Albert James Pickett's History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period first appeared in Montgomery bookstores in September 1851. The buyers of his two-volume work paid $3 and the demand caused Charleston publisher Walker and James to issue a second and third edition before year's end. William Gilmore Simms, the South's most prolific writer, referred to the publication as "one of the prettiest specimens...