Born on September 11, 1792, in Sumter County, South Carolina,[1] Gayle pursued classical studies and graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) in 1813 and read law in 1818.[2][1] He was President of the Clariosophic Society while at South Carolina College.[3][4] He was admitted to the bar and entered private practice in St. Stephens, Alabama Territory (State of Alabama from December 14, 1819) starting in 1818.[1] He was a member of the Legislative Council for Alabama Territory from 1818 to 1819.[1] He was a solicitor for the First Judicial Circuit of Alabama from 1819 to 1821.[1] He was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1822 to 1823, and again from 1829 to 1830,[1] serving as Speaker in 1829.[2] He was a Judge of the Alabama Circuit Court for the Third Judicial Circuit from 1823 to 1825.[1] He resumed private practice in Greene County, Alabama from 1826 to 1828.[1] He was a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1828 to 1829.[1] He was Governor of Alabama from 1831 to 1835.[1] He again resumed private practice in Mobile, Alabama from 1835 to 1846.[1] Gayle was mentioned in American Slavery As It Is, an abolitionist book published in 1839. He is given as an example of slavers who disregard marriages of enslaved African Americans. The book reprints a signed advertisement Gayle had placed in a newspaper seeking help capturing an escaped man and suggesting the fugitive could be heading to a neighboring county where the enslaved man's wife lived.[5]
Notable state court case
During his service as a judge, Gayle presided over the Petition for Freedom of Cornelius Sinclair, a young African American child who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.[6]
Notable achievements as Governor
During Gayle's term as Governor of Alabama, the state bank was expanded, and the first railroad was completed in Alabama. The Bell Factory, the state's first textile mill, was incorporated in Madison County.[7]
Gayle was married to Sarah Ann Haynsworth, formerly a resident of South Carolina, from June 11, 1819, until she died in 1835, due to lockjaw (tetanus).[8] They had six children. In 1837, Gayle married Clarissa Stedman Peck at Gaston,[9] Alabama. They had four children. Gayle died of ill health and natural causes on July 21, 1859, aged 66.[10]
^Weld, Theodore Dwight; Sweetser, Seth; American Anti-Slavery Society (1839). American slavery as it is: : testimony of a thousand witnesses. Boston Public Library. New York: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, office, no. 143 Nassau Street.
