Chapter IX: Introduction: By W. P. Trent (7)

An Indian race, the Choctaw, gave the name to the river and bay, and thus to the present city; for _Maubila_, or “paddling” Indians, long occupied what is now South Alabama, and their language was in later days the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Their primitive manner of living was interrupted about three centuries and a half ago. The West Indies then became Spanish, and the mainland was explored in all directions for colonization. A map of 1513, attributed to Columbus, shows many indentations on the north coast of the Mexican Gulf, then without a name, and the only one of them with a river (Rio de la Palma) resembles Mobile Bay. From time to time afterwards a score of other maps, with gradually increasing distinctness, develop the true outline. On them the principal feature of the north coast is a pear-shaped bay within the shore-line, into which empty one or more rivers called Rio del Espiritu Santo, or some variation of that name. It is first distinct on the map which Governor Garay of Jamaica sent home, as showing Piñeda’s exploration of Florida in 1519. Some have thought this the Mississippi River, with a total disregard of the fact that the delta of that great river projects out into the Gulf, while this bay is within the coast. We have to wait a century and a half before there is any account of the exploration of the Mississippi mouth; and meantime, dozens of maps show the bay or river of the Holy Spirit. It is, on the map, the most prominent object on the north coast of the Gulf, corresponding to Panuco (Tampico) on the west. Spanish ships visited it, and some explorers have left descriptions. Narvaez possibly wintered in it on his disastrous voyage of 1528, and a French tradition was that piles of bones on Dauphine Island were remains of his men. Here, or in Pensacola Bay, De Soto’s admiral, Maldonado, waited for De Soto, and here he certainly touched later in search of his lost master.

The famous expedition of De Soto crossed the Mobile River basin at right angles, but the itinerary is uncertain. The Spaniards did not care enough to map it intelligently, and the Indians, according to the proverb, could tell no tales.

It is doubtful, indeed, if De Soto came much within a hundred miles of the present site of Mobile, although early French tradition makes him to have crossed somewhere near the later settlement of Mobile Indians, about Mount Vernon landing.

In 1558 was made the careful exploration by Bazares, who proceeded from Mexico eastward towards peninsular Florida. Two bays he named Bas Fonde and Filipina. One was Mobile, and it was probably that called Filipina. The object was settlement, and the next year Tristan de Luna occupied the country with fifteen hundred colonists and explored the interior by Nanipacna and Cosa, up to the gold region of Georgia. But it all ended only in mutiny and misfortune. There was more gold and less fighting in Mexico and South America. The Spaniards claimed regions further north more to keep others from the Gulf than to colonize what is now the United States.

Soon Hawkins, Drake, and the buccaneers on the Gulf gave Spain enough to do. The French occupied the St. Lawrence, and even part of Florida. Raleigh and others led out unsuccessful English colonies. After the wreck of the Armada had destroyed Spanish prestige, the advance of the French in Canada, and of the English farther south, was more rapid. Jamestown and Plymouth were the beginning of colonies which gradually lined the Atlantic. The French took possession of the Great Lakes, and, under Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, explored the Mississippi to its mouth.

The grand plan gradually took shape in the French mind of colonizing the mouth of the great river, bringing the native tribes under control, opening trade with them, discovering mines, and uniting Louisiana, as La Salle called it, with Canada by a chain of forts at strategic points. La Salle did not live to accomplish this. He was assassinated in modern Texas, after missing the mouth of the Mississippi. But a worthy successor was found after a few years in the elder Lemoyne, better known as Iberville. In 1699, he was successful in finding the mouth of the great river, but realized that its swamps offered no site for a colony. He and his brother, Bienville, explored the tributaries and the adjacent coasts, and a fort was temporarily thrown up on what is now the east side of the Back Bay of Biloxi. On Iberville’s return from France, in 1702, the permanent seat of the colony was placed at 27 Mile Bluff, on Mobile River, amid the friendly and industrious Indians. The Spaniards, who had themselves lately occupied Pensacola, vigorously remonstrated at this occupation of Florida, as they had at the building of Fort Maurepas at Biloxi. But Iberville was acting for Louis XIV., and soon had everything of value moved _via_ Massacre (now Dauphine) Island and Mobile Bay to Fort Louis de la Mobile. A town was laid out and settled. Conferences with Choctaws and Chickasaws followed, and alliances were made. The establishment of what was even then popularly called Mobile was the entrance of a new power into the Gulf country. Tonty, the old companion of La Salle, came to stay, and colonists from France were brought to the port at Dauphine Island by every ship. The shadowy Spanish claim became forgotten west of Pensacola, and the English traders from the Atlantic colonies found active competitors. French influence became dominant in all the great Mississippi Valley. It showed itself in exploration, religion, trade, and war, and was all directed from Mobile.

Exploration and religion went together. The Jesuits had not as strong a hold as in Canada, and the _Relations_ throw little light on Louisiana. But the Seminary of Quebec had missionaries like Davion on the Mississippi and at Mobile, and Jesuits were found among the Creeks and Choctaws. The Illinois region was already known, and portages there and eastward became important, where canoes and supplies were carried from the Lakes to head waters of rivers emptying into the Gulf. Their value continued until our own century, and has pointed the way for systems of canals. Le Sueur, who, with his influential family, lived at Mobile, explored the upper Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, whence he carried green earth to France. The Ohio River was occupied to keep back the English, whose traders penetrated even to the Chickasaws and Arkansas, near modern Memphis, and Juchereau established a fort and tannery not far from our Cairo. The Red River was explored in order to bar out the Spaniards and to seize their mines. St. Denis penetrated Texas, and, as a prisoner, visited Mexico. Even the Missouri was ascended in the hopes of finding a way to the Pacific and to the Chinese trading there. Of course, the Mobile waters were well known, and fringed with industrious plantations. In 1714, Bienville took advantage of a war between the Creeks and English colonists to found Fort Toulouse among the Alibamon Indians, below Wetumpka, a move of great importance, and Fort Tombecbé high up on the Tombigbee was one good result of the unfortunate 1736 war with the Chickasaws.

