Col. William d'Alton Mann was not a Mobilian by birth, but adopted the city as his home in 1866. This Ohio-born carpetbagger arrived as the Federal Assessor of Internal Revenue. He ended up running for U.S. Congress, as a Democrat, and driving the first spike of the railroad that would connect Mobile and New Orleans. In an early bid for power, Mann made a series of loans to the city's struggling daily newspapers. He soon owned them, combining The Mobile Daily Register and several other papers, including the Mobile Daily Times. He realized, however, that touting an allegiance to the North in the editorial pages would bar his way to the better parlors and clubs of 1866 Mobile. The newspaper took a decidedly anti-Union slant, and the publisher was accused of instigating the Pig Iron Kelly riot in 1867. Kelly, a radical Republican from Pennsylvania, was injured, but nothing ever came of the congressional investigations that followed. The gregarious Col. Mann loved a good time, and invitations to his Christmas parties at the Battle House were much sought after. By 1869, 120 of Mobile's most prominent citizens attended the event. They enjoyed a 13-course meal that included haunch of venison and pressed buffalo tongue. In August of 1869, Mann ran for Congress as a Democrat, using the motto: "Down with Carpetbaggers!" His entourage toured the district with a band blaring "Dixie." He told his constituents that the colonel had resigned from the Union army before Sherman marched to the sea. Mann claimed victory, but federal authorities declared otherwise, leading to yet another Government Street riot. Mann eventually left Mobile and turned his attention to the booming railroad industry. He designed railway cars, and his sleeping car concept was successfully patented. It is still in use on many European trains today. His cars were the favorite of European royalty, who had them fitted with teak gaming tables, crystal chandeliers and Renaissance art. His firm eventually ran the Orient Express. GOSSIP GONE WILD His final stop was New York, where his younger brother had purchased a struggling magazine called "Town Topics - A Journal of Society." By the 1880s, Col. Mann had taken it over. His weekly "Saunterings" became one of the most widely read columns in the country. While his younger brother's magazine covered a world of America's privileged, enjoying receptions, tea dances and tennis parties, Col. Mann's column revealed adulterers, transvestites, nymphomaniacs, and male and female homosexuals. Suddenly, Americans were reading about strip parties at Newport's exclusive Bailey's Beach, the neck biting of a female member of New York's 400, and intimations that the relationship between two society ladies was more than mere friendship. Circulation soared and so did advertising rates. Mann boasted that his magazine was "not for babes, prudes, idiots or dudes." The New York Star denounced it as "an instrument of blackmail" in 1887. Mann quietly paid servants for inside information about their employers. Telegraph key operators were on his payroll. With an ever-expanding arsenal of scandal, gossip and innuendo at the ready, Mann made timely calls on some of the richest men in the world, including J.P. Morgan and William K. Vanderbilt. Loans to Mann were made and never repaid. He sold stock to individuals at a price several times its value. Payment was received for expensive leather-bound books, outlining America's most successful men, but the books were never published. Those who refused to pay suffered. He described the wife of one non-payer: "Though covered with diamond rings, her hands are wrinkled like a washerwoman's." Another's daughter: "suffers from some sort of throat ailment - she cannot go more than half an hour without a drink." And another's: "Seldom does a brunette make a pretty bride and Miss Maria Arnot Haver was no exception." Mann's jackpot lasted into the 20th century, when he attempted to blackmail society banker Edwin Main Post, the husband of not-yet-famous Emily Post. When Edwin Post alerted authorities about the extortion attempt, his marriage and Mann's blackmail machine were essentially ruined. A jury found Mann not guilty of the charges. He died on May 17, 1920. The Gilded Age that produced him was long gone and his name was nearly forgotten. Few newspapers made note of his death. Back in Alabama, however, the Register devoted an entire editorial to his years in Mobile. Image information: Main: Col. Mann was quite a character. Illustration by F.T. Richards. Left: Mann combined several local newspapers to create the Register at the corner of North Royal and St. Michael Streets. Erik Overbey Collection/ USA Archives. Right: After Emily Post's divorce in 1905, she began to write to add to her income. "Etiquette" was published in 1922. Courtesy of the Emily Post Institute.