Abstract
This article investigates media coverage of 19th and early 20th century river activism and its effect on federal policy to control the Mississippi River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ “levees-only” policy—which joined disparate navigation and flood control interests—is largely blamed for the Great Flood of 1927, called the largest peacetime disaster in American history. River activists organized annual conventions, and later, professional lobbies organized media campaigns up and down the Mississippi River to sway public opinion and pressure Congress to fund flood control and river navigation projects. Annual river conventions drew thousands of delegates such as plantation owners, shippers, bankers, chambers of commerce, governors, congressmen, mayors and cabinet members with interests on the Mississippi River. Public pressure on Congress successfully captured millions of federal dollars to protect property, drain swamps for development, subsidize local levee districts and influence river policy.
Highlights
River conventions and river activism in the 19th and early 20th centuries shaped federal responsibility over U.S waterways, unifying geographical and political groups around a common policy of flood and navigational improvements on the Mississippi River
While river conventions gained popularity through engagement with a common object of the Mississippi River, they spoke to a reading public that was organized around event-driven news
The swampland program boosted the flood control cause by sponsoring Army Corps of Engineers surveys, which consistently recommended that the federal government build protective levee projects (Barry, 1997)
Summary
River conventions and river activism in the 19th and early 20th centuries shaped federal responsibility over U.S waterways, unifying geographical and political groups around a common policy of flood and navigational improvements on the Mississippi River. Through written “memorials” sent to Congress and published in newspapers to drum up public pressure, conventions repeatedly tied the Mississippi River to national identity, framing the river as a unifying force in a divided nation, after the Civil War. The question of how to manage navigation and prevent catastrophic floods along the Mighty Mississippi provided a common exercise for Americans of different geographic areas and political stripes. While river conventions gained popularity through engagement with a common object of the Mississippi River, they spoke to a reading public that was organized around event-driven news. Imagining this reading public was a critical function of the delegate performances and of congressional representatives who received reports about the conventions These articles produced an image of the Mississippi River that exceeded even its vast material body. In the convention’s memorial to Congress, delegates repeatedly cited the Commerce Clause and its interpretation by multiple administrations from Jefferson to Polk to argue for river improvements (Semi-Weekly Union, 1847)
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