Cheaha State Park and Alabama's highest point.

Check out this great new story on Cheaha State Park, the highest point in Alabama, courtesy of www.twoegg.tv

December 7, 1941: Alabamians at Pearl Harbor

U.S.S. Arizona in flames on December 7, 1941
Courtesy of the National Park Service

The speech delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt one day after the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, still touches deep into the hearts of Americans:

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 8, 1941.

The total loss of life during the attack was listed as 2,390.  Another ----- men and women were wounded. The majority of these were sailors in the U.S. Navy, most of them dying aboard the U.S.S. Arizona. The casualty list includes 49 civilians killed with another 35 wounded. Included among the dead civilians were children as young as 7 months.

Explosion aboard the U.S.S. Shaw
Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

The servicemen and women and civilians killed came from every state and the then Territory of Hawai'i. Among them were dozens of Alabamians.

I have not been able to find a complete list of all servicemen from Alabama killed at Pearl Harbor, but the following men are known to have died aboard the U.S.S. Arizona.  If you know of others, please let me know and I will add them:

Adams, Robert Franklin

Benson, James Thomas

Bibby, Charles Henry

Bishop, Millard Charles

Black, James Theron

Blankenship, Theron A.

Boyd, Charles Andrew

Broadhead, Johnnie Cecil

Chandler, Donald Ross

Frizzell, Robert Niven

Hindman, Frank Weaver

Holland, Claude Herbert, Jr.

Holmes, Lowell D.

Hughes, Lewis Burton, Jr.

Isom, Luther James

Johnson, Samuel Earle

Jones, Daniel Pugh

Jones, Woodrow Wilson

McCary, William Moore

McGrady, S.W.G.

Morris, Owen Newton

Murdock, Charles Luther

Murdock, Melvin Elijah

Nichols, Alfred Rose

Nichols, Louis Duffie

Peleschak, Michael

Penton, Howard Lee.

Putnam, Avis Boyd

Rogers, Thomas Sprugeon

Shores, Ireland (or Irland?), Jr.

South, Charles Braxton

Wilson, Comer A.

Woolf, Norman Bragg

Others from Alabama known to have been killed in the attack include:

John Arnold Austin of Warrior, who gave his own life aboard U.S.S. Oklahoma to save the lives of 15 of his shipmates. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.

Julius Ellsberry of Birmingham, one of 62 black servicemen who gave their lives at Pearl Harbor. He died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

If you would like to review the complete casualty lists for Pearl Harbor, the National Park Service maintains an excellent listing at http://www.nps.gov/valr/historyculture/people.htm.

You can learn more about Pearl Harbor, which is now part of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument at http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm.

An excellent place in Alabama to learn more about World War II is the Battleship U.S.S. Alabama at Mobile Bay. To learn more, please visit: http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/battleshipalabama.html.

Media Attacks Confederate Memorial Park in Mountain Creek, Alabama

Cemetery at Confederate Memorial Park

A number of outlets of the national media have leveled fairly partisan attacks on the Confederate Memorial Park in Mountain Creek (for an example see the HuffingtonPost).

The park preserves the site of the Alabama Old Soldiers Home for Confederate Veterans, which was opened in 1902 to provide a home and care for the state's thousands of aging Confederate veterans. Contrary to what is being said about the home on blogs and message boards today, it was NEVER operated by the Confederacy and the tax that supported it was NEVER a "Confederate tax."

Entrance to Confederate Memorial Park

The home was, however, a place where elderly and disabled veterans could go to live safely and receive care. It gave them a place where they could share stories and live with their friends and former brothers in arms in the last years of their lives. It was a show of mercy on the part of the people of Alabama and was funded by a tax that was part of the 1901 Alabama State Constitution.

A small portion of the proceeds of that tax are used today to preserve the grounds and maintain the two cemeteries there, where over 300 of the veterans who died at the home are buried today.

Museum at Confederate Memorial Park

Some, however, feel that no money should be used to care for the graves or preserve this unique historic site and are calling for its elimination from the state budget, even though the tax that cares for the grounds is part of the state constitution and has been for more than 100 years.

If you live in Alabama, I encourage you to call or write your local legislator to express your support for the park. If you live elsewhere, please write or call the Governor of Alabama to do the same. This is a blatant effort to stop caring for the graves of more than 300 Southern veterans, while still collecting and keeping the tax money intended for that purpose!

If you are passing up and down I-65 between Montgomery and Birmingham, I also encourage you to stop by for a visit of the grounds and the beautiful museum that interprets not Confederate history, but offers a balanced view of the War Between the States in Alabama. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/confederatepark.

Old Columbia Jail - Civil War era jail in Columbia, Alabama

Old Columbia Jail

One of the oldest and most unique structures in the Wiregrass area of Southeast Alabama is the little wooden jail in the Chattahoochee River town of Columbia.

Believed to date from the early 1860s, the jail was standing when the War Between the States swept across Alabama and the nation. Columbia at that time was a thriving riverboat port that served as a receiving and shipping point for the commerce and people of a significant part of the Wiregrass area.

Iron Spikes in the Jail Door

Built of wood with iron spikes studded in its walls to help discourage escape attempts, the jail contained only two cells, with light and ventilation provided by windows and a single door. Modern for its time, it must have been an incredibly miserable place to be confined during the hot Alabama summers.

Remarkably, the little structure survived through the years and was restored as part of a local Bicentennial project. It is thought to be one of the oldest surviving wooden jails not only in Alabama, but in the entire Deep South.

To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/columbiajail.

