Howell Cobb to His Wife. E.
Mobile [Ala.], 31 March, 1861.
My Dear Wife, We failed to make connection at this point, so I am detained here for a day. I shall leave this evening however for New Orleans and expect to be there early tomorrow morning. I have met many friends and acquaintances and passed the time quite pleasantly. . . .
I attended last night, before going to the theatre, a lecture from Mr. Smith, a Member of our Congress from this place. It was on the same subject with my speech in Macon and was a most able and successful effort. It will be published and I advise everyone to read it. It was really a finished and eloquent defence of our new Constitution.
Mobile looks more like a military barracks than a commercial city. There are some fifteen hundred troops here on their way to Pensacola—most of them from Mississippi and composed of the best young men of the State.
I met here one of my old officers in the Treasury Dept.—Mr. Ela. A brother of his died here and he came out to settle his estate. He is a New Hampshire man and still holds his place at Washington. I had this morning a long talk with him. He is very much impressed with the condition of things and says the North has no idea of what is going on. He attended Mr. Smith’s lecture last night, and told me that the demonstration of the audience when Smith announced our eternal separation from the North left no doubt of the fact that the Union could never be reconstructed. He will be able to give new wrinkles to the Lincolnites on his return to Washington City.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th Governor of Georgia and as a Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan. Cobb is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as the President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.