“It is necessary”: Walter Lowrey, “Navigational Problems at the Mouth of the Mississippi River, 1689-1880,” Ph.D. diss., p. 203.
“The solution of this problem”: NYT, May 15, 1873.
“We must get ready”: AAH to Cyrus Comstock, March 2, 1873, Comstock Papers, LC.
“a bitter and unrelenting”: Corthell, “Remarks.”
“the river interests”: Calvin Woodward, p. 265.
“as many hours”: Ibid.
“If a thousand”: Ibid.
“The Board”: Ibid., p. 270.
a secret agreement: See memo in Eads’ handwriting dated July 1, 1874, in EP.
received Eads warmly: For an account of this meeting, see William Taussig, “Personal Recollections of General Grant,” Missouri Historical Society Publications 2 (1903), pp. 1-13; also Dorsey, p. 152; Calvin Woodward, pp. 262-286.
“badly designed”: Woodward, p. 270.
“[One] of those”: Kirby and Laurson, p. 162.
“soul became immersed”: Carl Condit, “Sullivan’s Skyscrapers as the Expression of Nineteenth Century Technology,” pp. 78-93.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Whatever the Delta”: Robert Brandfon, The Cotton Kingdom of the New South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 24-29.
“On the second”: U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, pp. 266-271.
“If we make”: Quoted in Benjamin G. Humphreys, Floods and Levees on the Mississippi River, p. 39.
“exhaustively treated”: Letter from Secretary of War, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., House Doc. 220, p. 109.
“my death blow”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems at the Mouth of the Mississippi River, 1698-1880,” Ph.D. diss., p. 376.
“The canal is”: AAH letter, January 15, 1874, quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties at the Mouth of the Mississippi, p. 34.
“mud lumps”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 11.
“masses of tough clay”: P&H, p. 442.
“If a fleet”: De Bow’s Review 18 (April 1855), p. 512.
“only a scattering”: Capt. Fuller to Col. Stephen Long, January 24, 1859, NA, RG 77.
“a foolish attempt”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 201.
“improvement of”: Dorsey, p. 91.
“The West is”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 289.
“I am well satisfied”: McAlester to Payne, October 10, 1868, quoted in ibid., p. 276.
“It is idle”: New Orleans Picayune, March 6, 1869.
“[T]he Essayons”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 313.
“This is a tissue”: Ibid.
“told me yesterday”: Higby to Capt. Charles Howell, quoted in ibid., p. 313.
“to run us down”: Howell to AAH, July 20, 1871, NA, RG 77.
“Its construction”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 303.
“are not in condition”: New Orleans Daily Times, February 14, 1874.
“Can it be possible”: New Orleans Picayune, February 8, 1874.
“Never was an honest”: New Orleans Daily Times, February 15, 1874; New Orleans Picayune, February 15, 1874.
“In talking over”: Corthell, “Remarks.”
Stone’s reversal: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 378.
“Socially Mr. Eads”: New Orleans Times-Democrat, March 18, 1887.
He also bought: See memorandum of understanding in Eads handwriting dated July 1, 1874; letter from James Wilson to JBE, July 6, 1876; memo by JBE, July 22, 1876, all in EP. The late John Kouwenhoven collected this and a vast store of additional material on Eads; thanks to John Brown of the University of Virginia for sharing it with me.
single most vital issue: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 391.
“I need not say”: Barnard to Comstock, April 14, 18, 22, and July 5, 1874, Comstock Papers, LC.
West Point had been using: See a superb article by Martin Reuss, “Politics and Technology in the Army Corps of Engineers,” Technology and Culture 26, no. 1 (January 1985).
members of the American Society: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 239.
“Every attempt”: Congressional Record, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., pp. 5367-5368.
“Thirty-seven years”: Quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 21.
“the real bed”: Ibid., p. 98.
“The annual advance”: Ibid., p. 21.
“absurd”: JBE to S. A. Hurlbut, U.S. House, May 29, 1874, attacking Humphreys’ report, in Eads, ALP, p. 153.
“We have laid”: Dorsey, p. 173.
“Disasters and”: Eads, ALP, p. 153.
he now claimed: Dorsey, p. 176.
