Headquarters District Of South Alabama,
Fort Gaines, Ala., April 19, 1865.
My Dear Daughter
Bettie:
I have just returned from Mobile, where I have been
sojourning for three or four days past, and you will want some description of
the city and what I saw there. You must know that Mobile, the principal city
and only seaport of Alabama, was the original seat of French colonization in
the southwest, and for many years the capital of the colony of Louisiana. I
shall transcribe for you a little bit of history, while for its geographical
position you must go to the map. In 1702, Lemoine de Bienville, acting under
the instructions of his brother Iberville, transferred the principal seat of
the colony from Biloxi, where it had been established three years previously,
to a point on the river Mobile, supposed to be about twenty miles above the
present site of the city, where he established a post to which he gave the name
of “St. Louis de la Mobile.” At the same time he built a fort and warehouse on “Isle
Dauphine,” at the entrance of Mobile Bay (where my headquarters now are).
The settlement at Biloxi was soon afterwards broken up. In
1704, there was an arrival of twenty young girls from France, and the next year
of twenty-three others, selected and sent out under the auspices of the Bishop
of Quebec, as wives for the colonists. Many of the original settlers were
Canadians, like Iberville and Bienville. In 1705, occurred a severe epidemic,
supposed to be the first recorded visitation of yellow fever, by which
thirty-five persons were carried off.
The year 1706 is noted for the “petticoat insurrection,”
which was a threatened rebellion of females in consequence of the
dissatisfaction with the diet of Indian corn, to which they were reduced. The
colony meanwhile frequently suffered from famine as well as from the attacks of
Indians although relieved by occasional supplies sent from the mother country.
In 1711 the settlement was nearly destroyed by a hurricane and flood in
consequence of which it was removed to its present situation. In 1712 the King
of France made a grant of the whole colony to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy French
merchant, and in the following year Bienville was superseded as governor by M.
de la Motte Cadillac. In 1717 Crozat relinquished his grant to the French
government, and Bienville was reinstated. In 1723, the seat of the colonial
government was transferred to New Orleans. In 1763, by the treaty of Paris,
Mobile with all that portion of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi and
north of Bayou Iberville, Lake Maurepas, and Pontchartrain, passed into the
possession of Great Britain. In 1780, the Fort, the name of which had been
changed into Fort Condé,
and subsequently by the British to Fort Charlotte, was captured by the Spanish
General, Don Galvez, Governor of Louisiana, and in 1783, its occupancy was
confirmed to Spain by the cession to that power of all the British possession
on the Gulf of Mexico. On the 13th of April, 1813, just fifty-two years before
the time it had been taken possession of by General Canby, the Spanish
Commandant Gayatama Perez surrendered the fort and town to General Wilkinson.
At that period, the population, which in 1785 had amounted to eight hundred and
forty-six, was estimated at only five hundred, half of whom were blacks. In
December, 1819, Mobile was incorporated as a city. Mobile is now a city of
moderate size, a population of probably forty thousand inhabitants and before
the war was opulent and characterized as the most aristocratic city of the
South, though I suppose Charleston would dispute, or rather would have
disputed, this point. There has evidently been a lavish display of money and
many of the houses and public buildings are elegant and tasteful in their style
and adornment. The luxuriance of vegetation in this climate gives great
advantages in the adornment of the streets and grounds with shade trees and
beautiful shrubs, vines and flowers. The present season corresponds with June
with you, and to me it was a rare and beautiful sight yesterday to look down
the long vista of “Government” street, their principal avenue through the aisle
of magnolia in full leaf and bloom, the pride of China, the crape myrtle and
many other trees, the names of which I do not know, but all laden with bud and
leaf and flower; while in relief, the houses were wreathed with ivy, climbing
roses, while the sweet-scented double violet added delicious perfume to the
fragrance of countless varieties of standard roses. The people have great taste
and wonderful love for flowers in the South; even the ragged urchins and
barefooted little girls carry bouquets that would be the envy of a ball-room
belle in Cincinnati. The streets are very broad, and have been paved with
shells, but the sandy nature of the soil has caused them to disappear beneath
the surface. The sidewalks are brick, as in Cincinnati. The city was like a
city of the dead. The principal men being in the army, were either prisoners or
had fled. The ladies secluded themselves from the public gaze. A semi-official
notice from the headquarters of the rebel General Maury had warned them that
General Canby had promised his soldiers three days' pillage; consequently, the
people, when our troops took possession, were frightened and anticipated all
sorts of enormities. Since, they have been in a constant state of profound
astonishment. The drinking houses were all closed, and a rigid system of
discipline has been enforced, quiet and order prevails.
