Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/426

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originally named New Philadelphia, it had from the first taken a vigorous part in the economic and political struggles which gradually separated North and South.

OLD CANNON OF BIENVILLE.

To reach the origin of Montgomery, one must go back nearly to the beginning of the century. From the misty traditions that early gathered like an Indian-summer haze about the red bluffs on which the city now stands, the first tangible object to emerge is old Moore's log cabin, perched insecurely on the high river-bank. Here Captain Woodward visited him, and long afterwards wrote: "Arthur Moore, the first white man that built a house and lived in it at Montgomery, built it in the latter part of 1815, or early in 1816. The cabin stood upon the bluff above what was once called the ravine. . . . The spot where the cabin stood had long gone into the river before I left the country." Here it stood high and solitary on the crumbling cliff, a picturesque connecting link between the legendary