Thomas H. Watts

Thomas H. Watts
18th Governor of Alabama
In office
December 1, 1863 – May 1, 1865
Preceded byJohn Shorter
Succeeded byLewis Parsons
3rd Confederate States Attorney General
In office
March 18, 1862 – October 1, 1863
PresidentJefferson Davis
Preceded byThomas Bragg
Succeeded byWade Keyes (Acting)
Personal details
BornThomas Hill Watts
(1819-01-03)January 3, 1819
Pine Flat, Alabama, U.S.[1]
DiedSeptember 16, 1892(1892-09-16) (aged 73)
Montgomery, Alabama, U.S.
Resting placeOakwood Cemetery (Montgomery, Alabama)
PartyWhig[2]
Alma materUniversity of Virginia
OccupationLawyer
Military service
Allegiance Confederate States of America
RankColonel
Commands17th Alabama Infantry
Battles/warsAmerican Civil War
Engraved portrait of Thomas H. Watts

Thomas Hill Watts Sr. (January 3, 1819 – September 16, 1892) was an American lawyer, slaveowner, Confederate States Attorney General and the 18th governor of Alabama from 1863 to 1865, during the Civil War.

Early life

Watts was born at Pine Flat in the Alabama Territory on January 3, 1819, the oldest of twelve children born to John Hughes Watts and Catherine Prudence Hill, who had moved from Georgia to find the better lands of the frontier. He was of English and Welsh ancestry.[3] Prepared for college at the Airy Mount Academy in Dallas County, Watts graduated with honors from the University of Virginia in 1840. The next year, he passed the bar examination and began practicing law in Greenville. In 1848 he moved his lucrative law practice to Montgomery. He also became a wealthy plantation owner, enslaving 179 people in 1860.[4]

Political career

Elected to the Alabama State Legislature in the 1840s as a Whig, Watts also served in the Alabama State Senate in 1853.[4] After the Whig party collapsed, he ran for Congress as a Know Nothing in 1855, but lost.[4] Initially Watts took a pro-Union stance as tensions rose in the 1850s. But on the eve of the Civil War he became an advocate of secession and called for Alabama's immediate exit from the Union following the election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln in 1860.[4] Watts played an important role in the Alabama secession convention and was one of the signers of the secession ordinance.[4]

Watts' reputation as a former moderate led to his defeat by fervent secessionist John Gill Shorter in the 1861 Alabama gubernatorial election.[4] Watts then organized the 17th Regiment Alabama Infantry and led it into battle at Pensacola and Corinth,[5] but resigned as its colonel in April 1862 when he was selected to become the attorney general in Confederate President Jefferson Davis' cabinet.[4][6]

Watts served as attorney general for 18 months, often tasked with managing legal matters related to conscription and the order of precedence between local state organizations and Confederate military authority.[7] He worked diligently, and gained a reputation as a competent and thoughtful chief legal officer.[4]

Governor of Alabama

Watts left his post as attorney general to run for Alabama governor in the 1863 election, facing off against his former opponent John Gill Shorter in a repeat of the 1861 contest. However, the military situation in Alabama had deteriorated greatly in the intervening two years. Union troops occupied the north of the state, there were major food shortages, and thousands of Alabama troops had deserted the army and formed hostile gangs that threatened Confederate control of the state.[8][9] Watts defeated the incumbent Governor Shorter by a 3-1 margin, and took office on December 1, 1863. Facing a disgruntled populace that increasingly preferred peace and a return to the Union rather than more war, Watts embarked on a speaking tour of the state to make the case for continuing the war effort.[4]

Watts' administration turned to severe measures to try to salvage the economic situation in Alabama. These initiatives included impressment of slaves for forced labor,[10] tax-in-kind polices, and other efforts that further alienated the already-suffering civilian population and left some communities on the verge of starvation.[11][12] In the face of discontent, Watts tried to position these unpopular measures as Confederate government policies rather than the actions of his administration.[13][4] Compelled to aid the destitute population, the state government printed paper money which was not backed by hard assets, leading to massive inflation.[4]

Military manpower was a constant and unsolvable problem. As the war began to turn against the Confederacy, there was greater resistance to patriotic appeals for men to form new volunteer companies.[14] Desertion was a major drain on Alabama's manpower, with many men leaving the army without permission, defying conscription officers, and practicing armed resistance against the state government.[8] By the end of 1864, gangs of armed deserters had turned half of Alabama's counties into lawless zones where the edicts of the governor and the national government had no effect.[4][8] Watts' appealed to the state legislature to restore order by reorganizing the awkward two-class state militia, but this measure was defeated. The legislature, now filled with peace advocates, refused to reform the laws that limited the ability to send militia units outside of their home counties, which made them useless from a military perspective.[15] As a result, Alabama did not have an effective home guard force either to fend off Union incursions or retake the rebellious regions of the state.[4][16]

