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.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] This gun, called the Lady Slocum, could long be seen on Government
Street in Mobile, but is now in New Orleans.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration: OLD CANNON OF BIENVILLE.]
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:
“All was agreed, and the union took place. Now for the name? What
shall be done? It will never do to call it ‘New Philadelphia,’ nor
‘Yankee Town’: either scent too strong for ‘Georgy.’ I have it:
we will call it Montgomery, after the county. It was settled upon
without a dissenting voice, and to the great satisfaction of all
concerned, the name being equally dear to every American throughout
the land.”
On the other hand, the Montgomery _Republican_ of 1821 states very
positively that the county was named after Lemuel Montgomery, who fell
in the fight against the Creek Indians at Horseshoe, and the town
after Richard Montgomery, who was killed at Quebec. Perhaps the river
bluffs may have suggested to local pride the heights of Quebec, or
possibly the true explanation is suggested in Klinck’s last sentence.
It was a name equally satisfactory to all parties. Like a political
platform, they all accepted it, and then interpreted it to suit their
tastes. The origin of the city in the union of two towns may still
be traced in the fact that the streets west of lower Court Street
run at an angle to those east of it. Alabama Town stayed out of the
consolidation, but the union town had superior resources. First the
business, then the citizens, drifted over, and like the earlier Indian
town it passed into the twilight of history.
With union came strength and bigger notions, and Montgomery, in the
twenties, was a bustling little frontier town, full of enterprise
and ambition. One writer, with fond enthusiasm, speaks of its “dense
population.” The editor of its first newspaper wrote: “Montgomery,
from its high and airy situation ... is considered peculiarly healthy;
indeed, many resort to that section during the Summer months.... For an
infant establishment, it may be called a pleasant, flourishing town.”
In another issue he adds: “Its present population is about six hundred.”
There was a healthy demand for houses, as is shown by the
advertisements in the newspaper. One man offers a gun and a rifle in
exchange for planks and shingles, and another a saddle-horse for bricks
and mortar. A wholesome respect, at least, was shown for learning in
the prompt establishment of schools, and in the advertised arrival of
such sturdy books as Murray’s _Grammar_, Webster’s _Speller_, Watts’s
_Psalms and Hymns_, and (for lighter use) song and dream books. Town
and country struggle amusingly in the ordinance that imposed a tax of
fifty cents for every dog a family kept--_more than one_.
The Court-House stood in the centre of what is at present Court Square,
and from it the houses extended mainly in two lines, one up what is
now Dexter Avenue, toward Goat Hill, the other down Commerce Street
toward the river. Perhaps a trace of the New England “Meeting-house” is
to be found in the multifarious uses to which this building was put.
Here law courts met with suggestive frequency during the week, and the
congregation assembled on Sundays when notified by a special messenger
that a preacher was in town, while celebrations, oratory, and even
dancing, kept it lively at night.
A motley population rises before our eyes as we run through the list
of their amusements. There is the speculator at the horse-races, the
frontiersman at the Indian ball game, the vociferous patriot at the
regular celebration of the Fourth of July and Washington’s Birthday,
and even the spirits of defeated Indians and English seem to gaze
grimly from the background at the hearty observance of Jackson Day.
Yet among all these the most significant fact is the earnestness and
delight with which the drama was cultivated. A company composed of
local amateurs on December 17, 1822, presented Shakespeare’s play,
_Julius Cæsar_, in the upper story of the old building still standing
at the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa Streets, and if we may believe
the newspaper “it went down to the satisfaction of a numerous and
splendid audience.” Of the actors, one afterwards became Governor of
Alabama, another United States Senator, another a State Supreme Court
Judge, and a fourth, Governor of Georgia.
[Illustration: DEXTER AVENUE DURING A STREET FAIR.]
