Raiders and blockade runners used Alabama’s waterways to great effect during the war as they slipped through to the Mississippi River to skirt the Union blockade.
Thereafter, the Alabama coast became the domain of smugglers, blockade runners, and focused efforts to bolster the naval defenses of Mobile Bay from Union attack. The Alabama militia seized the Port of Mobile after the state seceded on January 11, 1861. Alabama‘s great rivers (including the Alabama, Tennessee, and Tombigbee) and its coastline were the site of fierce contests during the Civil War, including the Battle of Mobile Bay.
Mobile was second only to New Orleans as a transit point for cotton, which was a major source of revenue for the Confederate government, as well as its principal diplomatic tool. Alabama played a key role in Confederate naval operations because of the state’s strategic and economic importance and its role in the defense of the Gulf Coast.
0 kommentar(er)
