Rising Tide. Part 16

If Coolidge did not seek reelection-something by no means clear in the spring of 1927, although the two-term tradition suggested he would not-the leading contenders for the 1928 Republican nomination were Frank Lowden, the former Illinois governor who had been a favorite in 1920, Vice President Charles Dawes, Senate Republican leader Charles Curtis, and Senator William Borah.

Before the flood, the Survey Survey, a national magazine considered quite progressive, reviewed the chances of these and other contenders, including dark horses. It did not mention Hoover. Even after the flood began, Literary Digest Literary Digest ran a story and cartoon about candidates chasing the GOP nomination. It did not mention Hoover. ran a story and cartoon about candidates chasing the GOP nomination. It did not mention Hoover.

Then, on Good Friday, 1927, the same day that torrential rains were deluging the Mississippi valley, Coolidge insulted Hoover when speaking to a group of White House reporters. The front page of the New York Times New York Times read, "Capital Mystified over Hoover's Status with the President." Privately, Coolidge, who called Hoover "Wonder Boy," said, "That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad." read, "Capital Mystified over Hoover's Status with the President." Privately, Coolidge, who called Hoover "Wonder Boy," said, "That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad."

But Hoover's ambition still churned. The flood was pouring through the belly of America, and it would be on every front page in the nation for weeks. Hoover could not have been unaware of his possibilities as he took charge. Since entering public life, he had mixed good works and ambition. Now he would mix them again.

Agnes Meyer, wife of Hoover's confidant Eugene Meyer, a financier and later owner of the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post and head of the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, wrote in her diary that Hoover was "consumed with ambition.... The man's will-to-power is almost a mania. The idea of goodwill, of high achievement, is strong in him, but he is not interested in the good that must be accomplished through others or even with the help of others. Only what is done by Hoover is of any meaning to him. He is a big man but cannot bear rivalry of any sort." and head of the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, wrote in her diary that Hoover was "consumed with ambition.... The man's will-to-power is almost a mania. The idea of goodwill, of high achievement, is strong in him, but he is not interested in the good that must be accomplished through others or even with the help of others. Only what is done by Hoover is of any meaning to him. He is a big man but cannot bear rivalry of any sort."

He had immense confidence, as much as Eads. After a conversation with him in 1927, the novelist Sherwood Anderson said, "I felt, looking at him, that he had never known failure."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

THE A APRIL 22 CABINET MEETING in which Coolidge named Hoover head of the flood effort adjourned at lunch. Two hours later Hoover sat down in his office with the other cabinet secretaries involved, American Red Cross vice chairman James Fieser, and senior staff. Hoover had rivalries with nearly everyone present. Davis, the secretary of war, was a potential presidential candidate and also resented Coolidge having given Hoover authority to issue orders directly to the Army. Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon was far larger than Hoover in the world outside Was.h.i.+ngton and scoffed at his ideas. And Hoover had repeatedly tried to usurp the power of several secretaries of agriculture. Hoover ignored these rivalries now; this meeting had purpose. Even while everyone was taking their seats, he demanded a report on the situation. in which Coolidge named Hoover head of the flood effort adjourned at lunch. Two hours later Hoover sat down in his office with the other cabinet secretaries involved, American Red Cross vice chairman James Fieser, and senior staff. Hoover had rivalries with nearly everyone present. Davis, the secretary of war, was a potential presidential candidate and also resented Coolidge having given Hoover authority to issue orders directly to the Army. Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon was far larger than Hoover in the world outside Was.h.i.+ngton and scoffed at his ideas. And Hoover had repeatedly tried to usurp the power of several secretaries of agriculture. Hoover ignored these rivalries now; this meeting had purpose. Even while everyone was taking their seats, he demanded a report on the situation.

DeWitt Smith of the Red Cross gave it. Exactly one week earlier, as reports had come in of the extraordinary rains, senior Red Cross officials had gathered late at night to plan for a disaster. Quickly they had concluded that they could handle the crisis in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But the most likely scenario in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana would be beyond their capabilities. There would be 200,000 refugees at a minimum. If other levees broke, as expected, the number of refugees could rise above 500,000.

Hoover turned to Davis, who reported gloomily, "The Army Engineers believe nothing can be done to stop further breaks in the levees, and flood conditions will grow worse hourly."