It was a memorable day in the history of this little town when, on
April 3, 1825, the great Frenchman Lafayette, then on his last visit to
America, stopped here. The reception given him, though not without its
amusing incidents, portrays vividly the eager and open-hearted temper
of the citizens. Escorted by three hundred Alabamians and a number
of Indians, he reached Montgomery on a beautiful spring morning, and
was met by the entire population on what is now Capitol Hill. Captain
Woodward, who was one of his escort, thus quaintly describes the scene:
“On Goat Hill, and near where Captain John Carr fell in the
well, stood Governor Pickens and the largest crowd I ever saw in
Montgomery. Some hundred yards east of the Hill was a sand flat,
where General Lafayette and his attendants quit carriages and horses,
formed a line and marched to the top of the hill. As we started,
the band struck up the old Scottish air, _Hail to the Chief_. As we
approached the Governor, Mr. Hill introduced the General to him. The
Governor tried to welcome him; but, like the best man the books give
account of, when it was announced that he was commander of the whole
American forces, he was scarcely able to utter a word. So it was with
Governor Pickens. As I have remarked before, Governor Pickens had no
superior in the State, but on that occasion he could not even make a
speech. But that did not prevent General Lafayette from discovering
that he was a great man.... The people of Montgomery did their duty.
Col. Arthur Hayne, who was a distinguished officer in the army in the
war of 1813, and who was the politest gentleman I ever saw, was the
principal manager. If the Earl of Chesterfield had happened there, he
would have felt, as I did the first time I saw a carpet on a floor,
and was asked to walk in. I declined, saying, ‘I reckon I have got in
the wrong place.’”
[Illustration: OLD BUILDING IN WHICH LAFAYETTE BALL WAS GIVEN IN 1825.]
He was hospitably entertained at Colonel Edmonson’s, on Commerce
Street, where he received with kindly grace the crowds that pressed
around him. At night a grand ball was given him in the building now
standing on the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa Streets; and in the
small hours “a large concourse of citizens escorted him through the
darkness down to the landing, and bid him a hearty but mournful adieu
amid torrents of tears.”
Frontier life conduces to early maturity in cities as well as in men,
and Montgomery was no exception to the rule. The hard knocks that
produce self-reliance were not slow in coming. In spite of disastrous
freshets and destructive epidemics, the population increased, and with
its growth came a new and rougher element. An old newspaper suggests
drily: “It requires no stretch of art to put rubbish before a shop
door; to take down a gingerbread-maker’s sign; to take the wheels from
a lady’s carriage and put them on a silversmith’s shop; and make noise
enough to disturb the slumbers of the sick by beating stirrups for
triangles, and blowing conch-shells for French horns.” Drunkenness and
gambling increased, and the same paper soon had occasion to add: “This
is the third, if not the fourth, attempt at homicide in this place
within a few months.” Such things were the first test of the city’s
capacity for self-government, and were met by primitive but rigorous
measures. Indecency of language or conduct was punished by a ducking in
some neighboring pond, followed by a ride on a rail. There is a record
of an outrageous scoundrel who attempted to steal and sell an Indian
family, and was promptly whipped through the streets by the squaws
while the citizens lined up and saw it well done. But the lawlessness
increased until finally it destroyed the peace and threatened the
existence of the town. Then it was that the law-abiding class rose in
mass, and under the leadership of Colonel John H. Thorington put down
the gang and cleaned out their haunts.
If they had at times been too lenient toward lawlessness, and at others
too impatient to wait for legal formalities, a ready explanation may
be found in their absorption in business cares and enterprises. A new
country of unknown resources had to be developed. Other things must
wait. Governor Gilmer, of Georgia, who visited Montgomery in 1833, was
deeply--perhaps too deeply--impressed with this side of their life. He
says:
“I found the fertile lands of Montgomery settled up with active,
intelligent, wealthy citizens, who had been drawn to it from the
old States by the great advantages which it afforded to those who
desired to increase their riches. The rapid accumulation of wealth
whetted the appetite for getting money, until the people could not be
satisfied with any quantity acquired. It was a subject of wondering
cogitation to me, who had for many years been constantly taken up
with the affairs of the government, and the strife of party politics,
to listen to my Montgomery friends talking without ceasing of cotton,
negroes, land and money.”
