Fortunately for her, Mobile was not the immediate seat of any part of that great civil conflict; but she was thoroughly loyal to the Confederate cause, and furnished most of her best blood to its support. The Mobile Cadets were tendered by Captain Sands immediately on receipt of President Davis’s call for volunteers, and from there went out, among others, the 3d, 8th, 21st and 24th Alabama regiments, the two companies of State Artillery and Charpentier’s and Watters’s Batteries. There are unmarked graves of Mobile boys from Pennsylvania to Texas. The Mobile post office in the interregnum issued its much-prized stamps,--two-cent black and five-cent blue. Later the streets were alive with Confederate uniforms, for camps were in the suburbs, and Government Street was the scene of memorable reviews. Society even in those war times was often gay. Courts, too, continued open, although litigation was limited. Groceries and staples changed hands, much as ever, but at prices measured in gradually depreciating Confederate money. Two hundred dollars for a barrel of flour, or finally even for a pair of shoes, and twelve hundred for a suit of clothes, were not unknown. The wits said that a basket was as much needed to carry the paper money to market as to bring back what it bought. After a while co-operative associations, with agents all through the country to buy supplies, became necessary in order to get things to the city at all. Coffee and some other articles almost disappeared, and various substitutes were used. Books and even money were printed on material that once would have been discarded, and the rough Confederate writing-paper still remains a curiosity. One new occupation came into being. While Semmes of Mobile, in the privateers _Sumter_ and _Alabama_, and Maffitt in the _Florida_, were destroying all Northern commerce which they could find on the ocean, the Federal navy was blockading Southern ports. This was designed to prevent supplies from getting in and cotton from getting out to Europe, and thus doubly to cripple the South. Blockade-running by swift Confederate vessels became common and often successful. The destination of the runners was generally the neutral port of Nassau, in British West Indies. Among these grayish-white vessels were the _Alice_, _Denbigh_, and _Red Gauntlet_. They carried, according to the size, from six hundred to twelve hundred bales of cotton, and brought back miscellaneous cargoes, in which drugs and war stores usually figured. Many of them were captured, and there was no insurance; but others made a dozen or more successful trips. The _Heroine_, now used as a bay boat, was one of the small blockade-runners. A Mobile Presbyterian minister took his wedding trip on the _Swan_, bound for Nassau, but was captured with his bride and taken North.