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Flooding in Louisiana. Mississippi Lev

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:25.00 USD Estimated At:50.00 - 75.00 USD
Flooding in Louisiana. Mississippi Lev
Flooding in Louisiana. "Mississippi Levees - Speech of Hon. Joseph H. Acklen, of Louisiana, in the House of Representatives, Feb. 5, 1879." 5 -1/2 x 9, 22 pp., charts, original cotton thread. Fascinating, closely-set address of this 29-year-old Congressman, a Louisiana sugar planter, later a leading light in Tennessee, and Chief Game Warden of the U.S. Of immense timeliness, mentioning below-sea-level sections of New Orleans, and claiming floods every four years. "...It is clear that unless the vast volumes of water which pour down from the upper States of the great Mississippi Valley are securely confined within levees, in the States of Miss., Ark., and La. the increased volume of water coming each spring will burst over the frail embankments and flood for miles the surrounding country ...The great Mississippi is the national highway of the United States...The civil war which brought ruin and desolation to so many homes in the South likewise caused the destruction of many of the levees, and let the turgid waters of the Mississippi in upon once smiling fields...(Let it) be the seat of a prosperity that will rival the glory and grandeur of any empire that history has handed down upon her golden pages." It is argued today that the kind of work proposed in this speech resulted in even greater destruction by Katrina. The personal copy of fellow Rep. James O'Brien, former Sheriff of N.Y.C. Dust soiling of wrappers, else very good.