The hardest problem that the business man of those early times had
to face was the question of transportation. Dry goods, groceries and
manufactured articles had at first been brought from Savannah and
Charleston by wagon or horseback. But the way was long, the roads
wretched,--especially through the Creek territory,--and the Indians
demanded exorbitant tolls at the bridges; so the method was anything
but satisfactory, and other plans were soon tried. Barges and flatboats
were laboriously poled up from Mobile. They bore the promising names,
_Alabama Swan_, _Lady of the Lake_, _Cotton Patch_ and _Ready Money_,
but consumed from fifty to seventy days on the trip. The local paper
records the arrival of an “amphibious animal in the shape of a boat
from East Tennessee.” It came down the Tennessee, was transported
across thirty miles of land to the Coosa, and by that river reached its
destination. After a journey of a thousand miles, it finally arrived
with an amusing assortment of flour, whiskey, apple brandy, cider,
dried fruit, feathers and a five-wheel carriage,--some of which must
have been taken on board near the end of the trip.
Under such circumstances, the arrival of the first steamboat, the
_Harriet_, on October 22, 1821, marked an epoch. Nor did the town fail
to appreciate its importance. The entire population turned out to bid
it welcome. The next day it carried an excursion up the river at the
lively rate of six miles an hour. Steam was too precious to be wasted
in whistling, so a gun was fired to signal its approach.
While the _Swans_ and the _Harriets_ were struggling for supremacy, a
third rival destined to supplant them both made its modest appearance.
The Montgomery Railroad, delayed by the panic of ’37, opened the
first twelve miles of its line for business in 1840. It made no great
display, and when the engine was out of fix horses were substituted
without hesitation or serious loss of time. But it was the beginning of
a system that soon put the city in close communication with the older
Eastern States; and when President Davis came in 1861 over the same
road, he traveled in a private car made in its own shops at Montgomery.
Business was the dominant interest during the first two decades of the
city’s existence, and may have seemed to visitors like Governor Gilmer
to exclude all other thoughts; yet beneath the surface there smouldered
the Southern devotion to politics. The town was scarcely two years old
when the Missouri question gave rise to an ardent discussion of State
rights, which found frequent occasion for renewal in subsequent years;
and at the public dinner prepared in celebration of the Fourth of July,
1826, there were two toasts whose sentiment seems strangely significant
in the light of after events. They were:
“The Union of the States--The golden chain of our liberties;
dissolved into its minute links, the fabric falls into ruin.”
“States Rights--The ark of our safety; every attempt to violate them
should be regarded as highly obnoxious to the holy spirit of the
Constitution.”
Nor was their zest for politics a mere fondness for empty debate or
idle personalities. It was an innate love for public affairs, a desire
to discuss and to take part in whatever touched the public welfare.
Now it was a question of State versus national power in the Creek
region, and they with other Alabamians took such a lively hand in it
that Francis S. Key, the author of _The Star Spangled Banner_, had to
be sent down as special commissioner to smooth matters over. A year
later it was Texas struggling against the absolutism of Santa Anna, and
so keen was the interest felt at Montgomery that a mass-meeting was
held in the theatre, funds were contributed, and a company of forty
men under Captain Ticknor was raised in the immediate neighborhood. In
addition to the princely pay of $8 a month, there was the uncertain
promise of a square mile of land out there. They got just six feet
of it; for they were massacred after surrender at Goliad. In 1840,
their attention was engrossed by the picturesque “Tippecanoe and Tyler
too” campaign. Log cabins, coon-skins, and hard cider were seen on
every hand, and the “Great ball,” which the Whig enthusiasts rolled
through so many cities as a spectacular admonition to “keep the ball
rolling,” passed through the streets inscribed with denunciations of
the Nullifiers.
