After four long years of Civil War, a despairing gloom veiled Mobile. “The city is a sad picture to contemplate,” lamented a northern paper, while the Mobile Tribune agreed, deploring it “the most desolate of cities.” Once among the nation’s most prosperous cotton ports, trailing only New Orleans, Mobile had taken on the quietness of a ghost town. The economy was ruined. The population was depressed, reduced to widows, orphans, refugees and emaciated soldiers returning from the war. Initially, it seemed like Mobile was more fortunate than Atlanta and Vicksburg, cities reduced to rubble from constant cannon fire. Such optimism, however, was lost after a huge explosion occurred at an ordnance warehouse, storing captured Confederate ammunition and weapons. Caused by the careless handling of explosives, the huge blast left most of the northern half of the city in flaming ruins and damaged or destroyed many buildings.
Following the catastrophe, thousands of Northerners streamed into the city. They were known pejoratively as carpetbaggers, seeking economic opportunities at the expense of a defeated people. Among them was a 26-year-old man with the distinguished name of William d’Alton Mann, who one spring day in 1866 made his appearance in Bienville Square. Young William had already served as a colonel in the Union cavalry during the war, and was lauded a hero of the Battle of Gettysburg. Unlike most carpetbaggers, Mann possessed considerable wealth from inventions he patented for use by the Union army. Adding to his royalties, the Federal government had named him to the position of tax assessor in Mobile. As a man of means, he checked into Mobile’s best hotel, the Battle House, where he remained throughout his years in the city.
Colonel Mann’s chances of being socially accepted by Mobile’s citizens were nearly impossible. Not only was he a former Union officer and carpetbagger, he also held the satanic position of Mobile’s tax assessor, controlling property taxes of an impoverished people with the power to seize and sell any abandoned property owned by former Confederate soldiers. Consequently, during the difficult days of Radical Reconstruction, men like Colonel Mann found themselves mercilessly ostracized and scorned by most of the citizens. Women would cross the street to avoid passing them. But if forced to pass one, they would sweep their skirts aside “as if to avoid contagion.”…