President Johnson appointed Lewis E. Parsons as provisional governor of Alabama following the end of the Civil War on June 21, 1865. Under President Johnson's proclamation, current Alabama laws (except those pertaining to slavery) remained in affect. For the most part, Governor Parsons kept the former Alabama state officials in office as he guided the political process toward statehood.
On August 31, 1865, roughly 56,000 voters elected ninety-nine delegates to the constitutional convention. Of those delegates: thirty-three were lawyers, forty-two were farmers, six were doctors, nine were merchants, two were teachers, and seven were ministers. These delegates were also from different areas of Alabama and had different political backgrounds, giving this group a wide range of backgrounds and knowledge. While some delegates wanted to keep slavery until the courts determined the constitutionality of wartime actions, the convention declared that slavery had been abolished and no longer existed in the state of Alabama. The convention then focused their attention on dealing with basic issues centered around Reconstruction.
The delegates called for a census to take place the following year, 1866. Using the numbers from the 1866 census, the delegates felt they would be better equipped to determine how many state senators and representatives were needed then they could in 1865. These numbers would be based off of the white population. Thirty delegates from the Black Belt area voted against this due to the fact that taking the census in this way would lessen their representation in state legislature. Also, he convention did not give full political rights to African Americans. The delegates voted unanimously to table a petition from African Americans in Mobile asking for the right to vote. African Americans were not made equal in the eyes of the law during the constitutional convention of 1865. The new Alabama Constitution was not implemented immediately, but was adopted on September 12, 1865.