[Illustration: ALABAMA STATE CAPITOL WHERE PRESIDENT DAVIS WAS
INAUGURATED.]
But, after all, the event which made politics a prominent feature
of life at Montgomery was the removal thither of the State capital.
Tuscaloosa, its location at that time, not being accessible enough, a
constitutional amendment was adopted providing for its removal, and
on January 28, 1846, the Legislature, after a hot contest, selected
Montgomery as the site. Two days later, the Selma stage brought the
news to the city. Next day there was a grand procession, and at night
there were bonfires and a jollification that would have gladdened the
soul of old Andrew Dexter. His desire was to be fulfilled, and the
capitol was to stand on the very lot he had reserved for it on Goat
Hill nearly thirty years before. The new building, erected by the city,
was ready in the fall of ’47; the archives in one hundred and thirteen
boxes were laboriously brought from Tuscaloosa in thirteen wagons, at a
cost of $1325--figures as significant of poor transportation facilities
as they are full of the magical number thirteen--and all was ready
for the Legislature, which met in December. The effect on the city is
vividly described in Garrett’s _Public Men_:
“The novelty of the occasion, together with the greater facilities to
reach the seat of government, brought together an immense concourse
of people.... The hotels were crowded to inconvenience, private
boarding-houses were increased and thronged, and every avenue to
the capitol presented at all hours of the day a stirring multitude.
Candidates for the various offices were as thick as blackbirds in a
fresh plowed field in spring.”
The new building was burned two years later, but was immediately
rebuilt on substantially the same plan.
Immediately on becoming the seat of government, Montgomery of course
became the most important place politically in the State, and during
the stirring years before the Civil War was the scene of many events
which connected its history more and more closely with that of the
country at large, and paved the way for the conspicuous part it was to
play in ’61.
The war with Mexico, like the struggle of Texas, aroused here more than
a passing interest. In spite of the sad fate of Captain Ticknor’s men,
its citizens enlisted again and went to the front under Captain Rush
Elmore and Colonel J. J. Seibels; and during the first few weeks of
its session in the new capitol the Legislature suspended routine work
more than once to join in the enthusiastic receptions accorded such
returning heroes as Generals Quitman and Shields.
From that time until the Confederacy was born in its midst, the little
city, like a mountain lake, bore on its ruffled surface traces of every
storm that passed over the land. No other city reflected more vividly
the heated debates in Congress over the fatal territorial problems
thrust on us by the Mexican War. Nowhere else was the attitude of the
South on these burning questions stated so promptly and so emphatically
as in the once famous Alabama Platform, first presented by Mr.
Yancey, February 14, 1848, to a great political convention assembled
in the capitol. The scene was historic, and is thus described by his
biographer, Mr. DuBose:
“At this stage in the proceedings Mr. Yancey rose. The galleries
were crowded with ladies and their escorts; the floor, lobbies,
and rotunda were packed with men. He drew from his pocket his
own resolutions and read them.... He spoke at length.... A vote
was taken, and Yancey’s resolutions were adopted, without even
one opposing voice, amidst the most enthusiastic cheering on the
floor and in the lobbies, the ladies in the galleries waving their
handkerchiefs in the contagion of joy.”
It was a characteristic example of his keen political foresight and
also of the wonderfully persuasive eloquence that set his hearers on
fire. No orator ever combined more perfectly closeness of reasoning
with the fire of earnestness and an irresistible personal magnetism.
The capitol, old Estelle Hall, every public place in the city, rang
with the mellow tones of his voice; his debates with Hilliard were
attended by throngs never equaled in the State before or since;
and the mention of his name at this day arouses in the memory of
old residents a sense of ecstasy produced by no other. No better
idea of his manner can be given than by quoting once more from his
biography, this time from a letter of General H. D. Clayton, describing
a subsequent impromptu debate with his great friend and opponent,
Hilliard: