The name of Alexander McGillivray is inseparable from the earliest annals of Alabama history. So notorious was he, that to omit his name from the records of the state, would be to occasion a serious gap. Though a private citizen, McGillivray, in the sway of power, was practically a sovereign. In the constitution of this wonderful man were extraordinary force, comprehensive resourcefulness, unquestioned magnetism, and sinisterness of purpose, rarely equaled. He was born to dominate, and his facility for planning and scheming, as well as for executing, was phenomenal. Nor was the dominion of his influence restricted to Alabama, for it extended into Georgia and Florida, and reached even the seat of the national government, which was at that time, seeking to stand erect in its emergence from infantile conditions.

McGillivray was the Machiavelli of these early times. With a gaze lifted immensely above that of his contemporaries, he planned vast designs, while the order of mind of this remarkable man was such that, in the requisite details of execution, he could fit and adjust conditions with a skill so marvelous, and a precision so exact, as to be able to accomplish all to which he set his hand.

His mind was fertile, his vision comprehensive, his judgment unerring, his skill adroit, his cunning foxy, his facilities without seeming limit, and his absence of principle as void as space. His plans were often a network of tangled schemes, so wrought into each other, that to most men involved in such, there would be no possibility of escape, but under the manipulation of this master of craft and of intrigue, they would be brought to a culmination invested with so much plausibility, as to divest them of any open appearance of wrong. McGillivray was always cool and collected, suave and smiling, and could make so fair a show of sincerity and of innocence, backed by a cogency of assertion, as often to make the false wear the mask of truth.

The times in which McGillivray lived were exceedingly favorable to the cultivation of his character. That which he did would have been unnatural with an ordinary man, but to Alexander McGillivray, and to the period in which he lived, nothing seemed more natural. The times were out of joint, his native gifts were exceptional, the period afforded just the orbit for their exercise, and with audacious effrontery he seized on every chance to execute his fell designs.

The close of the Revolution had left the country in a deplorable condition. The demoralization which inevitably follows in the wake of war, was one of unusual seriousness to the young American nation. Added to that of widespread disaster was the sudden transition from colonial conditions, under the crown, to that of republican independence. History has failed to emphasize the moral and social conditions in the American territory, incident to the Revolution, which conditions imposed a herculean task on our primitive statesmen. At best, the undertaking of a free government, under conditions such as then prevailed, was an experiment on which the hoary nations of Europe looked with doubting interest.

Under the conditions of universal demoralization, the task was assumed of welding into coherency the scattered elements of population, which population viewed freedom more as license than as liberty, and with an interpretation like this, there was a greater tendency toward viciousness and criminality than toward a patriotic interest in the erection of stable government. Then, too, the untutored savage still roved the forests, and his wigwam settlements extended from limit to limit of the territory of the prospective nation. The savage was revengeful, and stood in defiance of the encroachment of the whites on his rightful domain. It was under conditions like these that the unscrupulous McGillivray came on the scene with all his seductive arts.

In point of diplomacy, he was the peer of any man on the continent, while in cunning unscrupulousness he was unapproached by any. To scheme was to him a natural gift; to plot was his delight, and to him intrigue was a mere pastime. His machinations were so adroitly shaped as to enable him to rally to his aid forces the most opposite and contradictory, and yet into each of his wily schemes he could infuse the ardor of enthusiasm. The danger embodied in McGillivray was that he was not only bad, but that he was so ably and atrociously wicked. In his veins ran the blood of three races—Indian, Scotch, and French. His grandfather, Captain Marchand, was a French officer, his father, a Scotchman, and his mother, one-half Indian. Alexander inherited the strongest traits of these three races. He had the quick but seductive perception of the French, the cool calculation and dogged persistency of the Scotch, and the subtle shrewdness and treachery of the Indian. Possessing these traits to a preËminent degree, they were greatly reinforced by an education derived from the best schools of the time, he having been educated at Charleston, South Carolina. He was Chesterfieldian in conventional politeness, and as smooth as Talleyrand in ambiguity of speech. Apparently the fairest and most loyal of men, he possessed a depth of iniquity inconceivable.

His father, Lachlan McGillivray, had run away from his home in Scotland when a lad of sixteen, and reached Charleston about forty years before the outbreak of the Revolution. Penniless and friendless, he engaged to drive pack-horses, laden with goods, to the Indian settlements on the Chattahoochee. His only compensation for the trip was a large jackknife, which proved the germ of a subsequent fortune. Nothing was more highly prized at that time, than a good jackknife. Lachlan McGillivray exchanged his knife for a number of deer skins, which commanded an exorbitant price in the markets of Charleston. Investment followed investment, which resulted in increasing dividends to the Scotch lad, so that by the time he was fully grown, he owned two plantations on the Savannah River, both of which were stocked with negro slaves. He later came to possess large commercial interests, both in Savannah and Augusta, and having married the half-breed Indian girl, in Alabama, he owned large interests in this state. He had, besides Alexander, three other children. One of these married a French officer, Le Clerc Milfort, who became a brigadier-general in the army of Napoleon, while another became the wife of Benjamin Durant, a wealthy Huguenot merchant, the ancestor of the present Durants in Mobile and Baldwin counties, while another still, married James Bailey, a half-breed, who was subsequently a conspicuous defender of Fort Mims. These names are suggestive of fountain sources of history. This brief introduction prepares us to enter on the remarkable career of Alexander McGillivray.