Trade was at the bottom of everything. The Spaniards of Pensacola and Vera Cruz refused all commercial intercourse, and there was little more success with Havana. There was some smuggling, however, and a good deal was accomplished through the buccaneers and freebooters who roved the Gulf. But the Indians needed blankets, guns and ammunition, beads and gewgaws, and could supply furs, skins and provisions. Much could have been done in the way of agriculture, but, beyond introducing figs and raising some vegetables for local use and indigo for export, the colonists accomplished little. They were not of the right kind. At first they were from too high a rank in society to do much manual labor, and after John Law and his Mississippi Bubble exploited the province they were often jail-birds and prostitutes. Starvation faced them every now and then; mutiny was not unknown; and quarrels of priest and commandant, governor and intendant, were going on almost all the time.

And yet in war and diplomacy they did much. It was mainly with the Indians, although once Pensacola was captured from the Spanish, and Dauphine Island suffered from both Spanish and English attacks. The Choctaws and Creeks were held in alliance by congresses at Mobile; the Cherokees and Chickasaws were sometimes friendly, and the Mississippi River was kept open for free intercourse with Canada and the Illinois. Toulouse, Tombecbé, Biloxi, Natchez, Natchitoches, and, later, New Orleans and Fort Chartres and other Mississippi outposts, show the extent of French influence from the capital at Mobile.

In 1710, the site of this town had been moved from 27 Mile Bluff to where the river joins the bay. There the new Fort Louis was built, at first of logs, as shown on the plan of next year, and afterwards of brick, as Fort Condé. Its foundations still exist below the soil of the block bounded by Church, Theatre, Royal and St. Emanuel Streets, with bastions projecting across Royal and Church. Around it was laid out the town, with Royal, Conti, Dauphin and other streets just as to-day; and lots were assigned to Bienville, the sailor Chateaugué, the soldier Blondel, the explorer St. Denis, the engineer La Tour, to the priests and others. For several years affairs were generally prosperous.

The shoaling of the port on Dauphine Island in 1717 led to the removal somewhat later of the capital from Mobile, at first to Biloxi, and then to the daughter-town, New Orleans; and this made a great difference. But the fort was not abandoned and the place remained important. The Indian congresses were always held here, probably at the Indian house of posts and bark, once standing on the site of the German Relief Hall. There was the annual distribution of presents, too, with talks and solemn smoking, and Mobile was the centre of French influence for all Indian affairs. Choctaws and Creeks were always on the streets. The trade road northwestwardly to Yowanne and other Choctaw towns has become Spring Hill Avenue, connecting Dauphin Street with the suburban homes of Spring Hill, and its portage at Three-Mile Creek was long the boundary of the modern city.

The little town had its society, its church and homes, its public and private history. There are two executions of peculiar horror which are said to have occurred on the esplanade of the fort, possibly where now stands the Court-House. One was when Beaudrot, who under compulsion had guided to safety the men who killed the cruel governor of Cat Island, was placed in a coffin and sawn asunder. The other was when a similar punishment even earlier fell upon the mutineers of Fort Toulouse who murdered their commandant, Marchand, through an Indian princess, ancestor of the Creek chief McGillivray, of Washington’s time. A pleasanter remembrance of Toulouse, perhaps also in Marchand’s time, was the romance of Madame D’Aubant. Tradition makes her to have been that wife of Alexis Petrovich, the son of Peter the Great, who was thought to have died suddenly in Russia. She only feigned death, however, and escaped to America. At Mobile she met D’Aubant, an old or new lover, and, when he was stationed at the fort among the Alibamons, went there with him, taking their little girl. After his death she returned to Europe.

Mutiny was confined to the outposts, but Mobile had its own troubles. After Bienville finally left the colony in 1740, French influence over the Indians declined. Even he had been unable to restore the confidence and prestige lost through Perier’s harsh treatment of the Natchez. By the Tennessee valley and a land trail above Fort Toulouse passing not far from modern Birmingham, the English from Carolina increased their hold on the Chickasaws, and by Adair’s address had even provoked a civil war among the Choctaws.

Mobile became unsafe, and Vaudreuil connected the three squares north with Fort Condé by palisades, having gates at the esplanade, Dauphin Street, and by the present post office. So reduced was the city that a grant was made to Madame de Lusser of the south and west parts of the old town for a plantation, to be cultivated by her slaves.

This was one of many grants, but the others were not so near. The earliest known was that of a part of Dauphine Island, another of Mon Louis Island (really a part of the mainland), and the St. Louis tract between Three-Mile creek and Chickasabogue, above the city. This was where the Christian Apalaches lived, whom Bienville had colonized on their flight from Florida, as he did the Tensaws, whom he rescued from extinction on the Mississippi. These two tribes became civilized, and were moved to the east side of the Mobile delta, where they gave names to large rivers. French farmers settled all through the country, as far up as the Tombigbee, possibly as Bladon Springs, and along Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound. French names still abound, and some have been only translated. Dog River, Deer River, Fowl River, Fish River, Red Bluff, are translations, and Bayou Chateaugué (or Three-Mile Creek) still recalls Bienville’s sailor brother, as does Pont Chatooga on Dauphine Island, and Grand Bay; Isle aux Oies, Bayou Coden (Coq d’Inde), Bayou la Batré (batterie), Bon Secours and others are French to this day. Of French families, Grondel, Favre, Lusser, Narbonne, Chastang, Dubroca, and Rochon were important.

