lexington features several Morgan-themed landmarks, including an equestrian statue located at one corner of the old Fayette County Courthouse. Several high schools in Indiana and Ohio named their teams the "Raiders" in his honor.
Additional Resources
Black Robert W. Ghost, Thunderbolt, and Wizard: Mosby, Morgan, and Forrest in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2008.

Mowery, David L. Morgan's Great Raid: The Remarkable Expedition from Kentucky to Ohio. Charleston: The History Press, 2013

Ramage, James A. Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.

Slider, William W. John Hunt Morgan and His Great Raid. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.

Thomas, Edison H. John Hunt Morgan and His Raiders. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975.

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John Hunt MorganAlabama native John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864) was a merchant and military officer who served in the U.S. Army and Kentucky Militia during the Civil War. He earned the nickname "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy" as he raided from Tennessee into Kentucky and Ohio between the spring of 1862 and the summer of 1864, taking prisoners and equipment and disrupting Union supply lines.

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Person:Dr. Alexander Erskine (b1791) - HHC

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Notes: * He was of the first to discover and introduce into practice the virtues of Secale Corntum (an ingredient found in many pharmaceutical drugs and is also a homeopathic remedy. (He wrote a thesis on the subject) He was also a pioneer in the use of quinine.