2021 quick trips – part 16: overview of Fort Morgan from 1701 to the Battle of Mobile Bay and the end of the Civil War

Before this quick trip to southern Alabama, we had heard about Fort Morgan that sat on the tip of the entrance to Mobile Bay, but our initial introduction a couple of years ago was because of the nearby state campground. Today we drove out to the tip to explore the fort whose history dates back to the 1700s. As usual, we’ll start at the museum to get an overview, and in this post we’ll cover the fort’s history through the Civil War.

In March 1780, Spanish forces built the 1st military fortification on the point in the shape of an 8-gun battery that was later abandoned. The museum we’ll be walking through was built in this shape in honor of Spain’s contribution to the area, primarily keeping the shipping lanes open and active through the Gulf of Mexico.

First let’s look at the timeline of the fort starting in 1812.

A museum pamphlet added to our details of this time period.

• 1813: The U.S. Army builds a small earth and log fortification that became Fort Bowyer during the War of 1812. In September 1814, the British Royal Navy and Creek Indian allies attacked the fort unsuccessfully. The next February the fort was again attacked, this time with overwhelming numbers, and Fort Bowyer surrenders. In just 1 month the British returned the fort to the U.S. after they received word that the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the War of 1812 with the Americans.
• 1819: Construction begins on a new fortification to replace Fort Bowyer and was temporarily named “Work on Mobile Point.” The fortification officially was named Fort Morgan in April 1833 after Revolutionary War General Daniel Morgan.
• 1834: As construction is finished, Company B and U.S. Artillery arrived as the first garrison.
• 1837: Around 2500 Creek Indians (also known as Muscogee natives) are taken from the interior of Alabama and sent here until transportation could be arranged to Arkansas and then Oklahoma. Of this large group, 93 died from disease and exposure to extreme climates.
• 1861: Fort Morgan is seized by Alabama militia troops for the Confederate States of America (CSA) known as Montgomery Rifles. The fort’s largest garrison reach 1596 in December 1861.
• 1864: On August 5, Admiral David G. Farragut led his U.S. Navy fleet past the fort, losing only 1 ship in the process. The U.S. Army forces then landed east of the fort and led a siege against the Confederate forces. On August 23, the fort surrendered to Union forces.

We’ll look at the rest of the timeline in the next post. Now let’s look at the flags (or “colors”) that have flown here since 1701.

1701-1763: French Fleur de Lis was flown here during the first half of the 1700s since France was the first European power to claim Mobile Point in 1701. France eventually ceded their control to the British under the Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the French and Indian War.

1763-1780: King’s Colors was flown here since Great Britain controlled Mobile Point until February 1780 when Spanish forces seized control during the Revolutionary War.

1780-1813: Flag of Bourbon Span is for the Spanish forces that constructed the first documented fortification here in February 1780 after the British left. Spain controlled Mobile Point until April 1813.

1813: Star Spangled Banner was flown here when the U.S. seized Mobile Point from Spain in April 1813 and began constructing the first permanent fort, Fort Bowyer, later that year. Major actions against the British happened in September 1814 and February 1815.

1861: Montgomery Rifles was an Alabama Militia company sent to Fort Morgan in January 1861. Since Alabama didn’t have an official state flag yet, the Rifles’ flag flew over the fort from January through early March of 1861.

1863-1864: the Second National Confederate Flag replaced the First National Flag (known as the Stars and Bars) in May 1863. This 2nd flag flew over the fort during the Battle of Mobile Bay and the siege that followed it during August 1864.

1st fort constructed after the War of 1812

The construction of 2 masonry forts was justified here on Mobile Point and across the small opening to the Bay on Dauphin Island.

The 1820 fort plans were for mounting 118 cannons. During peace time, the fort would hold 100 men; during a war, it could hold 900 men. The cost for building such a fort was estimated to be $632,000 ($14,207,252 today). Slaveowners were paid $150 per year ($3372 today) for use of their slaves to work at the fort site, in the brick yards, and on the barges.

The fort was built in 3 parts. First was the central fortification, a 10-sided citadel used as a barracks. Second was the pentagonal brick fort with 5 bastions and 5 sets of casements for the lower level cannons and powder magazines. Third was the steep outer wall that surrounds the brick fort and was the first line of defense.

definitions (from Wikipedia)

Bastions, or bulwarks, are the structures projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification. Usually they have an angular shape and are placed at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of 2 faces and 2 flanks, with fire from the flanks being able to protect the curtain wall and the adjacent bastions. 

Casemates are fortified gun emplacements (or later armored structure) from which guns are fired.

making bricks for the fort

In 1823, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracted with Nicholas Weeks to make bricks for Fort Morgan. Between 1823 and 1828, over 12,730,000 bricks were made and delivered. The bricks were of such high quality that this was the only brickyard to have an Army contract.