They had defined the problem. Hoover quickly s.h.i.+fted the discussion to organization. The Red Cross had set up a headquarters in Memphis. Smith asked that each government department appoint a senior liaison person with direct access to the secretary. Done. Hoover went further, soon wiring to Henry Baker, the Red Cross relief director in Memphis, authority "to use such government equipment as necessary and charter any private property needed."

Finally came money. The Army, Davis said, had already spent $1 million with no way to recoup it. The Red Cross had a highly developed fund-raising apparatus. Davis suggested that the president set a specific target and ask for donations from the nation. Five million dollars was agreed upon as the initial goal, although all present knew it would be insufficient and a second call would have to be issued.

Meanwhile, a special train, including a railroad car for reporters, was being put together by the Illinois Central. As soon as it was ready, Hoover, Fieser, and Jadwin left for Memphis on it. They would arrive at 7 A.M. A.M. Jadwin would stay in the flooded region only briefly, but Hoover and Fieser would spend weeks there together, sleeping more than half their nights on a boat or train. Jadwin would stay in the flooded region only briefly, but Hoover and Fieser would spend weeks there together, sleeping more than half their nights on a boat or train.

FROM THE FIRST, Hoover's plans went beyond simply rescuing and maintaining hundreds of thousands of people. Enormous as that task would be, he intended to rebuild the region after it was devastated. Any more personal ambitions would be taken care of by the stories written and broadcast by the railroad car full of reporters. Hoover and Fieser both understood how useful the reporters would prove to all of their respective purposes. They jointly alerted all Red Cross personnel: "In the course of the next few weeks many representatives of magazines, newspapers, and feature syndicate companies will be in the flood area.... [G]ive these writers every possible cooperation."

Fieser separately wired Was.h.i.+ngton headquarters: "Essential push all publicity angles next week or ten days for sake of financial drive"; "Secretary Hoover is magnetic center of publicity. Wire us currently anything useful for release by Secretary in interviews enroute"; "Keep us informed all fact matter with publicity value"; "Get pictures of Coast Guard and other boats flying Red Cross flags. Send them immediately to Douglas Griesemer, Director of Publicity, Red Cross, Wash., D.C. Also suggest similar photography by news photographers."

Hoover's staff, particularly George Akerson, fed the stories and photographs to reporters accompanying Hoover. Simultaneously, Commerce Department staff in Was.h.i.+ngton a.s.sembled clips from hundreds of newspapers and wired them to Akerson. Together, Akerson and the Was.h.i.+ngton staff would create a potent publicity machine.

Hoover himself concentrated on business. From the moment he got off the train in Memphis, he sought only people who could give him information. At first, there was chaos. For days Henry Baker had been fielding frantic calls for aid. He had worked sixty straight hours in an empty office building put at his disposal. Carpenters, electricians, and telephone and telegraph technicians had banged hammers around him. The day of the Mounds Landing break Army liaison officers had arrived from each of four Army corps located in the South and Midwest. Supplies were arriving as well. Baker was being drowned in detail. Finally, a Memphis banker cleaned up the lines of communication by arranging for men in forty towns to wire daily reports on conditions in their regions.

They still had the immense problem of distributing supplies and services throughout the flooded region. Baker recommended to Hoover and Fieser that they centralize policy but decentralize execution. If they put each county Red Cross chapter in charge of relief in its area, they would save money on administration, speed reaction time, and strengthen the Red Cross by building up local chapters. Chapters already existed in most counties. Generally, they were chaired by prominent men, such men as, in Greenville, LeRoy Percy's son William Alexander Percy. And in case of scandal Baker pointed out decentralizing would put responsibility "squarely on the local community and not the national organization.... Therefore, criticism may be localized very definitely."

Hoover and Fieser immediately concurred, and Hoover streamlined things more. Red tape disappeared. Representatives from every federal agency, from the Army to the Public Health Service, and several governors soon sat near Baker's desk. When Baker needed something, he called to the appropriate man, who took care of it. Thirty yards away a Red Cross purchasing agent conducted a nearly continuous reverse auction; he stood on a platform and shouted out supplies and quant.i.ties needed, and dozens of suppliers shouted back bids. Four days after the Memphis headquarters opened, it had already outgrown its s.p.a.ce; on April 24 the Red Cross moved into an enormous Ford Motor Company automobile a.s.sembly plant.

