SHOAL CREEK. A small tributary of the Tennessee River (q. v.) which empties into that stream 199.7 miles below Chattanooga, Tenn. It rises in Lawrence County, Tenn.; flows southward through Lauderdale County, Ala., to its junction with the Tennessee; is 51 miles long; 831 feet wide at its .mouth; has a minimum discharge of 125 feet per second; and drains an area of 449 square miles. It flows through a more or less broken country, and cuts through the Niagara group (limestone) of the upper Silurian formation, the Devonian black shale, and the Lauderdale or Keokuk chert of the lower Subcarboniferous formation. It is not navigable, nor has any project for its improvement been undertaken by the United States Government. Near its mouth, the creek is crossed by an aqueduct 831 feet long, one of the sections of the Muscle Shoals Canal.

REFERENCE.-Manuscript data in the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Vol. II-34

SHORTHAND REPORTERS' ASSOCIATION, THE ALABAMA. See Court Reporters.

SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON. College fraternity; founded at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, March 9, 1856, by Noble Leslie DeVotie, class of 1856, assisted by Nathan Elams Cockrell, '56; Samuel Marion Dennis, '57; Wade Foster, '56; John Webb Kerr, '56; John Barratt Rudulph, '56; Abner Edwin Patton, '57, and Thomas Chappell Cook, '57. The parent chapter was designated Alabama Mu, and 21 men were initiated before 1858. Chapters: Ala. Mu, 1856, 250 members, suspended 1858 to 1886, and 1890 to 1891, and has a chapter house valued at $8,500, erected as a memorial to De Votie, the founder; Ala. Beta Beta, 1870, Howard College, 26 members, suspended because of antifraternity laws, 1876; Ala. Alpha Mu, 1878, Ala. Pol. Inst., 318 members, suspended from 1880 to 1886; Ala. Iota, 1878, Southern Univ., suspended from 1882 to 1884 because none of its members returned, owns a chapter hall, erected in 1908, cost about $1,200, 271 members. Periodical: "The Record." Colors: Purple and old gold. Flower: Violet.

REFERENCES.-Baird, Manual (1915), pp. 286297; the Fraternity Catalogues, various editions; Manual (1904); Wm. C. Levere's History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 3 vols., ill. (1911).

SIGMA CHI. College fraternity; founded at Miami University, Oxford, O., June 28, 1855. Entered Alabama when Pi chapter was established at Howard College in 1872. Chapters: Pi, 1872, Howard College, 74 members, suspended in 1885 because of antifraternity legislation and not revived; Iota Iota, 1876, Univ. of Ala., 60 members, suspended because of antifraternity legislation, 1885, and revived in 1914 by the absorption of the local Phi Epsilon; and Chi Chi, 1879, Southern Univ., 23 members, and died, 1882, because none of its members returned. A graduate chapter is organized at Birmingham. Periodical: "The Sigma Chi Quarterly." Colors: Blue and gold. Flower: White rose.

REFERENCES.-Baird, Manual (1915), pp. 298312; the Fraternity Catalogues; and Manual and Directory (1908).

SIGMA NU. College fraternity; founded at the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, January 1, 1869. It entered Alabama in 1874 with the establishment of Theta chapter at the State University. Chapters: Theta, 1874, Univ. of Ala., and designated as Chapter VIII under the old nomenclature, because of passage of antifraternity laws by the trustees, in 1878 became inactive, but existed sub rosa for some years, revived in 1885, chapter house erected in 1916 at a cost of $13,500, 400 members; Iota, 1879, Howard College, existed sub rosa for some years, but now active, 250 members; and Beta Theta, 1890, Ala. Pol. Inst., 210 members. Alumni chapters are organized in Birmingham and Montgomery. Periodical: "The Delta." Col

Black, white and old gold. Flower: White rose. Memorial Day: First Sunday in November.

Herrenscra- Baird, Manual (1915), pp. 313221; and the Fraternity Catalogues (1850, 1894, 1992 and 1911).

SIGMA PHI EPSILON. College fraternity; founded at Richmond College, Richmond, Va, November 1, 1901. Entered Alabama with the installation of Alabama Alpha at the Ala. Pol. Inst. November 7, 1908. The chapter was first organized October, 1907, as a local with 6 members, and was known as the D. P. Club. Its membership is 102. There is an alumni chapter at Birmingham. Periodical: "Sigma Phi Epsilon Journal." Colors: Purple and red.

