April 19, 1861

A week after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a naval blockade of Southern ports to prevent the export of cotton and the smuggling of arms and supplies to rebel fighters. Among the ports where the blockade was focused was Mobile – the second-most important harbor in the nation for cotton exports.

The blockade wasn’t very effective at first, in part because of the limited number of Union ships to enforce it at the start of the war, and because of the success of blockade runners – small, stealthy ships that used their speed, or the skills of their captains, to find a way through. Some blockade runners were forced to cooperate with the Confederate government – which needed to sell cotton to finance the war effort – or face confiscation of their vessels.

The capture of Mobile Bay by Admiral Farragut in August 1864 essentially put an end to blockade running through the Port of Mobile.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Cartoon map illustrating Gen. Winfield Scott’s plan to crush the Confederacy’s economy, 1861. (J.B. Elliott, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Three scenes of military facilities: lower battery on the Ogeechee destroyed by the Pembina, Fort Gaines, Mobile, and Fort Morgan, 1861-1865. (Alfred R. Waud, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Fort Morgan, 1861-1865. (New York Public Library, Wikipedia)

Fort Morgan, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Fort Morgan, 1817. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Fort Gaines, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Interior bastion at Fort Gaines, March 17, 1934. (HABS Survey, photograph by W.N. Manning, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.