The board estimated: Wright to AAH, November 30, 1874, House Exec. Doc. 25, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., pp. 1-2; and Report, Board of 1874, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1875, Exec. Doc. 114, quoted in Lowrey, “Navigational Problems, p. 404.
“The accompanying discussion”: R. E. McMath to AAH, May 7, 1874, NA, RG 77.
“If the profession”: JBE, address at a banquet in his honor at St. Louis, March 23, 1875, EP.
“undertake the work”: Ibid.
CHAPTER SIX
“The alluvial regions”: See Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1875, pp. 540-550, esp. p. 542.
“By such correction”: Quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 28-34.
Creoles: In New Orleans, a “Creole” was a descendant of French or Spanish settlers.
“Captain Eads has fought”: Quoted in New Orleans Picayune, May 12, 1875.
“The first indication”: Quoted in Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: Bantam, 1990), p. 134.
the deepest water: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 70-71.
“[T]ransfers of cargoes”: JBE to Leovy, June 11, 1875, and January 24, 1876, Henry P. Leovy Papers, Historic New Orleans Collection.
“Assurance of success”: New Orleans Picayune, June 13, 1875.
“any ‘bloated bondholder’”: Eads to Corthell, June 11, 1875, Kouwenhoven Collection.
Eads would pay: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” pp. 416-417.
The Dutch method: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 75-83.
a new sandbar: New Orleans Democrat, May 3, 5, and 10, 1876; New Orleans Picayune, May 10, 1876.
Howell pressed his attack: New Orleans Democrat, May 3, 5, 6, and 10, 1876; New Orleans Picayune, May 10, 1876.
“had no authority”: Comstock to Secretary of War George McCrary, May 2, 1877, Comstock Papers, LC.
“Please instruct General Comstock”: JBE to Taft, May 9, 1876, quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 100.
“General Comstock will”: Ibid.
oceangoing steamer Hudson: The account of this incident comes from Corthell, pp. 107-109.
“It is not too much”: Ibid., p. 108.
One such debate: for details see Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 460.
“Discharge the whole force”: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 156.
“a marked scour”: Ibid., p. 137.
whom he paid $5,000: JBE to Beauregard, January 2, 1877, Beauregard Papers, Louisiana State University.
“The results actually attained”: AAH to Congressman E. W. Robertson, May 1, 1878, AAHP.
“The Laws of Gravity”: Review of Humphreys and Abbot Report,” pamphlet, Missouri Historical Society.
forty-three-page rebuttal: AAH to Abbot, October 20, 1877, AAHP.
“a reply might”: Abbot to AAH, November 21, 1878, and November 26, 1878, AAHP.
“The work is done”: New Orleans Daily Times, July 11, 1879.
453,681 tons were shipped: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 235-238; J. Thomas Scharf, History of St. Louis City and County, vol. 2, p. 1126; see also Kouwenhoven Collection.
the second-largest: Arthur Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters, p. 129.
“The present successful”: Quoted in Morgan, pp. 147, 172, 175.
“The plan did not”: Lans
ing Beach, “The Work of the Corps of Engineers on the Lower Mississippi,” in American Society of Chemical Engineers, Transactions, 1924.
the levees rose higher: HFCCH, p. 1710.
“is held in place”: Elliott, vol. 2, p. 44.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“a very cave”: Percy, LL, p. 272.
“It is not like most”: Twain, pp. 134-135.
“a jungle equal”: Quoted in John C. Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” Ph.D. diss., 1991, p. 18.
One pioneer reported: James Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, p. 15.
“the fetid alligator”: Ibid., p. 44.
“almost worth a man’s life”: Ibid., p. 14.
“Nature knows not”: Alfred Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” Publications of the American Economic Association 3, no. 3 (1902), p. 236.
A 1906 scientific assessment: Quoted in Brandfon, The Cotton Kingdom of the New South, pp. 24-29. Brandfon’s book is a classic, particularly strong on the role of railroads in the Delta’s development.
assessed values: De Bow’s Review, October 1858, pp. 438-440.
In 1861: Willie Halsell, “Migration into and Settlement of Leflore County, 1833-1876,” Journal of Mississippi History, 1947, p. 238.