In June 1831, the yard closed its operations because of illness in its workforce and because enough bricks were stockpiled at Mobile Point to complete Fort Morgan. When I looked online for illnesses in 1831, I found that a nationwide Asiatic Cholera was probably brought to the U.S. by English emigrants.

The citadel was a 10-sided barracks in the center of Fort Morgan’s parade ground. It had 3 tiers of rifle-loopholes that soldiers could use to fire out of as a last line of defense. This structure housed the men and was the largest barracks out of all Third System Fortifications (this is a new term for us) in the U.S. When the garrison reached its peak in April 1861, soldiers repurposed casemates (where large guns like cannons are set up ready to fire) to house the troops.

From the U.S. National Park website, “Unlike First and Second system forts built between 1794–1812, Third System forts had durable construction materials and uniformity. Brick and stone forts were more resilient to time, nature, and battles. Masonry materials also allowed engineers to include essential features into their plans.” These fortifications had large smoothbore cannons that could fire up to 3 miles. Fort Morgan was the 3rd most expensive fort in the Third System Fortifications, probably because it was so remote.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

Just 4 years before Fort Morgan opened, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that would remove southern Native American tribes to Western Territories. In 1832, all Creek Indian claims east of the Mississippi were ceded to the U.S. government. The fort began to see more troops coming here in preparation for the Creek War of 1836, but the Secretary of War sent General Winfield Scott to end the hostilities by forcibly removing the Muscogee natives.

Lt. John Reynolds, the U.S. Marine Corps Military Agent and Acting Superintendent of Creek Removal was instrumental in relocating the Creek.

Arriving on 3 steamboats, the Muscogee had to live here under horrible conditions because of the lack of fresh water and exposure to the sun. Lt. Reynolds did everything he could to improve these conditions but couldn’t save those 93 Muscogee who died here during this time. He had great empathy for his charges and refrained from putting any more stress on them.

Guardian of the Bay: 1840-1860

After the Creek Removal had ended, Fort Morgan was available to become a military post to guard Mobile Bay’s shipping channel. The 3rd U.S. Artillery came in March 1942. One of the officers was William Tecumseh Sherman (of Civil War fame). He was the fort’s quartermaster and was tasked with bringing the fort back into operation. While he didn’t like the isolation of the area and the lack of distracting activities, he did enjoy fishing in the Bay. He spent 3 months here until he was transferred to Fort Moultrie near Charleston, SC.

Sherman said, “A large number of women landed at the wharf, marched boldly into the very heart of the citadel and carried the fort by storm.” Sherman took the women on a tour of the fort, showing off guns, casements, and embrasures.” (An embrasure is the opening in a battlement between the two raised solid portions; we’ll point one out when we tour the fort). Then the soldiers joined the ladies on their ship for refreshments and a small band.

During this time of peace, prosperity came to the South because of the cotton trade.

Alabama’s trade economy depended on Mobile’s location on the river system and Bay. By the 1820s, it was a major exporting center connecting Alabama with markets in the northeast and Europe. Starting in the 1830s, Mobile expanded as it became a city of commerce depending primarily on cotton. By 1850, around 10% of the city’s population was from New York City since it too was deeply involved in the cotton industry. From 1819 to 1850, Mobile’s population went from 900 to 20,515. Cotton exports boomed in both quality and value, benefiting the Gulf ports of New Orleans and Mobile. Up to $65 million was brought in by cotton trade in 1850 ($2,191,783,333 today).

As the South began to takes its place in the world economy, it wanted more control over its own destiny.

Battle of Mobile Bay

While the Civil War started in 1861, it didn’t reach Mobile Bay until August 1864. By this time, Mobile was the only major port on the Gulf still open to Confederate blockade runners (like Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind). Admiral David Farragut had long planned to capture Mobile Bay, and by early August, he had the warships collected to do so. (Farragut was the one who reportedly said, “Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead.” Now we’ll get to learn why he said that.)

On the morning of August 5, Farragut’s 14 wooden U.S. Navy warships lashed 2 abeam, along with 4 ironclad monitors steamed into fight against the Confederate forces on land and sea. I haven’t heard the term ironclad monitor before, especially when used for ships. Thank goodness for information from Wikipedia.

“The whole category of monitors took its name from the first of these, USS Monitor, designed in 1861 by John Ericsson. They were low-freeboard, steam-powered ironclad vessels, with one or two rotating armored turrets, rather than the traditional broadside of guns. The low freeboard meant that these ships were unsuitable for ocean-going duties and were always at risk of swamping and possible loss, but it reduced the amount of armor required for protection.”