While in Mobile, I was the guest of General Canby, who has
taken quarters at one of the best houses. I met there in the family of the
owner a fair sample of the young and middle-aged ladies of the place, and the
schoolgirls.
Everything is as old-fashioned as four years non-intercourse
with the “outside barbarians,” as they would style us, would be apt to induce.
This in dress, literature, and conversation. You will hear that there is Union
sentiment in Mobile, perhaps that not more than ten per cent, of its people are
secessionists; but my word for it, that not a man, woman, or child, who has
lived in Mobile the last four years, but who prays death and destruction to the
“damned Yankees.”
Well, I have given you a birds-eye view of the city. If
there is anything more you want to know, you must ask. In case anybody should
ask the question, you may say, that there were taken with Mobile upwards of
thirty-five thousand bales of cotton, over a million bushels of corn, twenty
thousand bushels of wheat, and large stores of tobacco. I don't think that
mother, for some time hereafter, will be compelled to give a dollar a yard for
domestics and double the price for calico. You must all have new dresses. I am
glad to get back from Mobile to my little island. There the weather was warm
and the air close and heavy, here I have always a delicious sea breeze. It is
very cool and pleasant. I have a fine hard beach as level as your parlor floor,
upon which I can ride for twenty miles and see the great ocean with its mighty
pulses break at my feet. I have a little fleet of boats; one, a beautiful
steamer called the Laura, that had been built by the rebels as a
blockade runner, as quick as lightning and elegantly fitted up, was sunk a day
or two since by running on to a pile. I am now having her raised again. I have
also a beautiful little yacht, a light sailboat rigged as a sloop with one mast
bowsprit and jib. She sails beautifully on the wind; is large enough to carry half
a dozen very well. I have just had her elegantly painted, and one of my
officers is to-day manufacturing a streamer for her. She has been called the Vivian,
but I am going to change her name and rechristen her the Bessie and
Belle. When I get a little more leisure I shall sail in her down to the
coral reefs and fish for pompino, sheepsheads and poissons rouge. Oysters
now are going out of season. I am told they eat them here all the year round,
but to my notion they are becoming milky. I shall now take to crabs and fish. I
have been keeping Lent admirably.
You say you hope “peace will be declared.” I should be glad,
my dear daughter, to see your hopes fulfilled; but peace will be long coming to
our country and papa; it would do to dream and talk of, but the snake is only
scotched, not killed. Our hope may rest on a foreign war, and to-day I could
unite many of our enemies to march with us under the folds of our own starry
banner to fight the swarthy Mexicans or the dull, cold Englishman, but without
this event we must fight on among ourselves for many a year to come. God grant
our jubilee may not have rung out too soon. How long will it take the North to
learn the South? But these are questions, my dear daughter, not for your
consideration, yet, at least. Study your books, my child, and learn to love God
and keep his commandments, and when you pray, pray first for wisdom and then
for strength, and if you want your prayers answered, study your books and go
about much in the open air.
I send you some lines you may put away in your scrapbook and
when you get to be an old lady like grandma, and have your own grandchildren on
your knee, one day you may get out the old battered book and read to them what
your father sent you from the war.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 387-91
