page_title: History of Mobile, Alabama
section_title: Mississippi Territory: 1813 to 1817
hierarchical_section_title: History of Mobile, Alabama / Territorial period / Mississippi Territory: 1813 to 1817
caption_attribution_description: English: Mobile in 1815 From Report on the Social Statistics of Cities, Compiled by George E. Waring, Jr., United States. Census Office, Part II, 1886. Found at Texas University Library 2007-05-08
context_page_description: Mobile was founded as the capital of colonial French Louisiana in 1702 and remained a part of New France for over 60 years. During 1720, when France warred with Spain, Mobile was on the battlefront, so the capital moved west to Biloxi. In 1763, Britain took control of the colony following their victory in the Seven Years War. Following the American Revolutionary War, Mobile did not become a part of the United States, as it was part of territory captured by Spain from Great Britain in 1780.
  Mobile first became a part of the United States in 1813, when it was captured by American forces and added to the Mississippi Territory, then later re-zoned into the Alabama Territory in August 1817. Finally on December 14, 1819, Mobile became part of the new 22nd state, Alabama, one of the earlier states of the U.S. Forty-one years later, Alabama left the Union and joined the Confederate States of America in 1861. It returned in 1865 after the American Civil War.
  Mobile had spent decades as French, then British, then Spanish, then American, spanning 160 years, up to the Civil War.
context_section_description: Before the War of 1812, the Spaniards in Mobile allowed British merchants to sell arms and supplies to the Indians defend their lands against encroaching settlers who had begun to build on part of present-day Alabama. During the course of the war, General James Wilkinson took a force of American troops from New Orleans to capture Mobile. The Spanish capitulated in April 1813 and the Stars and Stripes of the United States was raised for the first time over the Mobile area as it was added to the existing Mississippi Territory.
  A British attempt commanded by Captain Henry Percy in September 1814 to take Fort Bowyer on Mobile Bay was repulsed by American forces.
caption: A map of Mobile in 1815.
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