So what’s an ironclad monitor? According to Wikipedia, The ironclad had all of these chief characteristics: a metal-skinned hull, steam propulsion, and guns capable of firing explosive shells.

Confederate torpedoes

A new invention that was used in the Battle of Mobile Bay was a Fretwell-Singer torpedo. Edgar Singer was the nephew of Isaac Singer who invented the first commercially successful sewing machine. So why did he invent the torpedo?

One day in the fall of 1862, a small Union armada brazenly steamed into a small, backwater bay in Texas and fired more than 250 rounds onto La Vaca’s streets and into the homes of the soldiers manning the port’s guns. One of those men, a 6-foot-3 gunsmith originally from Ohio but who now lived in Texas, Edgar Singer, swore that would be the last time a Northern fleet slipped into a Southern harbor without a fight.

Singer turned to the local Masonic lodge, which he had joined upon arriving in Texas in 1840, to recruit and partner with lodge leader and friend Dr. John Fretwell, a 47-year-old private in the local home guard artillery company. 

They ended up manufacturing their torpedoes in Mobile and placed them in the mouth of Mobile Bay by a special torpedo launch manned by Confederate soldiers at Fort Morgan.

When a passing ship caused the iron plate seated on top of the device to fall, the plate pulled a safety pin to engage a spring-loaded rod. This rod would detonate 2 percussion caps that fired the weapon. To stay under 3 feet of water until it was needed, a length of rope was attached to an anchor.

success against the U.S.S. Tecumseh

The U.S.S. Tecumseh, the only Union ship that was destroyed in the Battle of Mobile Bay, was launched in September 1853 from New Jersey.

After joining Farragut’s fleet, the Tecumseh was given the mission of countering the C.S.S. Tennessee.

The following report was from a sailor on a Confederate ship about the sounds of the battle. “The noise from the firing was terrific; Commands to the nearest men had to be yelled, and the smoke obscured the hulls of the wooden ship, that we had to guess by their masts about where to direct our guns.”

The guns couldn’t bring down the Monitors since they were covered by iron, but the wooden ships could be severely affected.

David Farragut began his career on the sea when he was 9 year old and hired to be a midshipman, the lowest rank in most navies, during the War of 1812. Since he was from Tennessee and lived in Virginia before the outbreak of the war, he wanted to fight for the Union. Farragut was a Southern Unionist who strongly opposed Southern secession and remained loyal to the Union after the outbreak of the Civil War. 

The following picture shows Farragut shouting out his famous command, and now we know why he said it. But did he really say these words exactly?

According to Wikipedia, he was was lashed to the rigging of his flagship, USS Hartford, where he could see the ships pulling back after the U.S.S. Tucumseh sank. He shouted through a trumpet to the U.S.S. Brooklyn next to him, “What’s the trouble?” They shouted back, “Torpedoes.” Farragut then yelled out to his officers, “Damn the torpedoes. Four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead. Jouett, full speed.”  The Hartford entered the Bay, and the bulk of the fleet followed.

Now we know the rest of the story.

blockade

During the Civil War, Union forces blockaded the Confederate ports to prevent them from exporting cotton and importing war material for the Confederacy. This important economic policy successfully prevented Confederate access to weapons that the North could produce for itself since it was industrialized. The U.S. Government successfully convinced foreign governments to see the blockade as a legitimate tool of war, but wasn’t as successful at preventing cotton, weapons, and other items to transfer points in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Cuba for foreign merchants in these regions and elsewhere. These other countries provided blockade-runners to bring in supplies the Confederacy needed.

Blockade-runners were outfitted ships specially designed to bypass blockades and outrun Union Vessels. France and Britain both played a key role in supplying southern forces with domestic materials for the everyday people who were suffering. One famous blockade-runner was the Ivanhoe.

The Ivanhoe was built in Scotland to be a blockade-runner and started its trips in May 1864. On her maiden run from Havana to Mobile, she ran aground about 1 mile from Fort Morgan. Confederate soldiers from the fort were sent to guard the ship and remove the cargo.

Much of the lead was salvaged and transported to Mobile. However, some of the bars were picked up by soldiers who wanted to send them home so their impoverished families could make some money for the sale of this commodity.

the Union’s colored troops

As we’ve seen in other parts of the country, the U.S. Colored Troops have played an integral part in the military. Following President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the military began recruiting these men. The Corps d’Afrique of Louisiana’s Union units formed in New Orleans after the city fell to Union forces. This unit then became the U.S. Colored Troops. Units first served at Mobile Point during the Siege of Fort Morgan in August 1864. Many served as sharpshooters on the Union siege lines.

