Watts, Thomas

Thomas Hill Watts was born on January 3, 1819, on the territory of Alabama, a few months before receiving her statehood , not far from Buttsville, renamed three years later. The family agreed to pay for his education in the event of a waiver of claims to the share of family real estate, and Watts accepted the condition. In 1840, he graduated from the University of Virginia , where he studied law. In 1841 he was admitted to the bar and founded a practice in Greenville ( Butler County , Alabama ). In 1848, Watts transferred his practice to Montgomery and subsequently became a successful planter and owner of 179 slaves. Engaged in politics in 1842, when he passed from the Whig party to the House of Representatives of Alabama and held the deputy chair until 1845. In 1848 he entered the electoral college at the presidential election, and from 1853 to 1856 he was a member of the Alabama Senate. In 1855, Watts made an unsuccessful attempt to elect the US House of Representatives . After being elected president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln Watts reconsidered his position as an opponent of secession and in the same 1861 became a member of the Alabama Secessionist Convention, and with the beginning of the Civil War formed the 17th Alabama Regiment ^[1] .

At the same time, Watts made an unsuccessful attempt to elect the governor of Alabama. His opponent was , who received support from the sympathetic Democratic Party of the press (on the side of the Watts were the newspapers of the Whig and the northern states). Elections were held on August 10, 1861, Watts received 27,121 votes against 37,894 for Shorter ^[2] .

March 18, 1862 became the Prosecutor General of the Confederation . Due to the absence of the Supreme Court, Watts turned out to be the highest authority with the right to interpret the Constitution. Basically, he had to deal with lawsuits against the government, but also he sought from President Jefferson Davis restrictions on the imposition of martial law in certain areas, causing him to comply with the law. Watts also recognized the legality of the Conscription Act. Nevertheless, leaving office on October 1, 1863, and becoming governor of Alabama, began to speak of him as a violation of the rights of the states ^[3] .

In August 1863, Watts was elected governor of Alabama, defeating his former opponent John Shorter with a minimal advantage (on December 1, he took office). In this period, later joining the ideas of secession helped Watts to win, because the war time deprivation led to a significant increase in voters' sentiments in favor of an early peace. For the governor of Watts, one of the most difficult problems of wartime was the influx of a large number of deserters who turned some districts into uncontrollable territories, deprived of effective power. Being a prosecutor general in favor of the centralization of the Confederation, he became the governor to uphold the rights of the states, but, having no opportunity to influence the improvement of the situation in Alabama, by the end of 1864 he lost the support of voters and refused re-election ^[4] .

May 1, 1865, was arrested in (Alabama) by US authorities, but was released a few weeks later. Watts returned to law practice in Montgomery, and again engaged in politics, now in the ranks of the Democratic Party . He was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1880–81, and in 1889–90 he headed the Alabama Bar Association. Died September 16, 1892, buried in Montgomery ^[5] .

In 1842, Thomas Hill Watts married Elisabeth Brown Allen, later they had ten children. In 1873, Elizabeth died, in 1875, Watts married Ellen Noyes ^[1] .

• Terry Jones. Historical Dictionary of the Civil War . - Scarecrow Press, 2011. - Vol. 1. - P. 1565-1566. - 1751 p. - ISBN 9780810878112 .

• Henry M. McKiven Jr. (University of South Alabama). Thomas Hill Watts (1863-65) (English) . Governors . Encyclopedia of Alabama (30 September 2014). The appeal date is December 23, 2014.