Part 15

Savannah during the Revolution recalls a story of blood and suffering. If her people delayed in severing the bonds which united them to the mother country, they struck promptly and boldly when the issue came, and were zealous throughout their long period of captivity in opposing the forces of his Majesty’s government. After the colonists had seized the powder from the royal magazine, and had erected the liberty pole on King George’s birthday, they went actively to work in fortifying the city against the British troops. In February, 1776, when the English war-ships and transports sailed up the river, they were met by the patriots with a galling volley, and their fleet was afterwards scattered by a fire-ship set adrift from the American shore, communicating the flames to the British boats and sending their men and sailors through the marshes in flight. On the 29th of December, 1778, General Howe, the commander of the Americans, was defeated by Colonel Campbell. The English and Hessian soldiers marched through a small path in the swamp, and fell suddenly upon the flank and rear of the Americans, consisting of but nine hundred men, while Colonel Campbell’s forces, which had been landed at Tybee Island, numbered three thousand five hundred. The remainder of General Howe’s army escaped into South Carolina, and the British took possession of Savannah, which they held for three years and a half. In October, 1779, a bloody battle was fought at Savannah, but the British again triumphed over the allied forces of the French and Americans. Count D’Estaing arrived off Tybee with thirty-five ships and five thousand men. General Lachlan McIntosh and Count Casimir Pulaski marched down from Augusta and formed a junction with D’Estaing. The engagement took place at Spring Hill redoubt, now the site of the Georgia Railway. Count D’Estaing was shot, the noble Pulaski was killed, and the gallant Jasper, who endeavored to plant the American flag upon the redoubt, fell mortally wounded. Shortly afterwards, the French fleet sailed away, and the American forces were left to harass the enemy from time to time. This was done in splendid style by General Anthony Wayne, the Rough Rider of the Revolution, who dashed into the British with his flying columns and inflicted damage day by day. Finally, on the 11th of July, 1782, the English surrendered to General Wayne, who entered the city and rescued it from its long captivity. A memorial tablet, placed in position at the old site of Tondee’s tavern, marks the spot where the early patriots, braving violence abroad, and even derision at home, erected their liberty pole, while the frowning battlements of a model bastion commemorate the name of Pulaski.

[Illustration: COUNT CASIMIR PULASKI.]

At the siege of Savannah the city held only about four hundred houses and less than one thousand people. George Washington, who visited the city in 1790, writes in his diary that the place was “high and sandy,” that the town was surrounded with “rich and luxuriant rice fields,” that the harbor was “filled with square-rigged vessels,” and that the chief trade was tobacco, indigo, hemp, lumber and cotton. General Washington was received with every evidence of honor, and the Chatham Artillery was by him presented with handsome guns. This memorable organization, second only to the Ancient and Honorables, of Hartford, fired a salute to George Washington, as they afterwards did to Presidents Monroe, Arthur, Cleveland and McKinley upon their visits to this city. The Chathams served in the Civil War and in the late Spanish-American struggle.

The first steamship ever built in the United States was projected and owned in this city. It was named the _Savannah_, and in April, 1819, sailed for Liverpool, completing the voyage across the sea in twenty-two days. Off Cape Clear the _Savannah_ was signalled as a vessel on fire, and a cutter was sent to Cork for her relief. Thus Savannah perfected not only the cotton-gin, but steam navigation, which revolutionized the industry and commerce of the world. Savannah continued to prosper down to the period of the Civil War, having completed the Georgia Central Railway, the longest and most important line in the South and built up large foreign and domestic commerce at her port.

[Illustration: FORT PULASKI.]