When the Confederate Congress passed a new conscription law drafting men age 17-50, Watts, who had previously supported conscription as Confederate attorney general, defied the national government and fought hard to maintain local manpower under his control.[17] Drawing on these age groups would have taken away the men Watts was relying on to supply the state militia, and would further alienate those who resented being sent away to fight in a war they now considered hopeless. Governor Watts wrote to the Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon, stating "Unless you order the commandant of conscripts to stop interfering with such companies there will be a conflict between the Confederate general and State authorities"[18] and threatened to resist conscription by force of arms.[19] Seddon backed down and allowed Watts to keep control of the Alabama militia forces, and the state supreme court affirmed Watts' authority to maintain the militia's exemption from conscription.[4]

By September 1864, another turbulent issue confronted Governor Watts as a faction in the Alabama House of Representatives introduced resolutions in calling for peace and restoration to the Union. Watts bitterly denounced them and the measures were defeated in the legislature, but the Governor was aware that he would most likely lose his bid for reelection in the fall to the pro-Union faction.[4] By early 1865 anti-war sentiment was so widespread in Alabama it was reported to Union General Ulysses S. Grant that Watts' administration might possibly be overthrown by the peace party in Alabama.[20]

The military situation worsened as US Navy forces captured Mobile Bay in August 1864,[21] and Union cavalry raided across the state destroying infrastructure. When the state capital of Montgomery was threatened, Watts evacuated the government to Eufaula before he was arrested by US soldiers at Union Springs, Alabama, on May 1, 1865.[4] Released without charge a few weeks later, Watts returned to resume his law practice in Montgomery. He managed to build up a successful practice and argued more cases before the Supreme Court of Alabama than any other attorney of that era. Watts later returned to the state legislature for one term (1880-81),[4] was president of the state bar association, and after his death was remembered as "Alabama's greatest lawyer".[22]

Thomas Hill Watts died of a heart attack at age 73, on September 16, 1892, in Montgomery, Alabama.[4]

Family

On January 10, 1842, he wed Eliza Brown Allen, and they had ten children.

He was the great-great-grandfather of the white supremacist William Luther Pierce.[23][24]

References

  1. ^ John Buckner Little (1885). History of Butler County, Alabama, 1815 to 1885. J. G. Little, Jr.
  2. ^ "Thomas Hill Watts". National Governors Association. January 17, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
  3. ^ K. Torp. "Butler County, Alabama Biographies". Genealogytrails.com. Retrieved September 13, 2012.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Yearns, W. Buck, ed. (1985). The Confederate Governors. University of Georgia Press. p. 30-40.
  5. ^ Robson, Charles Representative men of the South. Philadelphia: C. Robson & Co., 1880, p. 43
  6. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 1 Serial 127. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 1005.
  7. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Serial 128. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 212.
  8. ^ a b c Weitz, Mark A. More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army. University of Nebraska Press. p. 210,214,239.
  9. ^ Yearns, W. Buck, ed. (1985). The Confederate Governors. University of Georgia Press. p. 21-30.
  10. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 26, Serial 42. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 503.
  11. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 32, Serial 59. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 718.
  12. ^ Ash, Steven V. (February 1991). "Poor Whites in the Occupied South, 1861-1865". The Journal of Southern History. 57 (1): 39–62. Retrieved April 12, 2026.
  13. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 39, Serial 78. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 780.
  14. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 49, Serial 103. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 1030.
  15. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 39 Serial 79. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 856.
  16. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 49 Serial 103. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 1013.
  17. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 3, Serial 129. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 463.
  18. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 3, Serial 129. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 466.
  19. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 3, Serial 129. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 817.
  20. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 49, Serial 103. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 590.
  21. ^ United States War Department (1895). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume 45, Serial 94. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. p. 683.
  22. ^ Davis, W.C. (1892). "Ex-Gov Thomas H. Watts". The Green Bag. IV: 549. Retrieved April 12, 2026.
  23. ^ "Miss Ferrell and Mr. Pierce to Wed Today". The Montgomery Advertiser. Vol. CI, no. 332. November 28, 1929. p. 6. ISSN 2993-9151. Retrieved November 2, 2025.
  24. ^ Morris, Travis (2017). "The Need to Weaponize Ideas: Anwar Al-Awlaki and William Pierce". Dark Ideas: How Neo-Nazi and Violent Jihadi Ideologues Shaped Modern Terrorism. Lexington Books. pp. 25–42. ISBN 978-0-7391-9105-7.

Further reading

  • McMillan, Malcolm C. The Disintegration of a Confederate State, Three Governors and Alabama's Wartime Home Front, 1861–1865. Macon, Ga.: Mercer, 1986.
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