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A L A B A M A
longtime rival New Orleans. As early as 1830 masked members of Mobile?s Cowbellian de Rakin Society paraded, danced, and feasted on New Year?s Eve. The Cowbellians were succeeded in 1841 by the Striker's Club whose members travelled en masse to New Orleans the following year to attend the first ball of that city?s Mystic Krewe of Comus. Mardi Gras in New Orleans has since outstripped that of Mobile in size and national attention. Mobilians have a ready explanation for this: they claim that the citizens of New Orleans parade for tourists while they cavort for their own amusement.
Mobile cherishes other reminders of her past. Although her original French and Spanish dwellings were destroyed by fire more than a century ago, copies of these Creole cottages, raised above the humid earth, are plentiful. Town houses garnished with iron lace outnumber Greek Revival temples. Mobile wantonly defied Prohibition during the 1920s and dared to erect Alabama?s first dogracing track in the 1960s. Its citizens continue to indulge a lusty appetite and quench a boundless thirst. Sober-minded hinterlanders, drawn to Mobile for conventions, experience a strange giddiness at the sight of such open and unashamed self-indulgence. Mobile?s blithe Mediterranean spirit still lifts the heart and tempts the flesh.
Alabama has suffered the loss of her natural coastline to a greater degree than any other seaboard state. That narrow ribbon of sand and pine barrens between the Perdido and Apalachicola rivers should have been part of Alabama. It is the watershed through which eight Alabama rivers flow to the sea. Its climate )	and	terrain	resemble those of interior Alabama. Its early history
was more closely tied to Alabama than to the peninsula. Indians and Spanish traders moved freely up and down these river routes. Alabamians and West Floridians mingled frequently in fighting units of the Confederacy. Southeastern Alabama traded with Pensacola and other coastal ports. But in the process of wars and treaties, Florida got a Panhandle which East Floridians originally regarded as a nuisance, and Alabama lost a seacoast beloved by generations of her citizens.
After Spain renounced all claim to West Florida in 1819 and
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ceded the eastern peninsula to the United States, considerable sentiment favored annexing the northwestern seacoast to Alabama. Floridians, having been divided under both Spanish and British rule, were accustortied to the idea of two Floridas. Residents of Florida's cast and west sections were political rivals. As early as 1821 the Alabama legislature urged its congressional delegation to seek annexation. On eight other occasions over a period of 150 years, Alabama expressed this recurring desire although jealous Mobilians evidenced little enthusiasm at the prospect of admitting the port of Pensacola. When serious negotiations began in 1S68, Florida?s commissioners actually expressed willingness to cede ten thousand miles of their coast to Alabama in return for SI million in thirty-year, 8-percent bonds. East Floridians often seemed anxious to rid themselves of the Panhandle. West Floridians, although divided, generally favored the change. But opposition to the purchase rose in western Alabama and Mobile. Opponents argued that the price was too high for a ?sand bank and gopher region" and that Alabamians could use the Pensacola harbor without buying the Panhandle. Floridians began to have second thoughts about ceding .such an excellent harbor. All nine annexation movements failed and two-thirds of southern Alabama remained permanently land-locked.,:
To look on the brighter side, perhaps Alabama should consider herself fortunate to have wrested Mobile from Mississippi. When the Mississippi Territory was being divided by Congress into two states, it appeared for a time that the Tombigbee River might become the boundary, thereby locating Mobile within Mississippi. Fortunately foe Alabama, she retained Mobile and a coastal fringe of some seventy miles on either side of the bay.
Alabama?s truncated coast lies mostly within one county, larger in size than Rhode Island and only slightly smaller than Delaware. Baldwin County produces more diverse crops and shelters a more heterogeneous population than any other rural
6.	The tangled negotiations for this coastline are traced by Jercell H. Shofner. "The Chimcricat Scheme of Ceding West Rnkia," Alabama Historical Quarterly 33 (Spring 1971): 5-36.