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MONTGOMERY

THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY

GEORGE PETRIE

Montgomery is best known to the general reader as the "Cradle of the Confederacy." He turns to its history, if he cares to read it at all, to get a clearer local background for the stirring scenes enacted there in '61. And it would have been hard to select for them a more appropriate setting. For in many ways Montgomery was then a typical Southern town. Situated in the heart of the cotton region, surrounded and supported by large plantations, it was the centre of much wealth and refinement. As the home of Yancey and other men of unusual ability and divergent politics, it had been the battleground where all phases of secession were keenly discussed. Moreover, although founded by a New Englander and