But the French development was now to cease. The Seven Years’ War had come, with the world for its stage. In that war America and India saw less fighting than Europe, but their maps were more changed. The English colonies had hitherto fringed the Atlantic, the French inhabited the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, with posts between; but Wolfe’s victory on the Plains of Abraham caused the transfer to England of all America east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans. On October 20, 1763, Colonel Robertson, with a company of Highlanders, took possession of Mobile. Fort Condé became Fort Charlotte, named for the young queen of George III., and seventeen years of British rule began.

This was not a long time, and yet in it was much change. It has been only recently made clear how thoroughly British everything became. Mather, Ancrum, Stuart, McGillivray, McCurtin, in Mobile; Walker, Carson, McGrew, Sunflower, Lizard, Campbell, and McIntosh up the river, were well-known merchants or settlers, and some of these families or sites still survive. Attorney-General Edmund Rush Wegg had a home on Mobile Bay near Battle’s, and Governor Durnford, to whom when provincial surveyor we owe the first chart of the bay (1771), lived near Montrose. The machinery of government was fully developed. The governor, council and assembly sat at Pensacola, the capital, and Mobile delegates were leaders there in what Governor Chester calls the “cantankerous” lower house. Mobile was the largest town in the vast province of West Florida, which extended from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee River, and had her own common law courts. A British custom-house was in full operation. We learn much from the military exploration of the Bigbee by Romans’s and Bartram’s botanical expedition, but most from the papers of General Haldimand, who was long in West Florida. They are preserved in the British Museum, and have been copied for the Canadian government. The collection is a mine for American history in the late sixties and early seventies. He pronounced Mobile that part of the province best fitted for development.

The British established on the Mississippi two forts that were the origin of Natchez and Baton Rouge, and also the one where the Iberville River (Bayou Manchac) left the Mississippi to take off its surplus waters to Lake Pontchartrain and the Sound. Thence the communication with Mobile was covered by a chain of islands, of which Dauphine is the easternmost. This Bayou Lake Sound passage the British endeavored to clear out and utilize, it being shorter than the ascent from the river mouth, which also they had a treaty right to use. In this way Mobile became a depot and starting-point for expeditions up the Mississippi River to the Illinois and other parts of the great West. Major Loftus started thence on his disastrous attempt to take possession, and the famous Major Robert Farmer successfully ascended from Mobile, and in conjunction with a force from the east occupied Fort Chartres. Locally the most important feature of British times was the Choctaw congress of 1765, which began for this part of America the process of “extinguishing the Indian title.” The French had acted as if the natives were subjects of their king and all territory was French. The English theory was that the savages were under a protectorate, but, while they could not treat with other nations, their lands remained their own until bought by the Crown. This is the modern doctrine of civilized nations as to all savage countries, and the United States have regularly acted on it.

The French had found no trouble with the climate or the marshes of the Mobile delta, but the British troops were less careful, and for several years suffered greatly. Summer camps were provided, one year on historic Dauphine Island, and longer at “Croftown,” on the high red bluff below Montrose, where the eye commands the full expanse of the beautiful upper bay, and where the British ships could lie at anchor within musket-shot of the sandy beach. The troops one year were practically withdrawn from all Florida on account of the expense of the establishments; but, as New Orleans was in Spanish hands, prudence compelled their early restoration. A popular revolution broke out in New Orleans, followed by a strong Spanish occupation, and the British at Mobile found it expedient to watch their neighbors closely.

When war began in Europe between these two powers, the American colonies on the Atlantic were in revolt against Great Britain. West Florida, under the overcautious General Campbell, was weak in military force. Louisiana, on the other hand, with Mexico and Cuba at her back, and ruled by the young, able, and ambitious Galvez, was strong. The result was what might have been expected.

Galvez reduced the Mississippi forts in the fall of 1779, and the next spring attacked Mobile by land, after an adventurous voyage. Durnford was in command, but he had only two hundred and seventy-five men with which to oppose two thousand. A cannonade, and Campbell’s slowness in sending aid, compelled a capitulation on March 14th, and the district became Spanish. Next year, Pensacola also succumbed. The treaty of 1783 confirmed the Floridas to Spain, and gave the English but a few months to sell their property and leave.

During the intervening years, Mobile was under military rule, but affairs gradually settled down to a peace basis. Many British abandoned their houses or farms, and left them as the property of his Catholic Majesty. The King, after an inquest showing their vacancy, regranted them, in different sizes, to his own subjects, and even to British who had taken an oath of allegiance. In this way, the grants still existing are generally new, and can seldom be traced back to English owners. Courts were held by alcaldes, and the commandant, as civil (political) and military governor, also exercised judicial power. Many proclamations, grants, suits, wills and inventories of this time are still preserved in the Probate Court. They are in thin books of rough paper, the size of legal cap, with curious old watermarks showing through the Spanish text.

The Spaniards renamed many of the streets. St. Joseph survives instead of St. Charles, and St. Emanuel, Conception, Joachim, St. Anthony and St. Michael also superseded French names. On the other hand, St. Francis, St. Louis, Conti, Dauphin and Royal have outlasted the Spanish changes. The population remained essentially French. Negro slavery had existed since the importations in the time of John Law, and there were many negroes and mulattoes, themselves owning land and slaves. But the commandant, the keeper of the royal hospital, in what is now Bienville Square, the royal physician, the commissary,--for a long time Don Miguel Eslava,--officers of the garrison and other officials were Spanish, and with their families and the priest made up an important part of the population.

