“Mobile”
Harper’s Weekly, September
8, 1866, p. 566
This city is so
thoroughly uninteresting that your artist made but one
sketch there. That was the picture of the Magnolia
Avenue on the Shell Road-or rather what is left of it,
for many of the finest trees were cut down in getting
rand for the guns which were to defend the city-a
needless destruction, as they never fired a shot.
The Magnolia, when old,
is a handsome tree. It grows tall, and the deep, glossy
green of its leaves is a capital foil to the delicate
while of its large and perfumed blossoms. The trees
through which the Shell Road passes-the fashionable
drive of Mobile-have long been famous, and it is a
great pity so many of them have been destroyed.
Mobile was a terribly
demoralized city during the war, and it is not to be
wondered at. Garrisoned by a large force, which was
entirely without occupation till toward the close of
the war, such looseness pervaded its society as to make
it the subject of repeated strictures in the rebel
newspapers. Since it fell into Union hands it has shows
itself to be by no means a community where liberal or
peaceful sentiments reign; as witness the repeated
burnings of colored churches and school-houses,
“entirely the work of accident, unless the
[negroes] did it themselves,” as I was assured by
a citizen. These and other things-the result of bad
policy-are driving much of the trade and even the
merchants to New Orleans, whither many of the planters
of Alabama follow to get their supplies.