“that great Swamp”: RP&H, p. 24.
“a seething lush hell”: Cobb, p. 6.
“a wilderness and a waste”: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” Ph.D. diss., pp. 13-17; Florence Sillers, ed., History of Bolivar County, p. 156.
the most profitable: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 221n.
“more a king”: Memphis Daily Appeal, January 6, 1881.
“on the threshold”: Brandfon, p. 10.
“The foremost branch”: Quoted in Brandfon, p. 14.
a record harvest: Brandfon, p. 20.
“To facilitate trade”: Eads’ speech at the dedication of the grand hall of the St. Louis Merchants Exchange, December 5, 1875, EP.
“the salvation”: Brandfon, p. 76.
“I [am] only trying”: Fish to John Parker, May 31, 1922, quoted in Matthew Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” Ph.D. diss., Parker Papers at USLL, p. 60.
2,365,214 Delta acres: Brandfon, p. 46.
the state sold 706,000 acres: C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, p. 119; see also Brandfon, pp. 49-63.
“The coming of”: Sillers, pp. 272, 277, 321.
the Y&MV Railroad: Robert Harrison, Alluvial Empire, p. 117.
The Y&MV soon became: Brandfon, p. 80.
“Black Code”: For more on the Mississippi Black Code, see Cobb; and Eric Foner, Reconstruction.
One man even credited Percy: Percy, LL, pp. 275-276; Foner, p. 174.
initially whites resisted it: Foner, p. 174; Cobb, p. 70.
thousands of blacks came: Vernon Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890, pp. 107-109; Cobb, p. 83.
More smoothly than elsewhere: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 333-335.
“Public sentiment”: Greenville Times, March 24, 1877, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 335.
Outside the Delta: Quoted in Cobb, p. 82.
“with unceasing vigilance”: Wharton, p. 115; Cobb, p. 70.
When his sister-in-law: LP to Pullman Co., October 24, 1907. Also see, for example, LP to Rigo & Co., February 16, 1909; wire to I. Aiken, July 22, 1905, all in PFP.
“quote a lower rate”: See, for example, LP to Rigo & Co., February 16, 1909; wire to I. Aiken, July 22, 1905; to Pullman Co., October 24, 1907.
“While, if you should”: LP to his brother Walker Percy, October 11, 1927, PFP.
“it has a tendency”: LP to Judge George Ethridge, May 4, 1929, PFP.
“I think the”: LP to WAP, May 31, 1929, PFP.
except one Wall Street: LP to Walker Percy, November 18, 1907, PFP.
“He read Ivanhoe”: Percy, LL, p. 57.
“No one ever”: Ibid., p. 57.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“bull clique”: Brandfon, p. 114.
Probably a higher proportion: Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. 5, Agriculture, pp. 96-97, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 5, 9; interview, June 9, 1994.
“The South must not”: Outlook, August 3, 1907, pp. 730-732.
“We are without”: Quoted in Robert Brandfon, “The End of Immigration to the Cotton Fields,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50 (March 1964), p. 600.
these partners included: Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 93.
“leave no stone unturned”: Ibid., p. 153. Brandfon cites a series of letters between Fish, Percy, Percy’s law partner William Yerger Scott, and U.S. Immigration Commissioner Frank Sargent on the subject in the early 1900s.
“the Delta’s three”: Ibid.
“the Yazoo Valley”: Ibid., pp. 104-111; The Call of the Alluvial Empire, pamphlet, TUL.
over fifty in Greenville: Interview with Frank Hall, March 24, 1992; see also James Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese, 1971.
“eloquence on the subject”: Ernesto R. Milani, “Sunnyside and the Italian Government,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991, p. 38; Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” pp. 132-133.
An asthmatic and weak: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 22.
“scarcely a genius”: WAP to Camille Percy, January 9, 1905, PFP.
Governor Andrew Longino: Lewis Baker, The Percys of Mississippi, p. 25.
Parker also disdained: JC-L, November 1902, passim; Parker to Jacob Dickinson, February 25, 1924, Parker Papers, USLL; Roosevelt to Philip Bathel Stewart, November 4, 1902, in Elting E. Morison, ed., Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), vol. 3, pp. 377-380.