For the first eight or ten years even official papers were often in French; but after the out-break of the great Revolution, everything French fell into disfavor. Proclamations posted on the gate of Fort Charlotte, not far from Royal and Government of our day, expressed the horror of the Spanish King at the crimes of that great upheaval, and called his children to a holy war. But Spain had her hands full in Europe, and the progress of her half-French post at Mobile was checked. No large public buildings were erected, and most of the private dwellings were small. They have been almost swept away by fires, but the type is preserved in old American homes. It was generally of frame, filled in between with mortar. In front was a wide porch, or gallery, as it is invariably called, often extending around the house, and a long hall, going all the way through, opened into rooms on each side. The chimneys were generally of native brick, and house and surrounding picket fence were whitewashed. The many shells furnished lime, the clay by Montrose and west of the city was utilized for brickyards, while on Dog River, on creeks above the town and on bayous across Tensaw River, were sawmills. These industries have all continued. In agriculture cotton was important, but freshets made indigo unprofitable.

Most of the cotton came from up the rivers, as around Fort St. Stephen, where are the first shoals of the Tombigbee. But the delimitation, so long demanded by the new country called the United States was finally run at 31°, and cut Mobile off from her river system. The treaty was made in 1795, and four years later Andrew Ellicott, of the joint commission, erected near the Creole settlement of Chastang’s, twenty miles from Mobile, the stone which marked the boundary. The result was a rapid influx of Americans north of the line, and the formation of the Mississippi Territory.

The hoisting of the American flag at Fort St. Stephen began the marvellous development and expansion of the United States. Kentucky and Tennessee became States, and Louisiana was purchased, by which the Union crossed the Mississippi. Finally, during the War of 1812, General James Wilkinson took possession of Mobile on April 15, 1813. This was on the theory, consistently adhered to by our Government, that Mobile was still a part of Louisiana. Whether the theory would have been carried out if Spain had been a strong power at the time is a different question.

So Mobile became American, the seaport of Mississippi Territory, whose extent was much that of the old British province of West Florida. The chief difference was that, as its south line was at 31°, there was no seacoast except about Mobile, and that this was compensated by giving a greater extent to the north. When the territory was divided in two, the west half made Mississippi and the east became Alabama, embracing roughly the basins draining to Mobile Bay.

Most of Wilkinson’s soldiers came _via_ New Orleans, but Mobile was really Americanized from the up-country. Washington County, that vast district of the territory on both sides of the Tombigbee, had been rapidly settled after the Spaniards withdrew. The Methodist, Lorenzo Dow, repeatedly ministered there on his meteor circuits. St. Stephen’s, Tensaw and Fort Stoddert became centres of influence. American courts were regularly held at Wakefield, and American civilization was firmly established in the first few years of this century. The Government was strong enough, in 1807, even to capture the popular Aaron Burr, near the Court-House on his flight from Natchez to the Spanish lines, and to send him on to Richmond for trial.

This development was largely in anticipation of the occupation of Mobile, and when that occurred many people moved thither. Some of the oldest families trace their ancestors to Washington County. St. Stephen’s was almost as much the first site of American Mobile as 27 Mile Bluff was of the French town; and both are now as deserted as Nineveh. Even an American rival, the younger town of Blakeley, over on the Tensaw River, has succumbed and joined its people to the Gulf City. Much of Mobile’s American growth has been due to immigration from the upriver counties.

For the first few years the great Creek War prevailed, which resulted in driving the Creeks east of a line running southeast from old Fort Toulouse. It was begun by the massacre of perhaps five hundred men, women and children at Fort Mims, in the Tensaw district, terrifying the whole Southwest. It did not reach Mobile, but a blockhouse was built near the present cathedral. The war was marked by thrilling scenes in Washington County and the fork made by the Alabama and Bigbee; by such incidents as the Canoe Fight on the lower Alabama River and Austill’s night ride; and by Claiborne’s storming of the Holy Ground. In it Andrew Jackson won his fame up on the Coosa and Tallapoosa by such battles as that of the Horse Shoe Bend. When he had made peace with the brave Creek Weatherford, and sent Pushmataha and the allied Choctaws home, he floated down to Mobile.

And there was need. The British were preparing to invade the country. Four vessels under Commodore Percy attacked Fort Bowyer at the mouth of the bay, but Lawrence with the garrison brilliantly repelled them. His motto was, “Don’t give up the fort.” The _Hermes_ drifted directly under his guns and was fired, and then the others withdrew. Indians, under Woodbine, were on land near by, but had no opportunity to participate.

Jackson reconnoitred around Mobile. His headquarters are said to have been at an old Spanish building, standing until a few years since at the southwest corner of Conti and Conception Streets, opposite the site of the Indian House of former times; but the troops were encamped south of the town, near Frascati. A tree under which he dined used to be pointed out over Three-Mile Creek, and a magnificent Jackson Oak is still shown at the village on the bay above Daphne, commemorating a stop on the way to the capture of Pensacola. It was from Mobile that he issued the two famous proclamations to Louisianians, white and black; and the first stage of his march westward to win the battle of New Orleans was at that beautiful spot near Cottage Hill ever since called the Cantonment.

After their defeat at New Orleans, the British reappeared at Mobile in overwhelming force. Fort Bowyer now had to surrender, and Dauphine Island was for months occupied by British troops. But the treaty of Ghent caused its restoration, and Mobile settled down to its long American development.

“Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war,” but they have less of incident. The settlement of Alabama, the immigration from the Atlantic States to the lands won in the Creek War, developed her Gulf port. Cotton was king, and it made her queen. Even in 1818, the year before Alabama became a State, Mobile had established her Bank of Mobile, and primitive steamboats, such as the _Harriet_ and _Cotton Plant_, built much on the model of Fulton’s _Clermont_, were already plying the rivers.

Everything was rude, as in frontier towns, but here could be found all kinds of people. Bertrand, Comte Clausel, the distinguished opponent of Wellington in Spain, lived for a number of years after 1816 on the bay, near present Arlington, the possible site of Bienville’s villa. Here he wrote his _Exposé Justificatif_, explaining that defection to Napoleon during the Hundred Days for which the Bourbons condemned him to death; and here he raised vegetables and carried them to market in his own wagon. Through Mobile passed those other Napoleonic exiles who, in 1818, ascended the Bigbee to found the unfortunate Vine and Olive company, in what was called for them Marengo County. Near Clausel lived Lakanal, the regicide, the creator of the educational system of revolutionary France. He was for a short time president of the Orleans College of Louisiana; but with his wife, Marie Barbe, he also spent most of his American life raising market vegetables in Garrow’s Bend. Tradition says that he and his neighbor Clausel brought their political differences with them, and would not associate. He was violently opposed to Lafayette. That great Frenchman was enthusiastically welcomed to Mobile in 1825. Arches were erected on Royal Street, and he is said to have been entertained at the house on Government Street opposite the Presbyterian Church. Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, included America in his _grand tour_, and in January, 1826, he also was at Mobile. He does not mention Lakanal at all, nor the Protestant Union Church, built a few years before where Christ Church stands. But the Catholic Church on Royal and Conti, with its tin altar service, and the three thousand people,--French, American, Indian and negro,--interested him; the compress, which by a vise reduced the bale one third; the thirty vessels in the harbor waiting for cotton; the volunteer company celebrating the battle of New Orleans; the wooden houses and brick public buildings, the plank walks and the gambling-houses, the prison, with its whipping-post, are all recorded. This marks a great advance on Hodgson’s unpleasing description of the place in 1820, and, in fact, Mobile had begun that progress which soon distanced the progress of her rivals and made her in the thirties a great city.

She was the natural result of the growth of the interior, whose products in those days, before railroads, could go nowhere except to Mobile. This growth brought trade, and with it immigration. In 1830, the cotton exported exceeded one hundred thousand bales; in 1837, over three hundred thousand, and by 1840 was almost four hundred and fifty thousand. The population grew to twelve thousand. The results were apparent everywhere. The United States Bank and the State Bank had branches, and others were organized. There was paper money galore. Water and gas were introduced; lands for Bienville Square were bought by the city; the Presbyterian, Christ and other churches were built; a public school system, the first in Alabama, was organized, and the Barton Academy erected; Hitchcock’s Press was operated, and the Cedar Point Railway and Grant’s Pass show attempts to get nearer to Dauphine Island and the Sound. A lighter side of the same activity was the formation, in 1830, by Michael Krafft and his merry companions of the famous Cowbellion de Rakin Society, the predecessor of the Strikers, O. O. M., and every other mystic organization in the South. It was the transfer of their celebrations from New Year’s Eve to Mardi Gras which has made the carnival season famous. The city grew in all directions; old Creole homes gave way to modern houses, the Orange Grove Tract was built up in warehouses, and St. Michael Street, because of its shipping interests, was called the British Channel. New streets were opened, Spring Hill became a famous summer resort, and handsome residences soon adorned both shores of the bay.

Then, alas, came the panic of 1837, in which, however, the Bank of Mobile is said to have been one of the four banks in the whole country which did not suspend. Everything else seemed to go to pieces. Even the city government made an assignment. To add to the distress, in 1839 was the most disastrous of all fires, in its two attacks sweeping Royal Street and Dauphin and St. Francis up to where the cathedral then stood unfinished. An epidemic of yellow fever the same summer slew the inhabitants as the fire destroyed their property. The year 1839 is the blackest in Mobile’s history, and Percy Walker’s picture of that dire summer, before the Alabama Legislature, deserves to rank high among American orations.

The depression lasted several years, and before complete recovery it became complicated with a commercial problem. Railroads had been invented, and Mobile with all other ports had to face new problems. M. J. D. Baldwin preached the necessity of building a Mobile road to the growing West, but long he was laughed at as a Cassandra. He persevered, and in 1848 the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was begun towards Cairo, Illinois. It was a magnificent conception, and right fitting it was that Baldwin should have driven the last spike of its realization. The result was that by 1860 the cotton receipts had grown to eight hundred thousand bales, and the next year were about a million.

In 1852 was a disastrous flood, and next year the worst epidemic of her history; but the results were only temporary. New banks, like the Southern and Mechanics (afterwards the Mobile Savings), were organized, the Battle House, Custom-House and other fine buildings erected, and Fort Gaines faced older Fort Morgan at the mouth of the bay. Society had long outgrown the crudeness of earlier days, and Mobile hospitality and refinement were famous. At her Bar were John A. Campbell (whose sister, Mrs. Chandler, was the grandmother of the Mrs. Maybrick, now so famous), Daniel Chandler, George N. Stewart, Robert H. Smith, Peter Hamilton, D. C. Anderson, Philip Phillips, E. S. Dargan and other splendid lawyers. In literature there was ample atonement for the neglect of early days. Among Mobile’s books appeared in 1854 Dr. Nott’s _Types of Mankind_, and in 1859 came Madame LeVert’s _Souvenirs of Travel_, and Augusta Evans’s _Beulah_. John Forsyth and Charles C. Langdon were famous editors of the time, and politics, of course, ran high. The town was generally Whig, and Mr. Clay’s welcome in 1844 was as cordial as was that of Jackson in earlier years. At that time, by the way, Macready held the boards, and drawled a strenuous objection to the announcement on his playbills that Henry Clay would be present at one of his performances.