REFERENCEA.--Baird, Manual (1915), pp. 327222; and the Fraternity Catalogues (1911-1915).

SIGMA TAU DELTA. Local college sorority; founded at Howard College, Birmingham, September 25, 1916; original and present membership six.

SIGMA UPSILON. College fraternity (honorary literary); founded in 1906 at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., by the federation of literary societies in several southern colleges. It entered Alabama in 1914, with the establishment of the Attic chapter; and has a membership of 25. Periodical: "Journal of Sigma Upsilon." Colors: Dark green and old gold. Flower: Jonquil. REFERENCES.-Baird, Manual (1915), pp. 608610; and Univ. of Ala. Corolla 1915-1916.

SILOS. The silo has come to be recognized as the best possible method for storing feed for live stock. It is of only recent introduction. In 1882 there were only ninety silos in the United States. So far as any record is preserved, the first silo constructed in Alabama was constructed on the Canebrake Experiment Station grounds at Uniontown in 1887. About the same date one was built at the Agricultural Experiment Station at Auburn. There are now reported more than 500 of different types in Alabama, including the pit, stave, tile and concrete. The largest one was erected by the Montgomery Lime and Cement Company in 1917, for L. C. Young, in Montgomery County. Prof. N. A. Negley, in 1914, prepared a circular on "silos and silage," filled with practical hints on the construction, materials,

etc.

SINTA BOGUE, A creek in the northern part of Washington County, which flows into the Tombigbee River from the west, a short distance above Hatchetigbee bluff. It was a part of the line of demarcation between the English possessions and the Choctaw Nation, and the same line was subsequently recognized as the boundary between the United States and the Choctaws. It was variously spelled, but is a Choctaw word, Sinti, “snake," bok, "creek," that is, "snake creek." The Choctaw treaty which the British exe

cated at Mobile. March 26. 1765. stipulates that "rone of His Majesty's white subjects shall be permitted to settle on Tombechee River to the northward of the rivulet called Cente bonek (Sinta bogue)."

REFERENCES.-Romans, Florida (1775), p. 329; La Tourette. Map of Alabama (1838), Bureau of American Ethnology, Eighteenth annual report (1899), p. 560.

SIPSEY RIVER. A tributary of the Tombigbee River (q. v.) and a part of the Alabama-Tombigbee drainage system. The length of the Sipsey River proper is about 145 miles, its width from 40 to 100 feet, and its average low-water depth about 1 foot. The river rises in Winston County, where it is known as "Nine Island Creek," and runs through the southeast corner of Marion County until it reaches Fayette County, where it becomes the "Sipsey River." Its course for 90 miles is practically due south, and thence to its mouth it flows southwestward, and empties into the Little Tombigbee River (see Tombigbee River) 1 mile south of the town of Vienna, which is situated about 343 miles by river from Mobile.

For the first 25 miles, the river runs through a broken, mountainous country, the bluffs varying in height from 15 to 80 feet, being formed of a species of sandstone, intermixed with layers of slate formation. Its bed, formed entirely of rock, is obstructed by numerous shoals, and large bowlders fallen from the bluffs. Besides the sandstone which is of great durability and easily quarried, rock suitable for millstones is found along the river, and also an excellent quality of grindstone, as well as extensive beds of coal. At one place the bed of the river for over a mile originally consisted of a vein of coal 18 inches thick. Twenty-five miles downstream the rock bluffs gradually disappear, and the banks of the river are formed instead of steep soil bluffs. This formation continues to a point within 22 miles of its mouth, where indications of the blue lime rock, similar to that found on the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, are met with. From this point to the mouth the bluffs are again nearly perpendicular and vary in height from 20 to 100 feet, changing from one side of the river to the other, and originally heavily timbered with nearly every species of hardwood, with here and there a few pine and cypress trees. The river traverses Fayette and Tuscaloosa Counties and forms a part of the boundary between Pickens and Greene Counties.

The course of the river is exceedingly tortuous, and it has never been navigable, except by rafts and flatboats during very high water.

The preliminary survey of the Sipsey River made by the War Department in 1879 was supplemented by a final examination in 1890, but no project for improvement was adopted, and no steps have since been taken toward making the river navigable for keelboats or steamboats.

No development of water power has been undertaken on the Sipsey except by the erec

tion of a few temporary dams, usually of wood, for the purpose of running small grain mills or cotton ginneries belonging to individuals.

