Anti-Barbecue Movement

In the decade or so after statehood in 1819, Alabamians reveled in the era’s political barbecues as a ritual testimony to individual liberty and grassroots democracy. In north Alabama, however, these events dismayed some reform-minded neighbors, some of whom objected to the serving of alcohol, too much revelry, and others to mixing of races and sexes in political spaces typically reserved for White adult men. These anti-barbecue reformers, spearheaded by the editors of The Southern Advocate newspaper, did not consider it appropriate for candidates to mingle with White male voters, much less women and enslaved people who did not have a formal role in politics at the time.

The 1819 Alabama Constitution included universal White male suffrage and frequent elections, leading to a spirted and energetic electorate. By the mid-1820s, Americans, including Alabamians, had started to transition away from politicians in the style of John Quincy Adams, who seemed elitist and out of touch, and started to favor candidates like Andrew Jackson, whose supporters played up his frontier origins and status as a military hero.

While aspiring American politicians, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, had long used barbecues, which featured a variety of meat and plenty of alcohol, to show their generosity to voters, political barbecues changed over time. In previous iterations, candidates initially stayed away from such events but hosted them as a sign of hospitality to showcase their respectability and generosity. As politics became more democratic in the state and the nation, the people who collectively hosted the political barbecues expected the candidates, who increasingly showcased their ambition and determination instead of hiding it, to not only attend, but to also participate in the festivities. Candidates who wanted to gain the favor of Alabama’s rowdy, egalitarian electorate, had to indulge in food and drink at barbecues. As a uniquely American food, some scholars argue that barbecue’s lack of pretension served the emerging world order emphasizing the common man. Reformers, therefore, targeted the barbecues for contributing to immoral behavior and inappropriate mingling between candidates, constituents, women, and enslaved people.

By the 1820s and 1830s, Alabama’s political barbecues did not yet necessarily feature the modern-day staples of pulled pork, pork spareribs, and smoked chicken. Instead, the community sponsors of the barbecue provided a wider variety of meats, typically whatever they could spare. As such, barbecues could feature pork, chicken, and beef, but also mutton, lamb, and game meat. The events typically featured political stump speeches with a break for everyone to get food.

In 1827 and 1828, The Southern Advocate became the leading voice in Huntsville, Madison County, to stop barbecues as a site of electioneering. The newspaper editors published a series of anti-barbecue editorials. They also published the diatribes of a local reformer with the pseudonym “Barbecuensis.” At these political barbecues, traditional politics and society, which had deferred to the very wealthy, gave way to an emerging sociopolitical order emphasizing individual liberty, democracy, and popular sovereignty. As such, political barbecues increasingly brought voters and candidates, as well as women and enslaved people, into contact with one another. The anti-barbecue reformers, typically aligned with the remnants of the Federalist Party, condemned political barbecues as an insult to good government, or in other words, a sign of too much democratic spirit.

Despite having no voting rights, free and enslaved Blacks not only prepared the barbecue that had increasingly become emblematic of American democracy, but they also participated in the festivities. While it seems unlikely that enslaved Alabamians frequently attended these events as invited guests, they seemed to have felt inspired by the freedom and liberty exercised at these occasions and enjoyed them from time to time. They may have done the cooking and, therefore, had earned the right to enjoy some food or drink. Or, they simply attended with or without their enslavers’ approval. Regardless, they attended, which had implications for social order in Alabama, because in the nineteenth century, the mixing of the races and sexes at barbecues made the events the targets of criticism.

For anti-barbecue-minded politicians and voters, barbecue politics signaled the descent into democracy, as in rule by the people, or mob rule. While a suspicion of too much democratic spirit pervaded the political leaders of the founding generation, most notably John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who both made numerous statements on the problems of putting power in the hands of common people, this opinion had become unpopular but not eliminated by the 1820s and 1830s. These anti-barbecue reformers clung to the older worldview that emphasized order and hierarchy, not egalitarianism, as essential to good government.

These anti-barbecue reformers signaled their frustration with the manners and intellect of the so-called common man. In letters to the editor of The Southern Advocate, Barbecuensis characterized the barbecue crowd as especially unruly with their music, dancing, gluttonous eating, drunkenness, gambling, and other behaviors, including brawling and dueling. Along with the editors of The Southern Advocate, Barbecuensis was the most vocal opponent of political barbecues.

Barbecuensis did not have a favorable opinion of the people and their behavior at barbecues, and he or she lamented that upper-class people attended these events alongside their unruly and uncouth social subordinates. Barbecuensis had expected to see the lower classes partaking in the free food and drink at the barbecue but did not expect wealthier people to humble themselves by attending these shameless, barbaric feasts. Reformers contended that barbecue culture had led to lower-quality candidates because the electorate wanted their leaders to act like them instead of superior to them in manners, intellect, and taste. The reformers lamented candidates who seemingly lowered themselves to revel with common people. The reformers argued that barbecue politics led to false representations of candidates and pushed candidates into demagoguery.

Across the United States, many people, typically the remaining supporters of the now-defunct Federalist Party, had similar concerns about the democratization of the electorate, the increasingly ambitious candidates, and new styles of electioneering. Huntsville and north Alabama, however seems unique in its specific targeting of barbecue. Despite the attempts by local reformers to eliminate barbecues, they continued in the area throughout the years before the Civil War, and after. For the most part, candidates who refused to participate in these events often suffered defeat on Election Day. In Alabama, especially, barbecues proved more popular than the candidates who opposed them. In Madison County, for instance, candidate Josef Leftwich took a stand against barbecues by refusing to attend barbecues and finished seventh out of nine candidates in the race to serve as tax collector. By the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, aspiring politicians made famous barbecue joints must-stop sites on their campaign tours in primary and general elections in the state.