Mobile theatres, except the last, have generally burned after a few years. The best was built by Caldwell on Royal Street, near St. Michael, and the best-known manager was Noah M. Ludlow, who, with Sol. Smith, operated a Mobile-New Orleans-St. Louis circuit. Ludlow and Smith played a great part in the history of the theatre in the Mississippi Valley. Ludlow’s memoirs are an invaluable compilation, and can almost be claimed as a Mobile book, for he long lived here. J. H. Hackett, Madame Celeste, Ellen Tree, Edwin Forrest, J. B. Booth, Macready, H. Placide, Charles Kean, Mrs. Mowatt, Julia Dean, John T. Raymond and Charlotte Cushman were often on the Mobile stage. The present theatre was opened in 1860, and the late Speaker Crisp was often about it when his father conducted it during the war.

Fortunately for her, Mobile was not the immediate seat of any part of that great civil conflict; but she was thoroughly loyal to the Confederate cause, and furnished most of her best blood to its support. The Mobile Cadets were tendered by Captain Sands immediately on receipt of President Davis’s call for volunteers, and from there went out, among others, the 3d, 8th, 21st and 24th Alabama regiments, the two companies of State Artillery and Charpentier’s and Watters’s Batteries. There are unmarked graves of Mobile boys from Pennsylvania to Texas.

The Mobile post office in the interregnum issued its much-prized stamps,--two-cent black and five-cent blue. Later the streets were alive with Confederate uniforms, for camps were in the suburbs, and Government Street was the scene of memorable reviews. Society even in those war times was often gay. Courts, too, continued open, although litigation was limited.

Groceries and staples changed hands, much as ever, but at prices measured in gradually depreciating Confederate money. Two hundred dollars for a barrel of flour, or finally even for a pair of shoes, and twelve hundred for a suit of clothes, were not unknown. The wits said that a basket was as much needed to carry the paper money to market as to bring back what it bought. After a while co-operative associations, with agents all through the country to buy supplies, became necessary in order to get things to the city at all. Coffee and some other articles almost disappeared, and various substitutes were used. Books and even money were printed on material that once would have been discarded, and the rough Confederate writing-paper still remains a curiosity.

One new occupation came into being. While Semmes of Mobile, in the privateers _Sumter_ and _Alabama_, and Maffitt in the _Florida_, were destroying all Northern commerce which they could find on the ocean, the Federal navy was blockading Southern ports. This was designed to prevent supplies from getting in and cotton from getting out to Europe, and thus doubly to cripple the South. Blockade-running by swift Confederate vessels became common and often successful. The destination of the runners was generally the neutral port of Nassau, in British West Indies. Among these grayish-white vessels were the _Alice_, _Denbigh_, and _Red Gauntlet_. They carried, according to the size, from six hundred to twelve hundred bales of cotton, and brought back miscellaneous cargoes, in which drugs and war stores usually figured. Many of them were captured, and there was no insurance; but others made a dozen or more successful trips. The _Heroine_, now used as a bay boat, was one of the small blockade-runners. A Mobile Presbyterian minister took his wedding trip on the _Swan_, bound for Nassau, but was captured with his bride and taken North.

Fort Morgan, under General Page, was well equipped, and kept the blockaders at a respectful distance. Shots were frequently exchanged between them and the fort, and sometimes, when they ventured to anchor too near the coast, they were surprised by a ball from a cannon, run out behind a sandhill during the night.

FROM A PAINTING BY R. S. FLOYD.]

The cruiser _Florida_ was one of the ships built in England for the Confederacy, and turned over to its authorities out at sea. Maffitt took her to Nassau and Cuba, but, as his small crew was sick with yellow fever, and he needed further equipment, he made for Mobile. Personating an English vessel, the _Florida_, in broad daylight on September 4, 1862, ran by the _Oneida_, _Winona_ and _Cayuga_ into Mobile Bay, amid a hail of shot and shell. She remained four months, mainly in the deep water off Montrose. The Union fleet was strengthened, and was on the watch for her to come out. But Maffitt, on January 16th, before day, ran through the blockaders again, to their great chagrin, and, although chased, got away to capture prizes off the coast of Cuba. As it turned out, the only way the Federals were able to capture the _Florida_ was in the neutral port of Bahia, while her captain was ashore,--a flagrant breach of international law.

About Mobile a line of land fortifications was early built, at first too far out to be held by a small force. The entrenchments are still visible two miles from town, the most prominent being Fort Sidney Johnson, on the bay beyond Frascati. Afterwards one or more lines were constructed nearer in, and remains lately could be seen near the head of St. Joseph Street, on both sides of Government east of Ann Street, near the Bascombe race track and near the Southern Drain. Slave labor built them under the supervision of Engineers Pillans and Van Scheliha. These redoubts were never much used, however. The great battles for Mobile were fought at the mouth of the bay and near Blakeley.

