Mighty Mississippi

By Marquis William Childs and Marquis Childs

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 089919088X
• ISBN13: 9780899190884
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Rowdy history of an untameable resource

The Missisloppy, as some local people call it, is one of the largest rivers in the world and has a colorful history. The speedy settlement of the interior of the North American continent could not have been possible without the existence of the mighty river and all its substantial tributaries, such as the Ohio and Missouri. That settlement was done by a collection of wild characters who worked hard, played even harder, fought harder than that and were nearly always on the edge of destitution. As Childs makes clear in this book, whisky was the primary fuel for the settlement of the area drained by the Mississippi. The people who moved the boats up and down the river largely subsisted on whisky, yet were always capable of doing the jobs that needed to be done. However, even though the boat traffic rose to economic dominance very rapidly, it fell to insignificance even faster. The arrival of the railroad and the construction of rail bridges across the mighty rivers reduced the boats to near insignificance. While you can build a railway nearly anywhere, it is almost impossible to place a river where you want it. What I liked best about the book was the description of the transfer of economic power from the river and New Orleans to rail and Chicago. At one time, many people believed that New Orleans would be the commercial capital of the United States, even exceeding New York City in cost of goods shipped. The Erie Canal was the first event to reduce the traffic, making it much cheaper for people in western Pennsylvania and Ohio to ship their goods to New York City via the Erie Canal rather than float them all the way down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. The creation of the massive rail hub in Chicago then made it the location where all points in the northern United States shipped most of their goods. This reduced the river to near insignificance. The book closes with a discussion of the plans developed by the Army Corps of Engineers for the massive set of locks and dams on the Mississippi. Like all major development projects, there were those for and against, but if you have gone through some of them, as I have, they cannot fail to impress you. The history of the Midwestern United States for the first fifty years is roughly equivalent to the history of the Mississippi. In this book you learn the bawdy past of that great stream. You learn about some of the rowdy men who lived in concert with the river, drinking, fighting and cavorting with loose women, yet doing their share in building a mighty nation.