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Show GENERAL GRANTS TO STATES 323 Wilson came forth with some significant, even startling proposals. He found the levees- generally 5 feet high, 30 feet wide at the base and lx/i feet at the top-to be wholly inadequate because they were not uniform nor continuous and were totally lacking along minor streams flowing into the Mississippi. The levees that had been thrown up were not adequately impacted; as a result numerous crevasses had been created by high water. Wilson suggested straightening the channel, beginning at the mouth of the Mississippi and working upstream. This would cause the river to deepen its channel, speed up the flow and prevent abrasion of the banks. He proposed to start new levee construction farther back from the river, raise the levees to a higher elevation and make the top wide enough to serve as a road, which would make for more solidity and at the same time assure that weaknesses would be discovered early. He maintained that the natural outlets of the river which had been closed should be reopened to permit the water to proceed through the bayous to the Gulf and to serve as a safety valve, lowering the quantity of flow in the river and the pressure on the levees. Wilson pointed out that the cost would be heavy, the income from the swamplands would be inadequate, and Louisiana would have to raise additional taxes to finance the improvements. As a further help to the stricken state he recommended that the swampland grant to Louisiana be expanded to include all the remaining public lands in the state.10 Wilson's statement offered more reason for supporting the donation of the swamplands, at least on the lower Mississippi, than anything said in Congress. It did not make sense, however, to help Louisiana build levees unless Mississippi on the other side of the river were given similar aid. Furthermore, Arkansas also needed aid to drain its swamplands and shut out the floodwaters of its rivers. Other states, all the way to the Canadian line, had alluvial lands that seemed to be useless unless they could be drained. Back from the streams, in the level prairies in Illinois, in large wooded areas of Indiana and Michigan, and elsewhere were many wet tracts seemingly not capable of being utilized except as pastures. In Florida more than half the state was regarded as unsuitable for farming land, but only partly because the land was wet. Interests from all these states joined in a move to have the Congress give the swamplands to the states. For Louisiana, Mississippi, and perhaps Arkansas the grant was planned to aid in the construction of levees; farther north in the Mississippi Valley, in Florida, and in California it was drainage that was needed and that could be accomplished, according to the best knowledge of the time, by ditching. These states, however, had no plans in contemplation for utilizing their grants for this purpose. Before the general Swamp Land Act of 1850 was adopted, discussion again centered on the criteria for selection of "swamp and overflowed lands unfit for cultivation." Advocates of the measure tried to assure opponents that descriptions on the surveyors' plats would be the basis of selection and that it was. not intended simply to transfer the lands to state ownership but to make it possible for the states to finance drainage and development of the lands. Critics might well have been skeptical of the states' ability to undertake such massive improvement schemes considering that they had only just carried to completion the canals they had begun in the thirties and had not succeeded in completing the railroads they had undertaken. But Congress seemed only too glad to dump the swamplands on the states, thereby ridding itself of any further obligation for them.11 In view of the fact that the early maximum estimate of swampland to be selected was 20 10 S. Ex. Doc, 31st Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 14, No. 68 (Serial No. 562), pp. 2-8. 11 H. Ex. Doc, 52d Cong., 1st sess., 1891, Vol. 14, No. 1, Part 5 (Serial No. 2933), p. 59. |