This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

() ENDED the War of 1812; and so began the span of American rule on the gulf coast, and, with it, the era that leads directly to our own modern day and time. The big, new element was machinery. Machinery, plus the steam engine. The troubles that preceded the war, and the war itself, had delayed things. But in the twenties, poled freight boats and hand-cleaned cotton gave way to cotton ginned by machinery and boats that ran by steam. Soon the rivers were lined with plantations.
The year 1830 saw 100,000 bales of cotton come down the river, to be handled and re-shipped through the Port of Mobile. In 1835, it was 200,000 bales, in 1837 there were 300,000; and in 1840, the total was 440,000 bales! In that short period Mobile?s population had quadrupled. ?Long live King Cotton and his prime minister, Machinery!? cried Mobile?s citizens, as the tide of gold rose ever higher, and the cotton-created boom that made the ?Flush Thirties? flush, got under way.
In the Flush Thirties, Fort Morgan was built; the first Mystic Society was begun; The Mobile Register started publication; a lighthouse was built on Choctaw Point; and a channel was cut through the bars at Choctaw Point and Dog River to allow a depth of fifteen feet from Cedar Point to Mobile River. Barton Academy came into being; the steamers on the river became larger and larger, and they brought ever more and more bales of cotton. Steam hissed and whistles blew. Nine
months ? September, through May ? Mobilians consented to linger in town and busy themselves with the harvest of gold from the year?s cotton crop. ?There was no gayer place in the winter time,? so it was written, by one who knew, ?than Mobile.? But when June came, what then?
Why, then there was the Eastern Shore?and Point Clear. ?At Point Clear,? says Peter Hamilton the historian, speaking of this early time, ?was built a hotel that became a favorite resort of Mobilians in the summer.? Very likely he refers to a group of During the time they ruled	Mobile,	cottages, which may have been used,
c?i-K built pleasure settle- <? i	.	L	?	I
tern	Shore	of	t"ls ear'y> as a resort hotel on the
Mobile	Bay	Point. For says another historian,
the English mcnts on the
?records show? that the famous old Grand Hotel, that later burned, was built during the Forties. Records also show that by now the Point had already achieved more than local fame; since from the time the first	Grand Hotel	was
built.	Point Clear	was
known throughout	the
South, and the socially elect	of Louisiana	and
Mississippi were already in the habit of joining Mobile?s aristocrats, regularly, for the season at the Point.
The Spaniards returned to rule Mobile Bay, a second time, in the eighteenth ccntury
If the Forties were not so flush, the Fifties, loading climax on climax, more than made up for them! Mobilians, casting about for a suitable name, called them the Golden Fifties. The story of Mobile is from the beginning a story of ships and a seaport. When the ?Black Warrior? came into the Port of Mobile, in the Fifties, inaugurating a direct Mobile-New York service, a day of public rejoicing was proclaimed. British and French freighters were always coming and going, now, and the ships of the Royal Mail Line called regularly, on schedule. On the Alabama River there were four hundred landings, on the Tombigbee, two hundred, with all their trade centered in Mobile. Great, floating palaces hundreds of feet long, came puffing sofdy down the rivers bearing as many as a thousand bales of cotton each trip; bringing gay throngs of passengers, also; wealthy planters and their families, to enjoy Mobile, Mobile Bay, and Point Clear. Lumber and coal were added, now, to Mobile?s exports. It was as if the mighty river sent down floods of?not water?but gold! And still, there was more machinery; for now little primitive railroads appeared?and we read that in 1856 there were 90,000 bales of cotton brought into Mobile by rail, to be counted in with the hundreds of thousands from up the river. Six great cotton compresses, and other lesser ones, hissed and labored night and day, preparing the mighty tonnage of cotton for re-shipment. Thus was the Glory of the Old South built of Courage, and Joy, and Progress,?and Machinery!
In the wake of all this prosperity, came leisure and culture. Mobile became known as a literary and publishing center. Came, too, new