Proceeding southwest from Atlanta, the route crosses the Chattahoochee
at West Point, another shipping port for the vast cotton plantations
of this region, whence steamboats take the cotton-bales down to the
Gulf. Beyond is Tuskegee in Alabama, where is located the famous
Industrial and Normal Institute for colored youth, conducted by
Booker T. Washington, the distinguished colored educationalist, who
was born a slave in Virginia. It was founded in a small way by him in
1881 to meet the needs of education, and particularly to provide for
the training of teachers for the colored race, and having greatly
grown, has sent out nearly four hundred of its graduates throughout
the South, where they are teaching others of their people. It has
seventy instructors and over a thousand students; its lands cover
nearly four square miles and there are forty-two buildings, many of
them substantial brick structures erected by the students, the
property being valued at $300,000. Great attention is given to manual
training, and this institution, entirely supported by donations and
requiring $75,000 annually for its expenses, is doing a great work in
furthering the advancement of the colored race in the South.
A short distance westward, the Alabama River is formed by the union of
the Coosa and Tallapoosa, and coming down a winding course a few miles
from the junction, sweeps around a grand bend to then go away towards
the setting sun, and ultimately seek the Gulf. The story is that a
wearied Creek Indian, seeking quiet in the far-off land, wandered out
of the mountains to the fertile plains of this attractive region.
Charmed by the scenery and the beauties of the valley, when he reached
the bank of the river he gazed about him, and then struck his spear
into the earth, saying _Alabama_--"Here we Rest." At this grand bend
of the river, upon a circle of hills surrounded by rich farming lands,
is Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. There was an Indian village
here in remote times, and traders came to the place, so that gradually
a settlement grew, which in 1817 was made a town and named after the
unfortunate General Montgomery who fell in storming Quebec. The bluffs
rise to Capitol Hill, crowned with the State House, a small but
imposing structure, having from its elevated dome an extensive view.
Here was organized the Government of the Confederate States in
February, 1861, continuing until the capital was removed to Richmond
the following May. In the grounds there is a handsome Confederate
Monument. There are thirty thousand people in Montgomery, and it has a
large trade in cotton, gathered from the adjacent districts, shipped
down the river to Mobile and also by railroad to Savannah for export.
In the suburbs are many old-fashioned plantation residences, and the
adjacent country is largely a cotton-field, the great Southern staple
growing luxuriantly on the black soils of this region. The Alabama
people devote themselves chiefly to cotton-growing, and this industry
leads throughout the vast section of the South below the Tennessee
boundary. This great product is the leading foreign export of the
United States, and being indirectly the cause of the Civil War, it
brought to the Confederacy the sympathy of the nations of Europe,
which were the chief consumers. Cotton is said to have originated in
India, and in America was first cultivated for its flowers in
Maryland. It was not until about the beginning of the nineteenth
century, however, that the invention by Eli Whitney of the cotton-gin
enabled the seeds to be easily removed from the lint, and thus
enlarged the uses of cotton, so that a rapid increase was given its
growth and also its manufacture throughout the civilized world. Both
the seed and the lint are now used, the former producing valuable oil.
The Alabama River flows a winding course from Montgomery southwest to
Mobile Bay, first going westward to Selma. It passes a region of the
finest cotton lands, where originally the old southern plantation
system reached its richest development, and where the modern plan of
smaller farms has been making some headway since the Civil War. Selma
is the _entrepôt_ of what is known as the Alabama "Black Belt," built
on a high bluff along the river, and has cotton factories and other
industries, including large mills for crushing the cotton-seed and
producing the oil. To the westward, over the boundary of the State of
Mississippi, is Meridian, a manufacturing town of fifteen thousand
people, which has grown around a railway junction. This was the place
which General Sherman, in one of his rapid marches, captured in
February, 1864, and destroyed, the General reporting that his army
made "the most complete destruction of railways ever beheld." Farther
westward, on Pearl River, is Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, a
small city with an elaborate State House. The Alabama River flows
southwest from Selma and joins the Tombigbee River coming from the
north, the stream thus formed being the Mobile River. A few miles
below the junction it divides into two branches, of which the eastern
is called the Tensas, both then dividing into several others and
making a sort of delta, but meeting again in a common embouchure at
the head of Mobile Bay, the Mobile River being about fifty miles long.
The Tombigbee River is four hundred and fifty miles in length, and
rises in the hills of Northeastern Mississippi. The name is Indian,
and means the "coffin-makers," though why this name was given is
unknown. The Tombigbee became celebrated in politics in the early
nineteenth century, through a correspondence between the Treasury at
Washington and a customs officer at Mobile, wherein the latter, being
asked "How far does the Tombigbee River run up?" replied that "The
Tombigbee River does not run up; it runs down." He was removed from
office for his levity, and the controversy following, which became an
acrimonious partisan dispute, gave the river its celebrity.