When the troubles leading up to the Civil War opened, Savannah did not wait for the State of Georgia to secede, but, true to the traditions of Revolutionary ancestry, seized Fort Pulaski on the 3d of January, 1861. The State convention, which framed a new constitution for Georgia, assembled in Savannah on the 7th of March, and the flag of the Confederacy was thrown to the breeze from the United States Custom-House with a salute of seven guns, one for each State of the young nation. The moving spirit of secession in Savannah, the “Mad Anthony Wayne” of the State, was Francis S. Bartow, a young man who, failing to receive permission from the State authorities to go to Virginia, summoned his company and went without orders, sending back in defiance the message to Governor Brown: “I go to illustrate Georgia.” He was killed with several of his command at the first battle of Manassas, so that Savannah received the baptism of blood at the very beginning of the Civil War. In November, 1861, General Robert E. Lee made his headquarters in Savannah and inspected its defences. He pronounced Fort Pulaski impregnable, and said its walls, which were seven and a half feet thick, would withstand the heaviest cannon. The rifled guns of large calibre, however, had not then been tested, and their penetrating power was unknown. As a matter of fact, the fort was breached by Union batteries from Tybee Island in one day. On the 11th of April, 1862, General Gillmore, who had constructed the fort for the Government at a cost of $500,000, reduced it at a range of from two thousand to three thousand five hundred yards. One remarkable fact about the defence of Fort Pulaski was that the Confederates allowed the Northern fleet to sail back of the fort through Wall’s Cut, and interrupt communication with the city. It was through this identical channel that the British reinforced their troops in 1779, the French fleet failing to guard the narrow pass. In July, 1863, the Confederate ironclad ship _Atlanta_, fitted out in Savannah, sailed for Warsaw Sound to meet the monitors _Weehawken_ and _Nahant_. The _Atlanta_ ran aground, and was shot to pieces by her antagonists. On December 26, 1864, General Sherman’s army captured the city, eighty-six years, almost to the day, after the British captured it from General Howe. Savannah then contained about twenty thousand people. To-day it has over sixty thousand, is the largest and busiest seaport on the South Atlantic, ships more than a million bales of cotton a year, and handles more than a million packages of naval stores. At Tybee Roads, where Oglethorpe first anchored his good ship _Ann_; where the English fleet halted before attacking the town; where D’Estaing moored his French frigates and waited for the Americans to join him; where the colonists captured the powder ship from the English, the first naval engagement of the Revolution; where the sturdy Southern ironclad met the invulnerable monitors of the Union, ships of every flag now ride and rest. Not alone the little “square-rigged vessels” which Washington saw, but big ocean steamships, of which the _Savannah_ was the pioneer, now plow their way to foreign and domestic ports. The shipping of Savannah exceeds that of all the South Atlantic and Gulf ports from Baltimore to Mobile.

[Illustration: R. M. CHARLTON, POET, JURIST, U. S. SENATOR.]

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MOBILE

“THE GULF CITY”

BY PETER J. HAMILTON

Perhaps Mobile is the only American city which has seen five flags wave as emblems of the peaceful rule of as many civilized powers. She has been French, English, Spanish, American and Confederate by turn, and her street names perpetuate her varied story. In the original Creole limits, we find Dauphin and Royal, of the French era; Government, St. Joseph, and Conception, of the Spanish; just without, come many American names like Jackson, Franklin, Monroe, and Congress; and the Mexican War produced Monterey; while Beauregard, Davis Avenue, and Charleston Street, among others, point to Confederate times and feelings. The Latin element is merged in the Teutonic, but it is still shown by the narrow thoroughfares, in the character of the people, and in some of their institutions and diversions. Steam, electricity, sewers, waterworks, shell roads and handsome buildings have caused a long and romantic history to be half forgotten. Let us recall its chief events.

The region had a story even back of the European. Not only are Dauphine Island and the Portersville coast at the mouth of the bay fringed with banks of oyster-shell, but on the marsh islands of the Mobile delta, and in the swamps adjoining, one often finds huge piles of clam-shells and high mounds of earth. These sometimes contain human bones and ornaments, and point to a large native population before the white man came.

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.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE PAGE OF BAPTISMAL RECORD (1704) WITH THE AUTOGRAPH OF BIENVILLE.]

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.

[Illustration: PLAN OF MOBILE AND OF FORT LOUIS IN 1711.]

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.

[Illustration: THE BAY SHELL ROAD AT LOVERS’ LANE.]