Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1894 — WHAT A ROMANCE. [ARTICLE]

WHAT A ROMANCE.

The Old Capital of a Proud Southern State Sold to an ex-81ave. Alabama’s old capital, the city of Cahaba, was sold the other day at auction for 1550. In old days Cahabt, held its head high. It had grand in* augural fetes. Great streets were laid out in the pine groves and large docks were erected. A Governor’s mansion was built and a daily paper started. Fine dwellings shot up as in a night. Brick stores arose as if by magic. A metropolitan air sat upon the woodland capital. It vaunted itself proudly, and spoke in friendly and condescending interest of the decay of neighboring towns and villages. The town-lot speculator fastened himself upon the community. He laid out the pine groves into lots and sold them at fancy prices. Eligible sites for building purposes were sold at thousands of dollars an acre. Cahaba began to look even upon Mobile as a suburb, and saw the day when it would be as large as New Orleans Cahaba’s glory lasted about ten years. In 1850 the capital was taken from the town and removed to Tuscaloosa and thence to Montgomery. The reason for this was the impure aijabout Cahaba. The capital was all Cahaba had to call it into prominence. It gone, the town went back gradually into the insignificance from which it so suddenly had been called. The brick stores became empty, the streets grew up in grass and forests, and the proud families moved away. The death-knell was sounded last week. At the stroke of the Sheriff’s hammer the town was knocked down to Henry Freeman, colored, an exslave, for $550 cash, in default of the payment of taxes. Henry got in his purchase seventy-two town lots, three brick stores, several cottages, and other property —fifty acres in all. What will he ao with his purchase? He will plant cotton, corn, and rutabagas. He will train bean vines over the brick stores, or tear them down and use the brick to make barns and outhouses.