The site along the
Chattahoochee River that is now modern-day Eufaula was occupied by three
Muscogee Creek tribes, including the
Eufaulas. By the 1820s the land was part of the Creek Indian Territory and supposedly off-limits to white settlement. but it was not fully effective in practice until the late 1820s. The 1832
Treaty of Cusseta, by which the Creeks ceded all land east of the
Mississippi River to the United States, allowed white settlers to legally buy land from the Creek. However, the treaty's terms did not require any natives to relocate. By 1835 the land on which the town was built had been mostly purchased by white settlers, and had a store, owned in part by William Irwin, after whom the new settlement was named "Irwinton". In 1850
secessionists in the town formed a vigilante committee which terrorized any white people who had
abolitionist sympathies. Thus captain Elisha Bett was driven from the town and only returned after he had signed a written agreement not to express his views again. Significant numbers of Jewish settlers came to Eufaula in the middle of the nineteenth century from Germany and from neighboring states. The community founded a cemetery; the first burial took place in 1845. By the late 1850s, Eufaula's advantageous location on the Chattahoochee made it a major shipping center for cargo bound for the
Port of Apalachicola and, from there, to major world markets such as
Liverpool and
New York City. By November 1859 the railroad company authorized its president to purchase slaves worth $150,000 to use for the construction of the railroad. Grading for the track bed began in January 1860. By 1861, when it had become clear that the
American Civil War was imminent, work on the railroad was suspended to allow the laborers to lay track between
Montgomery, Alabama, and
Pensacola, Florida, to facilitate the transport of Confederate troops to the
Gulf of Mexico. Work on the railroad was resumed after the war, and, in October 1871, the tracks finally reached the city limits of Eufaula and a depot agent, John O. Martin, was appointed to run that terminal station.
The Civil War in Eufaula Very little is known about the history of Eufaula during the
American Civil War because very few contemporary records or newspapers survive. Alabama
seceded from the United States on January 11, 1861. By the end of the month a military encampment was founded at Eufaula with soldiers ready to decamp to
Fort Pickens or elsewhere as needed at the onset of hostilities. Ultimately six companies of the
Confederate States Army (CSA) were raised at Eufaula and Barbour County. One of these was the Eufaula
Zouaves, one of dozens of military units on both sides that adopted that name, patterning their uniforms and
order of battle after the French light infantry units on which they were modeled. The CSA operated a military hospital in Eufaula during the conflict. Eufaula's strategic position on the Chattahoochee river involved it in the naval component of the Confederate war effort, and at least one
ironclad warship was constructed in the city. By April 1865, the
Union Army had occupied
Selma, Alabama, and plans were made to move the Alabama state government to Eufaula should Montgomery fall to Federal troops. Montgomery was captured on April 12 and governor
Thomas H. Watts, with other state officials, fled to Eufaula, establishing what the
New York Daily Tribune called "the fugitive seat of Government of Alabama". On April 29, 1865, Union general
Benjamin Grierson had reached
Clayton, Alabama, and word had finally made it to Eufaula that the war was over. By May 1865 the
Daily Intelligencer of Atlanta reported that 10,000 Union troops had occupied Eufaula. In the immediate aftermath of the occupation there was a food riot and an "attempt to illegally distribute the public stores". By the end of May Eufaula was sufficiently pacified that a special agent of the
United States Post Office was able to deliver mail from
Providence, Rhode Island, to the town via
Macon, Georgia, without need for any of the twenty-five armed guards he had brought with him to defend him with violence.
Reconstruction in Eufaula By August 1865 cotton shipping out of Eufaula was increasing again, mostly in barter for household goods, which were arriving by ship in increasing quantities. However, the quantity of cotton being shipped out was nowhere near antebellum levels, and ships bound for
Apalachicola were far below capacity. In November 1865 the Federal garrison that had been occupying Eufaula was relieved of duty by two companies of the
8th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose commander, John Bell, assured the citizens that they would not "be disturbed in their lawful business." In March 1867, the
United States Congress passed the first of four
Reconstruction Acts and the
Reconstruction Era began in earnest. Alabama, and therefore Eufaula, was placed in the
Third Military District under the command of General
John Pope. By the time the first elections were held under the new regime, in October 1867, Barbour County had about 5,000 registered voters, with about 1,500 white and 3,500 black. Municipal elections were held in March 1870 and white candidates won all offices except for the two fourth (of four)
ward positions as
aldermen, which were won by black candidates Washington Burke and Melvin Patterson. Election officials set aside Burke's and Patterson's victories for election fraud and replaced them with their white competitors R. A. Solo and T. E. Morgan as fourth ward aldermen. In the same election a
radical republican candidate named Keills won the post of City Court Judge. According to the
Mobile Register, Keills's "election turned upon sectional differences. The negroes made their usual noisy demonstrations, marching in from the country with
fife and drum." By 1866 there was a general movement of black Baptists to
separate from the white churches and form their own congregations. Black Baptists applied for permission to separate in May 1866. The permission was granted, and, after negotiations, the black Baptists were allowed to purchase an old church building to house their own congregation. This congregation formed the basis of the Eufaula Association, one of two black Baptist associations formed in Alabama prior to the founding of the state association of black Baptist churches in 1868. By 1869 the site for the new white
First Baptist Church of Eufaula had been purchased and $16,000 out of an estimated $25,000 necessary for its construction had been raised.
Civil rights movement Eufaula housing case For a number of years after the
U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision
Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned
Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, the schools in Eufaula remained unintegrated. In 1955 the Eufaula Housing Authority sought to use
eminent domain to condemn land on which a number of black families had lived since emancipation in order to build public housing, a park, and an expansion of the white high school. The residents of the neighborhood, surrounded on all sides by white areas, thought that the city's motive was actually to keep their children out of a newly built high school once the now-inevitable racial integration occurred. Although his appeal of the constitutional issue was unsuccessful, Gray also appealed the city's valuations of his clients' properties and, arguing before
all-white juries in Wallace's court, managed in most of the cases to win much higher prices. In 1966 the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) responded by appointing a local Eufaulan, Daddy Bone, to organize
voter registration drives in Eufaula. Bone initiated a series of nonviolent protests and boycotts of local stores that refused to hire blacks which attracted SNCC supporters from around the
Southeastern United States. The city of Eufaula, under some pressure from the businessmen whose stores were targeted, passed anti-picketing laws and began arresting demonstrators
en masse for violating them. Bone brought in civil rights lawyer
S. S. Seay to defend the protestors, who were mostly convicted, and in such numbers as to overwhelm the county jail.
School integration In July 1968 the
United States Department of Justice filed suit against 76 Alabama school districts, including that of Eufaula, in an attempt to bring them into compliance with
Brown v. Board of Education. Schools in Eufaula remained segregated by race until the fall of 1966 and the first black students graduated with the senior class of 1967. After integration began the school stopped sponsoring social events, such as
proms On March 31, 2020, another tornado struck the city. There were no reports of fatalities or injuries. Eufaula has never had an African American mayor. Jack Tibbs Jr. won his third term as mayor in 2020. ==Geography==