At about the same hour on the night of the 3d, when Leadbetter started for Mount Vernon, Colonel John B. Todd, acting under the orders of Governor Moore, embarked, at Mobile, in the steamer Kate Dale,1 with four companies of volunteers, for Fort Morgan. They reached it at about three o'clock in the morning, and at five o'clock they were in possession of the post. The garrison not only made no resistance out an eye-witness declared, that when the State flag of Alabama v. as unfurled, in place of the National flag that had been pulled down, they cheered it. It was a bloodless conquest. One of the insurgents, writing at the fort that morning, said:--“We found here about five thousand shot and shell; and we are ready to receive any distinguished strangers the Government may see fit to send on a visit to us.” Fort Gaines, on Dauphin Island, opposite Fort Morgan, was taken possession of by the insurgents at the same time; and, on the same morning, the revenue cutter Lewis Cass was surrendered to T. Sandford, the Collector of the Port of Mobile, by Commander Morrison. On the 9th, five companies of volunteers left Montgomery for Pensacola, at the request of the Governor of Florida, to assist the insurgents of that State in the seizure of the forts and Navy Yard. These formed a part of the force to whom Armstrong surrendered his post.
When the Ordinance of Secession was passed, the Mayor of Mobile called for a thousand laborers, to prepare defenses for the city. These, and an ample amount of money, were at once supplied. The Common Council, in a frenzy of passion and folly, passed an ordinance, changing the names of several streets of the city which bore those of Free-labor States to those of places in the Slave-labor States. The name of Maine Street was changed to Palmetto Street; of Massachusetts Street, to Charleston Street; of New Hampshire Street, to Augusta Street; Rhode Island Street, to Savannah Street, &c. And now, at the close of January, the authorities of the State of Alabama, and of its commercial metropolis, were fully committed to the great work of treason, which brought terrible suffering upon large numbers of the peaceful citizens of that Commonwealth.
A week after the so-called secession of Alabama, the politicians of Georgia, assembled in convention at Milledgeville, the State capital, announced to the world that that Commonwealth was no longer a part of the great American Republic. We have already observed the preliminary secession movements in that State,2 under the manipulations of Toombs, Cobb, Iverson, and some less notable conspirators, and the reluctance of the greater portion of the more intelligent citizens to follow the lead of these selfish and ambitious men. Their exalted positions (one a Cabinet Minister, and the other two named, National Senators) enabled them to work powerfully, through subservient politicians, in deceiving, misleading, exciting, and coercing the people. Toombs, in particular, whose thirst for power and