In June 1865, these troops joined the U.S. troops at Fort Morgan. At this time the USCT had 15 officers and 648 enlisted men. By the next November, the garrison reduced the number of USCT companies to only 3 with 181 officers and men. Two companies served at Fort Gaines across the entrance to the Bay from Fort Morgan. The next March, orders were for the 86th regiment to be mustered out of U.S. Service. The rest of the companies left the fort the next month, April 1866. These companies were the last African-American soldiers to serve as part of Fort Morgan’s garrison

Emancipation Proclamation

Since we see the results of this proclamation for some African-Americans, let’s look at what it was really about. This information is from the National Archives website.

“President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared ‘that all persons held as slaves’ within the rebellious states ‘are, and henceforward shall be free.’

“Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

“Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

“From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery’s final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.”

This was an important step in ending slavery in the United States. It certainly would have been an encouragement for the African-Americans to fight for the Union. I’m sure more would have happened if President Lincoln, the leader of the newly formed Republican Party, hadn’t been killed and could have completed his 2nd term. Vice President Johnson, a Democrat who succeeded Lincoln, reversed all that Lincoln had put into place and had hoped to put into place..

battery huger in upper Mobile Bay

To this point we’ve been talking about the conflict at the entrance to Mobile Bay. Since it is 31 miles long, the 2 armies fought each other at locations further north in the Bay. Up by Spanish Fort, the Huger battery was erected on pilings driven into the marsh. Because of its key position, engineers were constantly strengthening and upgrading the work. By April 1865, just before the battle of Fort Blakeley that we know about, 22 heavy guns and 2 smaller pieces were put in place.

As Union forces were threatening to overrun Confederate trenches at Spanish Fort, the garrison left and silently made their way across a hurriedly constructed narrow wooden walkway to Battery Huger. Steamers then evacuated the troops to Blakeley.

On Sunday, April 9, Union forces attacked the outnumbered Confederates entrenched at Blakeley, quickly overwhelming them. Now only Battery Huger and one other Confederate battery was left to hold off the Union soldiers until Mobile could be evacuated.

Battery Huger’s garrison not only faced a massive concentration of Union heavy artillery, but also captured the Confederate artillery that was shelling them. Finally they spiked their guns and pulled back to Mobile.

A Union sympathizer living in Mobile gave them this tribute, “Never was a devoted garrison more bravely defended, and never was there a finer display of scientific gunnery.”

Just 3 days after the battle at Fort Blakeley on April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. The Union had won the Civil War. That same day Mobile surrendered. Fighting was over in Mobile Bay.

shots, shells, and bolts

This topic is completely unknown to me. How about you? Can you imagine moving around the ammunition in the following pictures? Let’s look at them in detail.

• left: The 8-inch spherical case shot was a hollow projectile loaded with iron or lead balls that was ignited by a black powder bursting charge. The Borman’s fuse’s short burning time (5 seconds maximum), meant the shot was rarely used with heavy artillery that exploded projectiles.
• middle: The exploding shell for a 32-pounder smoothbore gun was also a hollow projectile with a black powder bursting charge. A black power-filled paper time fuse was inserted through the brass fuse plug to detonate the bursting charge.
• right: at a 5^o elevation using an 8-pound charge, this 32-pounder smoothbore gun could fire a 32-pound solid shot for 1922 yards. These solid shots were primarily used against ships. While this gun was outmoded by the Civil War, 78 of the old guns were at Fort Morgan in April 1861.

• top: This solid iron conical projectile known as a bolt was fired at Union warships from Fort Morgan’s 6.4-inch rifled cannon. The Confederate Ordnance Department tried to improve effectiveness of the Fort’s outmoded 32-pounder smoothbore guns by having several rifled and reinforced with iron bands around the breech that were made by a Mobile iron foundry.
• right: The Burton shells were also used as ammunition for Fort Morgan’s 6.4-inch rifled guns. The lead device that once surrounded the base of this projectile is now missing. When fired, this lead device (sabot) would expand into the gun’s rifling, making the projectile spin in flight.
• bottom: Remember the Parrott Rifle from the Fort Blakely posts? Robert Parrott also designed this solid projectile as standard ammunition for the 30-pounder Parrott Rifle. The expanding gases of the powder charge forced a brass driving-band around the base of the shell into the gun’s rifling to produce greater range and accuracy. During the August 1864 siege, 8 U.S. Army 30-pounder Parrott Rifles bombarded Fort Morgan.

The Hotchkiss shell was one of the best mass-produced projectiles for rifled artillery during the Civil War. When fired, the force of the propelling charge pushed the cast iron cap onto the base of the shell’s body. This action forced the lead driving band into the gun’s rifling, causing the shell to spin. This spinning ensured greater range and accuracy.

The damage these shells could do was overwhelming. In the next post we’ll see the history of Fort Morgan from after the Civil War to today.