REFERENCES.-U. S. Chief of Engineers, Annual report for 1881, App. K, p. 1221; 1890, App. R, pp. 1722-1724; U. S. Chief of Engineers, Reports of examinations and surveys made under act of March 3, 1879, 1880, (S. Ex. Doc. 42, 46th Cong. 3d sess.), Sipsey River, Ala., pp. 34-38.

SLATES. The slates of Alabama belong to several geological formations, viz, the Talladega, or Ocoee, the Weisner, and the Montevallo shales, of the Cambrian, and the upper Trenton of the Silurian; and are found principally in the counties of Shelby, Talladega, Calhoun, Cleburne, Clay, Coosa, and Chilton. Those of the Weisner formation in the southwestern part of Talladega County, of the Montevallo group in Chilton County, and of the Trenton, northeast of Anniston, in Calhoun, are perhaps the best. Slate from these beds was used to some extent during the War for roofing, the Confederate arsenal at Selma being covered with it, but it has not yet been as extensively quarried as might be expected from its quality and quantity.

REFERENCE.-Smith and McCalley, Index to mineral resources of Alabama (Geol. Survey of Ala., Bulletin 9, 1904), p. 68.

SLAUGHTER HOUSES. See Live Stock and Products.

SLAVERY. To Alabama and to Alabamians slavery was an inheritance. Their attitude toward the institution, their conduct and practices in its operation had few features not found in other sections where the attitude was friendly and sympathetic. Throughout the State were those, not considerable in numbers it is true, who felt the same abhorence to its continuance as the most extreme of the Abolitionists, and who dreamed of a time when Alabama would be a free State, with a complete re-organization of the economic system. There were some whose attitude was one of distinct unfriendliness to the slave from racial consideration. These dreamed of the day when Alabama might be wholly Caucasian, and with the absence of the negro their confidence in social integrity would not be disturbed. The vast and overwhelming part of the population, however, was friendly to the institution, even including those who were themselves without slaves. While they had little socially or economically in common with the rich slave owners or even with those who owned but few, several factors served to make and to keep them friendly. In the first place, they too had dreams of the faction and power which the rich enjoyed. Many poor men who came into the State at the beginning had, by hard economy and prudence, risen to places of prominence. Further, the overseers were largely drawn from the class of poor white people, and the position was one that had many attractions. Perhaps a reason as potent as either of the foregoing was the

feeling that wisdom and quality of leadership was safer in the hands of the rich and the powerful than with those less favored. Slaves were a part of the population of the State, that is, of the section now in the limits of the State from 1800 to 1865, during fortyfive years of which period or from 1819 to 1865, it was one great factor which influenced, more powerfully than any one or even many other factors, the political, economic and social through aspiration and conduct of the people. The State came into the Union on the period of agitation preceding the Missouri compromise, and they shared in the feeling that an unjustice was involved in the efforts of the North in restricting slavery in the new territories. While they presently acquired in the compromise plans, they were never satisfied with the equities of the settlement, and long years afterward they were willing to join their trusted bodies in the endeavor to make the new State of Kansas slave rather than free. The expedition in 1856 of Jefferson Buford, of Barbour County, and his associates, had a far more remote genesis than an immediate desire to open up new slave territory. It was a protest, breaking out in sallen seriousness, reminiscent of the feelings of the older generation who were never reconciled to the justice of the compromises.

Slavery was to all early settlers, and to the people generally, an accepted fact both of right and practice. They had no doubt of the right or the wisdom of slavery, and yet there was slowly growing up a conscious moral sense of the evils of slave ownership. Many, too, felt that there were defects in the institution as an economic system. In 1823 Israel Pickens became Governor of the State. About this time Colonization Societies were springing up in various communities, and Gov. Pickens was elected as President of the State organization. Many men and women emancipated their slaves by legislative act. Others removed to the free states in order to enjoy the opportunity of giving freedom to their slaves. Within the decade other influences were at work serving to relax the hold of the system or to weaken it. With all of these influences there was no sense of wrongdoing under the law, and the majority planted themselves firmly upon the declarations and practices of the Bible in defense of the institution and of themselves. However, the people had no sympathy with the efforts to repeal the law forbidding the slave trade, or to reopen it, although some of the leaders favored the latter. In Alabama the last slaver ran its cargo contraband into a sheltered inlet of the Coast, only to be captured, libeled and ultimately punished. As time went on the legislature prohibited the introduction of slaves from sister states, a curious regulation since it in a sense violated their own contentions for the extension of slave territory. Their justification was that in the one case it was the carrying of the slave along with and as a part of the property of the owner in the new territory, while in the other case it was traf