PRE-STATEHOOD 35 River to be the boundary. The Natchez-based westerners favored the Tombigbee where it joined the Mobile River (north of the present-day city) and then south to Mobile Bay. (This would have put Mobile into present-day Mississippi.) When it did not appear that the boundary would be set as far west as the Pearl, Toulmin then argued that “it would certainly be the wish of the settlers on the Pascagoula and its waters that they should be connected with the proposed territory (of Alabama), instead of the proposed state (Mississippi). All their habits of intercourse and business are with the people of the Mobile and Tombigby, whilst they are separated by a wilderness of from eighty to 130 miles in extent from the nearest settlements in the proposed state,” included in the Toulmin petition. Specifically, Toulmin argued for the inclusion of Wayne, Greene, and Jackson counties in the eastern territory. Congress eventually adopted a line that ran from the “mouth of Bear CAPITOL LAYOUT In 1821, Thomas Hinds, William Lattimore, and Peter Vandorn were chosen to locate a site on a navigable river for a permanent capital near the center of the state. The commission decided on Le Fleur’s bluff on the Pearl River. The legislature accepted the commission’s recommendation because it met all search criteria by having good water and fertile soil, as well as being located on high ground near a navigable waterway. Shortly thereafter, the planning began for the town of Jackson. The first state-owned capitol was built on the corner of Capitol and President streets. The legislature first met in this two-story, 2,400-square-foot brick building in December 1822. Jackson’s status finally changed to capital city during the 1832 constitutional convention.