Part 16

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.

[Illustration: MOBILE IN 1765.]

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.

[Illustration: THE ELLICOTT STONE.]

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.

[Illustration: PLACE WHERE AARON BURR WAS CAPTURED.]

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.

[Illustration: JOHN A. CAMPBELL.]

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.

[Illustration: RAPHAEL SEMMES IN 1861.]

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.