John Sledge
Defending Confederate Mobile
A key piece of Confederate Mobile’s defensive strategy was its naval squadron. Like the army, the navy changed commanders several times, but...
Bygone Structures
“Remove not the ancient landmark, ” the Bible tells us. But we Americans have always been an impatient, push-ahead people, continually building, tearing down...
An Elegy to Spanish Moss
Not long ago, I had to attend a meeting at the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion on Spring Hill Avenue. Having a little time before...
Tedious on the Mud
Getting into or out of antebellum Mobile by sea wasn’t easy. No one involved with maritime traffic then was completely happy with the...
Steamboatin' on Mobile River
Steamboats were the defining objects of antebellum Mobile. According to one contemporary list, there were 50 of them working the local waterways....
Eyeing the Sparrow
In the weeks before my father’s March 2001 passing, he began jotting notes about his Port City boyhood and love of natural...
The Stakes: 1814
In the late summer of 1814, a year after the massacre at Fort Mims and five months after the Creek defeat at...
French Plantation Life on the Mobile River
Throughout the Port City’s long colonial century (1702 - 1813), there were plantations all around the Bay area. These were not like...
The Mississippian Period
Long before Europeans first trod these shores, Native Americans were here. In the beginning, they were simple hunter-gatherers, subsisting on...
Grit Lit
Tom Franklin burst upon the literary scene in 1999 with the publication of his award-winning short story collection “Poachers.” He followed up that...
