community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or
hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the
enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.

In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to
Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their
crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and
enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the
ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies
were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.

Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did
not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions
to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or
Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.

When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad
was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of
its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a
cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from
railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then
waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But
to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a
railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a
railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing
farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced
to make a new survey, and when the line was built it passed at a
distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.

Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had
hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles,
and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of
the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the
company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the
railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a
branch line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was
finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.

With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and
dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett passed into
the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old
families. Among these ex-slaves the