Editing Bullock County, Alabama (section)

==History==
Bullock County was established by act of the state legislature dated December 5, 1866, with areas partitioned from [[Macon County, Alabama|Macon]], [[Pike County, Alabama|Pike]], [[Montgomery County, Alabama|Montgomery]], and [[Barbour County, Alabama|Barbour]] counties.<ref name=BCA>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1197|publisher=Auburn University Outreach/Encyclopedia of Alabama|access-date=September 13, 2020|date=June 28, 2007|title=Bullock County}}</ref> The boundaries were changed in February 1867.

Prior to the arrival of white settlers, the future Bullock County was inhabited by [[Muscogee|Creek Indians]]. The [[Treaty of Fort Jackson]] (1814) ceded much of Alabama and Georgia to the US government, and the Creeks were [[Indian Removal Act|removed completely after 1830]]. From 1818 through the 1830s, white settlers poured into the area, turning the rich soil into cotton-producing plantations and the area into one of the state's richest.

Bullock County was devastated by the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]. Its once-enslaved population (about seventy percent of the total population) had sustained its output, but their emancipation caused a sharp decline in the economy. In the aftermath, Bullock County elected two former slaves to the state legislature, but with [[Reconstruction era|end of Reconstruction]], the black population were severely restricted and kept down.<ref name=BCA/>

By 1877 the [[boll weevil]] had migrated into Bullock County cotton fields from Mexico, and the area's economy was further depressed. A significant portion of the once-cotton-producing area was converted to a site of the Amateur Field Trial competition for bird dogs and a game preserve.<ref name=BCA/>