Fort Gaines Historic Site - Dauphin Island, Alabama

Cannon at Fort Gaines, Alabama

General Edmund Pendleton Gaines (1777-1849) was one of the most significant figures in both Alabama and U.S. history, and while he did not live long enough to figure in the Civil War, his name did.
Born during the American Revolution, Gaines was a hero of the War of 1812 who also fought in the First and Second Seminole Wars and the Mexican War. Along the way, he was the officer who arrested fugitive former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr in Alabama in 1807.

Gaines was at the pinnacle of his military fame in 1819 when the U.S. Government began construction of a fort on the east end of Dauphin Island. One of two major defenses designed to protect Mobile Bay from foreign attack, the masonry citadel was named in honor of the major general.  Gaines died in 1849 and was buried in Mobile's Church Street Graveyard. Fort Gaines, however, continues to stand to this day.

Fort Gaines

Designed by military engineers to operate with Fort Morgan, a second masonry fortification on the west end of Mobile Point, Fort Gaines was located so close to the water that its builders encountered significant difficulties in its construction. Forty years after work on the citadel had begun, it was still not finished when Alabama seceded from the Union in 1861.

Confederates completed the fort in 1862 and manned it as one of their key defenses against a Union attack on Mobile Bay. That attack came in August of 1864, when 1,500 Union soldiers landed on Dauphin Island and began their advance on Fort Gaines. Confederate troops skirmished with them as they slowly advanced, before falling back into the defenses of the main fort itself.

Fort Gaines

Two days later, on August 5, 1864, the fleet of Union Admiral David G. Farragut stormed through barrages of shot and shell from Forts Gaines and Morgain and entered Mobile Bay. It was during the monumental encounter, remembered as the Battle of Mobile Bay, that Farragut issued his immortal battle command, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

The soldiers in Fort Gaines bore witness as the famed Confederate ironclad C.S.S. Tennessee steamed out to engage Farragut's fleet in one of the greatest ship to ship battles of all time. The Tennessee was eventually captured and the fort held out only another three days, as Union ironclads moved up to point blank range and bombarded its masonry walls.  The white flag rose over Fort Gaines on August 8, 1864.

The history of the old fort continued, but never again would U.S. possession of Dauphin Island be contested. Now a historic site maintained by the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board, Fort Gaines is open to the public daily. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/fortgainesal.

The Battle of Spanish Fort, Alabama - March & April, 1865

Confederate Earthworks at Spanish Fort

One of the largest battles of the Civil War in Alabama was underway in earnest 146 years ago this week.

For most of the month of March in 1865, Union troops had slowly pushed their way north up the East Shore of Mobile Bay. Led by General E.R.S. Canby, the 32,000 soldiers were determined to break up and capture the Confederate defenses at Spanish Fort and old Blakeley, a critical step towards the final capture of the port of Mobile.  Simultaneously, a column of 13,000 men moved north from Pensacola, Florida, to break the railroad connecting Mobile with Montgomery and complete the encirclement of the Confederate forces.

The movement was very slow and it took Canby weeks to march his command from a jump off point on the Fish River to within sight of the massive Confederate earthworks at Spanish Fort.  The Union general had no way of knowing it, but he was opposed by a Southern force of only a couple of thousand men, but they were commanded by a bold and enterprising officer in General Randall L. Gibson.

Battle Markers at Mobile Bay Overlook

Facing sharp skirmishing from Gibson's Confederates, the Federals began to encircle Spanish Fort on March 27, 1865, officially opening the battle. It took 12 days for Canby to complete this process, dig siege positions and get his artillery into place. As a result, it was not until April 8, 1865, that he opened his bombardment of Spanish Fort with 90 cannon. The Confederates had 47 guns, but many of these were positioned to defend the river channel that led below the bluff. The replied to the Union fire as best they could.

The 8th Iowa broke through the Southern outer lines late in the day on April 8th, 1865, and General Gibson knew that his bluff was about to be exposed. Completely undetected by Canby's pickets, he withdrew his force from Spanish Fort that night, using an already prepared footbridge to slip away across the channel to nearby Fort Huger.

With only a couple of thousand men, Gibson had delayed the Union campaign up the East Shore of Mobile Bay for more than one full month. The Federals had no idea that they outnumbered him by 14 to 1. It was one of the most impressive performances by a Confederate general during the entire war.

To learn more about the Battle of Spanish Fort, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/spanishfort.

Confederate States of America formed in Montgomery 150 years ago today

Alabama State Capitol Building

The historic Alabama State Capitol Building became the capitol of a new nation 150 years ago today when delegates from seven Southern states met in Montgomery and declared themselves a provisional legislature for the Confederate States of America.

The so-far bloodless revolution in the Deep South had begun in December of 1860 when South Carolina declared its independence from the United States. The Palmetto State was followed on the road of secession by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, with each of the states agreeing to send delegates to a meeting in Montgomery on February 4, 1861.

First National Flag of the Confederacy

Alabama's Secession Convention had extended the invitation when the state left the Union in January. The purpose was to consider measures for the common defense and support of the newly independent states.

As a large crowd gathered outside the historic building and military companies paraded on Dexter Avenue, the delegates met 150 years ago today and declared themselves a provisional legislature for a new nation called the Confederate States of America. They authorized a committee to begin work on the drafting of the Confederate Constitution and laid the groundwork for establishing a new national government. The new Constitution would take four days to draft and its approval would be followed on February 11th by the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as the first President of the Confederacy.

The historic building where the delegates met remains in use as the State Capitol of Alabama to this day. To learn more about its role as the First Capitol of the Confederacy, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/montgomerycapitol1.