Less than six months from today, on Friday, March 3, 2017, THE STATE OF ALABAMA's BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION will kick off. On that day two hundred years ago, Monday, March 3, 1817, President Madison signed some legislation in D.C. and ALABAMA TERRITORY was created. For the first time the civilized world heard the word "Alabama" spoken  in English by somebody other than by a bunch of drunken Indian traders along the Gulf Coast. In fact, the enabling legislation was introduced into Congress labeled as creating "Mobile Territory" but the name got changed the night before it was supposed to be submitted by some Georgia Congressmen who happened to want to promote some land they owned on some river in the new territory. The March 3 legislation, signed on the last day Madison would serve as the President of the United States, was just the first of many milestones leading up to Alabama Statehood on December 10, 1819 but those 33 months would be filled with highly eventful living for those spending there time from 1817 to 1819 on Dauphin Island and around the mouth of Mobile Bay.

As 1817 dawned on Dauphin Island, the U.S. Revenue Boat maintained vigilance inspecting ships and charging fees to an ever increasing number of those arriving around what was known as the Lower Anchorage at Mobile Point. U.S. General Bernard in New Orleans was busy designing fortifications for both Dauphin Island and Mobile Point. By the end of 1817, General Bernard submitted his plan for a Dauphin Island fortification to the government and it was approved. Thus began one of the most outrageous, monstrous frauds ever perpetrated against a government as well as against its law-abiding citizens: THE CONTRACT FOR THE BUILDING OF A DAUPHIN ISLAND FORTIFICATION.




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