August 23, 1864

The Battle of Mobile Bay ended with the Confederate surrender of Fort Morgan. Alabama had seized the fort from federal control in January 1861 and then turned it over to Confederate forces, which, until August 1864, used it to keep the U.S. Navy out of Mobile Bay while letting blockade runners in. Mobile had risen to prominence as a major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico after the fall of New Orleans. The fall of Mobile Bay was a major blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of Yankee successes that helped secure the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) later that year.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

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

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

The ruins of Fort Morgan in Mobile County as it appeared during the late 1860s following the Civil War. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Map of the Battle of Mobile Bay, 1861. (H.H. Lloyd & Co., David Rumsey, Wikipedia)

Reproduction of an 1864 pen and ink drawing of the Battle of Mobile Bay by George S. Waterman, C.S.N., depicting the action as seen from above and inside the entrance to Mobile Bay. (U.S. Naval Historical Center, Wikipedia)

Battle of Mobile Bay, c. 1886. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

“Great naval victory in Mobile Bay, Aug. 5 1864.” (Currier & Ives, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

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