Obstructions and torpedoes filled the channels between Forts Gaines and Morgan, except for a short distance immediately under the guns of Morgan. Within the bay lay the Confederate fleet, consisting of three gunboats and the powerful ram _Tennessee_. This vessel had been built during 1863 and 1864 at Selma, and was equipped with five-inch iron armor at Mobile. As she drew thirteen feet, while the Dog River bar allowed but eight or nine, wooden caissons were sunk and attached to her, and when they were pumped out they raised and lifted her also. The whole Confederate fleet mustered but four hundred and seventy men and twenty-two guns, while the Federal consisted of fourteen steamers and four monitors, carrying twenty-seven hundred men and one hundred and ninety-nine guns.

Farragut started on his perilous passage early in the morning of August 5th, his vessels lashed in pairs, the monitor _Tecumseh_ in the lead. Then came the _Brooklyn_ with her mate, and next the flagship _Hartford_, the Admiral in the rigging. As the stately procession neared the fort, all engaged on both sides in a murderous cannonade. Suddenly the _Tecumseh_ lurched, and, in a few seconds, sank, struck by a torpedo. The _Brooklyn_, despite her torpedo protector, wavered and backed, confusing the whole column, and giving the gunners in the fort an opportunity of which they made good use. But Farragut pushed the _Hartford_ to the front, and restored order, leading the others, amidst a galling fire, into the bay. A little boat had rowed out to save the few who did not go down in the _Tecumseh_, and the Confederates chivalrously refused to fire upon them, despite the Union flag defiantly run up. The fleet, though much damaged, gradually passed in.

An engagement followed with the little Confederate squadron, but the odds were too great. One gunboat was sunk, another captured, a third finally got away to Mobile, and the ram took shelter, apparently for repairs, under the guns of the fort. And then, to the astonishment of friend and foe, the _Tennessee_ boldly made straight up the bay to ram the Federal fleet. Vessel after vessel rammed and fought her, but she held her own, unwavering, seeking the flagship _Hartford_, which, however, was too swift for her to overtake. She engaged the whole fleet at once in one of the most heroic naval combats of history, and did not desist until her plates were loosened, port shutters jammed, smoke-stack carried away, many of the crew wounded, Admiral Buchanan disabled, and the steering apparatus shot away, leaving her as helpless as a log. Then, at last, she hauled down her flag. Farragut sent Buchanan and the wounded to Pensacola, a ship peaceably passing the fort after arrangements had been made for that purpose under a flag of truce.

Troops landed on Dauphine Island had already driven the Confederates into Fort Gaines, and it was invested by land and sea. Farragut had an interview with Col. Anderson, convinced him that resistance was useless, and thus induced him to surrender the fort with all its stores. The Pelham Cadets, Mobile’s home guard of young men, had lately been sent down, and they were captured with the regular garrison.

General Granger landed at Navy Cove with an overwhelming force, and after approaches, run gradually closer from day to day, by the 22d Fort Morgan was completely invested by army and navy. The discipline of the garrison continued perfect, standing the test of an unbroken bombardment, whose thunders were heard at Mobile, thirty miles away. Many shells were thrown into the fort, the citadel fired, and at last the walls were breached in several places. Further defence was impossible, and after spending a night in destroying everything capable of destruction General Page surrendered.

General J. E. Johnston is said to have pronounced Mobile the best fortified city in the Confederacy. If the fortifications on or near the Tensaw River could be taken, however, transports, if not vessels of the fleet, could be sent behind the torpedoes and obstructions to the city wharves.

Therefore Canby, with forty-five thousand troops, including a column under Steele from Pensacola, undertook to overcome about five thousand Confederates in Spanish Fort, which was named from the bastion built by Galvez almost a century before. Randall L. Gibson, since Senator from Louisiana, was there in command, reporting--like Lidell at Blakeley--by telegraph to D. H. Maury at Mobile. Gibson handled his fifteen hundred men admirably from Fort McDermott on the right, Red Fort in the centre, and along the line to the swamp, which was relied on to protect his left. The principal gun in his Red Fort was an eight-inch Columbiad, cast at Selma in 1863, and manned by Louisiana artillery, commanded by Slocum. This gun did terrible execution, and dismantled a whole fortification. But, while the sand-bags were still removed for that shot, Federal gunners dismounted her, and killed several men at their posts by her side.[8] Spanish Fort held out thirteen days against over thirty thousand men. The riflemen in the opposing pits even became friendly, and exchanged yarns and courtesies. The fleet, after three vessels had been sunk by torpedoes, picked up enough torpedoes to get within range, and the discovery of a passage through the swamp made it necessary to abandon the whole fort. Blakeley, with its garrison of about three thousand, was finally stormed on April 9th, the day Lee surrendered in Virginia.

Maury felt that he could not hold Mobile with only four thousand five hundred men, for the Federals could now attack from the river and land at once; and so he withdrew to Meridian. Blakeley was the last great battle of the war.

The Federal troops occupied Mobile immediately upon the surrender by Mayor Slough on April 12th, camping in the suburbs, on Government Street and elsewhere. One unfortunate result was the terrible explosion on May 25th, from careless handling of ammunition in a warehouse on Water and Lipscomb Streets. There were hundreds killed, more than $700,000 of warehouse property was destroyed, and the whole business section of the city was injured. Such was the return of peace!

