Bibb's primary duties were establishing the state government. Huntsville was designated to be the site of the constitutional convention. The capital was chosen to be the newly-created town of Cahawba in 1820 on the Alabama frontier but moved to Tuscaloosa in 1826 and finally to the central city of Montgomery in 1846, where a State Capitol building was begun later. (Montgomery was later the site of the historic inauguration in 1861 of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as the first provisional and only president of the Confederate States of America after the first seven of thirteen southern states seceded, with Montgomery as the temporary Confederate capital.)