1839
Slave Trade Continues to Increase
The Worst Yellow Fever Epidemic To Date
The sickness at Mobile continued, at our last dates, to prevail with great virulence, and at no time since the memorable year of 1819 has the mortality been so fearfully great. The Journal of the 13th says: ‘We are pained to say, that there is no sign of an abatement in the epidemic. On the contrary, comparing the daily mortality with the diminishing population, we fear it may be said to be on the increase. The number of interments since the first instant, amount to the frightful number of 180, which gives a daily average for the past eleven days of a little over 16. Our population now hardly reaches 3,500; some compute it much less. Those of the citizens who were able to leave, have almost invariably suspended their business and other engagements, and departed, either to the watering places on the Pascagoula Bay, and the islands and bluffs along Mobile Bay, or south refuge in the salubrious atmosphere to be found in and around the neighboring city of Pensacola.
"Sickness at the South” Gloucester Telegraph, Massachusetts, September 28, 1839
Violence
The following events occurred in Mobile on Saturday, October 19, 1839
The story was printed in the Mobile press on Tuesday, October 22 and reprinted in the Charleston Southern Patriot on October 31, 1839
Our city was thrown into great consternation on Saturday morning last, from a report that two young men of the most amiable and unexceptionable character had been lynched the night previous by a company of five men. The fact, as we have heard them are briefly as follows: These two young men were on guard, as they have been during the last two weeks, for the protection of the city. At about 11 o’clock on Friday night, they were seized in the streets, hurried into a carriage, and driven about two miles from the city, where they were stripped, tied, and whipped with a cowhide!! A pile of wood was also placed around them, and threatened by the monsters to be fired. This however was not done. The reason alleged for this inhuman violence was that these young men had set fire to the City Hotel, and this information was derived from one of the gang of lynchers, a man of notoriously despicable character, who would not be believed on oath of ten men in this city. Yet without any proof or further inquiry, the innocent young men we seized, and their persons most inhumanly and shamefully mutilated. And the actors in this infamous transaction were some of them CONSERVATORS OF THE PEACE!!! One holds the office of Justice of the Peace, and member of the City Council! Another is one of the Commissioners of Roads and Revenue for Mobile County!!! We blush - for the honor of our city, we blush, to tell the degrading truth.
As soon as the transaction was known in the city, the city patrol promptly took steps for the arrest of the offenders and before morning three of them were lodged in jail. The other two were not to be found. The three were brought before the mayor in the morning and, all the facts being fully proved, they were fined to the fullest extent of the law…In the afternoon the two others cam in - gave themselves up – and executed bonds in $5000 each for their appearance at Court. Never have we known such indignation in a whole community, as was exhibited here on Saturday. Not a single breath of suspicion of guilt rests on the young men, and the sympathy for them is unbounded and universal. Whilst toward the vile and unprincipled monsters, who have thus inflicted on them this personal injury, - who have violated the sanctity of the law, and disgraced our city, there was one universal feeling of deep indignation, contempt and scorn. Never have we known a feeling so universal and at the same time so intense.
Southern Patriot (Charleston, SC), October 31, 1839