* * * * *

Mobile, since the Civil War, offers a fruitful field for study. The few flush years, when commerce first revived; Reconstruction, with slaves over masters; bond issues from 1870 on railroads that were never built, resulting in bankruptcy in 1879; the panics of 1873 and 1893, the first of which depressed everything, while the other showed that Mobile had become sound again; new railroads and commercial growth in every line, consequent on the Government’s cutting the ship channel, twenty-three feet deep, through the bars to the lower bay; the growing rivalry of the Gulf port with Eastern harbors for the Western trade to Latin America and even Europe; the passing of the once dreaded yellow fever; the good relations which have existed between the negroes and whites since they were relieved of outside interference; the Cuban War, with its American soldiers (some from Mobile) encamped on ground once occupied by Confederates, and the picturesque embarkation of troops for Santiago; extensive municipal improvements; impressive public structures, such as the Y. M. C. A. Building, new hotels, and the Semmes statue; the advance of literature, also, which has kept Augusta Evans as Mrs. Wilson, and added Madame Chaudron, Father Ryan, T. C. De Leon, Amélie Rives, Hannis Taylor, and others:--these things are important, but are too recent for detailed treatment.

The net result, however, is that Mobile has faced the political questions growing out of the war, the commercial conditions arising from the building of railroad systems eastward, the development of independent cities in what had been her exclusive territory, just as she has met so many other problems in her long history. What she could conquer she has overcome, and for what she must lose she has substituted other industries. Lumber, coal and iron far overbalance the loss of cotton, and there is no mean array of manufactures, while her railroad and steamship territory yearly increase. To-day her population, trade and prospects are greater than anything she has known before. She has had little of the outside capital which other towns have enjoyed, and she has had no “booms.” But the great fire of 1890, the storm of 1893, and even pestilence in 1897 did not daunt her. In wealth, culture and industry this Latin-American town has carved out her own place. Her shady streets and drives invite visitors, and her pleasant homes shelter quiet but energetic people. Born in romance, baptized in fire, educated in commerce, her past is interesting, her present prosperous, while her future promises to surpass them both.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] This gun, called the Lady Slocum, could long be seen on Government Street in Mobile, but is now in New Orleans.

MONTGOMERY

THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY

BY GEORGE PETRIE

Montgomery is best known to the general reader as the “Cradle of the Confederacy.” He turns to its history, if he cares to read it at all, to get a clearer local background for the stirring scenes enacted there in ’61. And it would have been hard to select for them a more appropriate setting. For in many ways Montgomery was then a typical Southern town. Situated in the heart of the cotton region, surrounded and supported by large plantations, it was the centre of much wealth and refinement. As the home of Yancey and other men of unusual ability and divergent politics, it had been the battleground where all phases of secession were keenly discussed. Moreover, although founded by a New Englander and originally named New Philadelphia, it had from the first taken a vigorous part in the economic and political struggles which gradually separated North and South.

To reach the origin of Montgomery, one must go back nearly to the beginning of the century. From the misty traditions that early gathered like an Indian-summer haze about the red bluffs on which the city now stands, the first tangible object to emerge is old Moore’s log cabin, perched insecurely on the high river bank. Here Captain Woodward visited him, and long afterwards wrote: “Arthur Moore, the first white man that built a house and lived in it at Montgomery, built it in the latter part of 1815, or early in 1816. The cabin stood upon the bluff above what was once called the ravine.... The spot where the cabin stood had long gone into the river before I left the country.” Here it stood high and solitary on the crumbling cliff, a picturesque connecting link between the legendary days of the Indian Town, Ecunchatty, and the bustling Western scenes so soon to follow.

Barely two years later the territorial government of Alabama was established, and the prospect of protection under it proved an inducement to the tide of population then setting strongly toward the Southwest. Fabulous reports of the fertility of the soil got abroad, and a steady stream of settlers poured across from the land office at Milledgeville, Georgia, through the Creek lands into Alabama territory.

Among these pioneers were many men of excellent family from all parts of the South, and even from far-off New England. One of the earliest was Andrew Dexter, of Rhode Island, nephew of the well-known Samuel Dexter, of Massachusetts. In 1817 he bought the land on which the eastern half of Montgomery now stands, and paid for it later with the assistance of John Falconer, a fellow pioneer from South Carolina. Dexter was a man of large ideas and remarkable foresight, and at once recognized the importance of his purchase as a site for a town. By the very modern plan of offering free lots, he persuaded several traders to join his venture, and proceeded to lay off his town. With touching faith, he reserved a fine site on the crest of the most commanding hill for the future state capitol. It was a prophetic dream that had to wait thirty years for its fulfilment. Goat-sheds meanwhile adorned its brow, and gave it the unpoetic name, “Goat Hill.”

Among the original settlers who came with Dexter was John G. Klinck, a South Carolinian of sanguine and enthusiastic temperament, who, writing years afterwards of the town in these early days, says:

“As soon after this as I could have the centre pointed out to me, I
selected my lot, which was a privilege of first choice, and to name
the place, which I called New Philadelphia--and the name was never
changed until 1819. I employed a Mr. Bell to build me a cabin, and in
showing him where, we found on the corner a post oak in the way of
laying the ground sill, when I immediately seized the axe and felled
it, remarking to Bell, ‘This is the first tree: future ages will tell
the tale.’”

Immigration was brisk, and the high and healthy bluffs were tempting sites for homes. So the next year, 1818, two more towns sprang up in sight of New Philadelphia. One was a mile or two down stream, and bore the name “Alabama Town.” The other, immediately adjoining, was called “East Alabama Town.” Its site is now included in the part of Montgomery west of Court Street. The jealous rivalry that followed was seasoned with many pranks played by one town on the other. The redoubtable Mr. Klinck, on one chilly night, fired his musket with such continued energy that the neighboring town supposed the Indians were upon them, fled over the river, and men, women and children spent the night among the canes and bushes.

The inconvenience of this rivalry soon became apparent, and on December 3, 1819, New Philadelphia and East Alabama Town were united in one town called Montgomery, a name whose origin Mr. Klinck explains thus: