stormed on April 9th, the day Lee surrendered in Virginia.
Maury felt that he could not hold Mobile with only four thousand five hundred men, for the Federals could now attack from the river and land at once; and so he withdrew to Meridian. Blakeley was the last great battle of the war.
The Federal troops occupied Mobile immediately upon the surrender by Mayor Slough on April 12th, camping in the suburbs, on Government Street and elsewhere. One unfortunate result was the terrible explosion on May 25th, from careless handling of ammunition in a warehouse on Water and Lipscomb Streets. There were hundreds killed, more than $700,000 of warehouse property was destroyed, and the whole business section of the city was injured. Such was the return of peace!
Mobile, since the Civil War, offers a fruitful field for study. The few flush years, when commerce first revived; Reconstruction, with slaves over masters; bond issues from 1870 on railroads that were never built, resulting in bankruptcy in 1879; the panics of 1873 and