“made any direct request”: Parker to Scott, May 30, 1904, quoted in Schott, p. 104; LP to Fish, November 25, 1905, PFP.
“in every way superior”: Manufacturer’s Record, April 7, 1904, p. 250.
forty-seven Delta: Randolph Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos and the Federal Campaign Against Peonage: The Case of Sunnyside Plantation,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991, p. 41.
“Every step taken”: Alfred Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” pp. 236-278 passim.
“It is always difficult”: Quoted in Rowland Berthoff, “Southern Attitudes Toward Immigration, 1865-1914,” p. 346.
three Italians were lynched: Brandfon, “End of Immigration,” p. 611.
“a very dirty”: Report by Hall W. Sanders of Mississippi Justice Department, State Department peonage files, NA, RG 59, M862, reel 687, case 9500.
“I think we”: J. Holland to LP, November 11, 1907; LP to Holland, October 15, 1907, PFP.
“Don’t Go”: Don’t Go to the Mississippi, pamphlet, PFP.
a barn at Sunnyside: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 42.
“an unfriendly attitude”: LP to Umberto Pierini, March 9, 1907, PFP.
he told other planters: LP to Will Dockery, March 8, 1907, PFP.
“Mr. Percy”: LP to Ambassador Des Planches, February 14, 1907, PFP.
“The Italian immigrant”: Quoted in Milani, “Sunnyside and the Italian Government,” p. 36.
the first female U.S. attorney: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 45.
“endless and tedious”: LP to Scott, n.d.
“Mr. Percy appears”: Quackenbos to Attorney General, August 14, 1907, NA, RG 60, 100937.
“The whole future”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States 1900-1925, vol. 4, The War Begins, 1909-1914, p. 386.
Roosevelt then spent: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 125.
“at Sunnyside”: Quoted in Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 49.
“we have seen”: Charles Russell, “Report on Peonage,” 1908, Justice Department peonage file, NA, RG 60.
“I have a perfect”: Quackenbos to LP, October 16, 1907, NA, RG 60.
“O. B. Crittenden”: Ibid.
“rough with labor”: L
P to J. B. Ray, December 26, 1906, PFP.
“I would be willing”: LP to H. B. Duncan, March 27, 1907, PFP.
“Those negroes”: LP to J. R. Taylor, May 20, 1907, PFP.
“If conditions were”: Sullivan, The War Begins, p. 384.
“see the South”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925, vol. 3, Pre-War America, pp. 128, 133, 136.
“I am counting on you”: LP to H. Hawkings and LP to Lewis Levi, July 17, 1906.
“The fundamental trouble”: LP to J. S. McNeilly, March 9, 1906, PFP.
“a positive unkindness”: Albert K. Kirwan, Revolt of the Rednecks, pp. 144, 146.
“[t]hat man is a lover”: Outlook, August 3, 1907, pp. 730-732.
“an intense southerner”: LP to John Sharp Williams, November 30, 1907.
“Percy, by George”: LP to WAP, April 19, 1907.
“I hailed”: Roosevelt to LP, August 11, 1907, PFP.
“I believe he”: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907.
“social acquaintance”: LP to Lawrence Lewis, March 9, 1907, PFP.
Percy had urged Parker: LP to Parker, November 7, 1907, PFP.
Roosevelt did move: Schott, “John N. Parker of Louisiana,”: p. 125; NOT-P, January 7, 1919.
Now Percy called: The following account of this meeting comes chiefly from two letters: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907, and LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 100937.
He then made: LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 100937.
“very amusing”: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 57.
he gave Percy the answers: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907, PFP; LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 10937.
Then the president: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 20, 1907.
It was part: Ibid.
“Fish are biting”: LP to Dickinson, December 23, 1907, PFP.
“I am very uneasy”: Roosevelt to Hart, January 13, 1908, Albert Bushnell Hart Papers, Harvard University, quoted by Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 56.
Of 8 million: Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 104.
“Italian immigration has not”: LP to M. B. Trezvant, December 26, 1913, PFP.
“There is no labor”: LP to WAP, April 19, 1907, PFP.
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