Mobile sits on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of a river system that brought huge quantities of cotton from Southern plantations for transshipment to England, Boston and New York. Mobile was initially divided on the issue of secession. Augusta Jane Evans was one of its leading Confederates while mercantile interests feared a blockade.
Once the war started, Mobile would become a loyal Confederate bastion, an active port for blockade runners and proving grounds for the experiments that would ultimately yield the Hunley, the world’s first submarine. It remained in Confederate hands until the last year of the war, when Farragut’s federal navy reduced Fort Morgan at the mouth of Mobile Bay and after a fierce battle, took the port city within.