Hoover stayed away from the headquarters, instead receiving a train of visitors in his suite at the Peabody Hotel where he dealt with the larger picture. Connolly, the Army engineer in charge of the Memphis district, had pinned a map to the wall. The Memphis mayor had a.s.signed Hoover two homicide detectives to find and bring to him whomever he wanted to see. To ease coordination with the Red Cross, Hoover also told the governors of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana to create state flood relief commissions headed by a single "dictator" with authority over all state resources. Each governor did. In Louisiana, Hoover told the governor to name John Parker, who had served under Hoover during the war as a regional food administrator. Parker was named. The Arkansas dictator was Harvey Couch, who headed the Arkansas Power & Light Company. Mississippi's flood czar was L. O. Crosby, a lumberman with few ties to the Delta. But he had made a fortune and, like Hoover, wanted a place at a bigger table; he was bankrolling Murphree's reelection campaign, asked him for the job, and got it. Crosby would soon become one of Hoover's most obsequious supporters.

Next, with a few phone calls, Hoover convinced railroads-the Illinois Central, the Missouri Pacific, the Texas Pacific, the Southern, the Frisco-to provide free transportation for refugees and cut rates on freight during the emergency. They also fed Baker's operation information about the contents of each boxcar, so one or more cars could be cut out of any train and sent where needed.

Order finally began to emerge. Meanwhile, Hoover began a.s.sembling a rescue fleet. In the Delta the rescue operation had long since begun.

THE FORCE of the Mounds Landing break, if not the break itself, had stunned the entire Delta. The water pouring through it rooted out, undermined, and collapsed buildings, trees, railroad embankments, rose over them, washed them out. Water poured over even Egypt Ridge, named because no flood had ever risen above it. of the Mounds Landing break, if not the break itself, had stunned the entire Delta. The water pouring through it rooted out, undermined, and collapsed buildings, trees, railroad embankments, rose over them, washed them out. Water poured over even Egypt Ridge, named because no flood had ever risen above it.

Literally tens of thousands of people, wet and exhausted, were clinging to trees or sitting on rooftops. All waited for boats. They waited in danger and misery. It was unseasonably cold, penetratingly cold. Some died of exposure.

The storms continued. Gales turned the entire flooded region into an angry sea, churning with filthy brown foam. As far as one could see were rolling whitecaps, a sight foreign and terrifying to planters and sharecroppers alike. Waves pounded against buildings, currents ate at their foundations, the combined force sweeping them away. From the river for sixty miles east and ninety miles south spread the sea.

There were few boats. In the entire city of Greenville there were only thirty-five bateaux-double-ended, flat-bottomed boats-a few skiffs, and a handful of motors. Only six people in Greenville had an outboard motor, and elsewhere in the Delta they were even rarer. But what boats and motors existed quickly arrived, volunteered and driven by their owners; the rest were commandeered. The first rescue boat left the city soon after the break, and independent of any organization. The fastest boats with the best motors came from Arkansas, up the White River. They belonged to bootleggers who swooped down the Mississippi, lifted their boats over the levee, and spread out into the ocean the Delta had become. From Memphis came Dr. Louis Leroy, who owned, and raced, perhaps the single fastest speedboat on the river. From the Gulf Coast towns of Gulfport, Pa.s.s Christian, Biloxi, and Bay St. Louis, professional fishermen came, 120 of their boats freighted north by rail and unloaded on the edge of the flood in Vicksburg, Greenwood, Yazoo City, and a few making it to Greenville on the last train, arriving just as water roared through the streets. The "river rats" came too, men who lived on houseboats and survived by fis.h.i.+ng and trapping and building rafts of logs, floating them downriver to the giant Greenville sawmills. They too lifted their boats over the levee and headed over what had been fields.

It was a time for individual initiative and heroism. Will B. Moore, a black man working for a Greenville lumberyard, said, "I made myself and a bunch of men, I got a committee, we just built boats, went out and caught locals." Hunter Kimbrough grew up in a planter family, made films with Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico, and was a bond salesman at the Whitney Bank in New Orleans when the flood came. He asked for leave to help. The Clearing House a.s.sociation gave him $3,000 and wished him luck, and he bought two motors, took a train to Vicksburg, and got on a stern-wheel steamboat for Greenville. There he found a large steel-hulled government boat and lifted it over the levee. For the next ten days he stayed in the Percy home at night, rode through the fields by day. Herman Caillouet, a Cajun, lived in Greenville, worked for the Corps of Engineers, and had a river pilot's license. He was not one of the social elite; his wife made dresses for debutantes. But upon hearing news of the break, he put a Model T Ford engine on his own 22-foot boat and set out onto the new sea towing another 22-footer. On his first trip back to Greenville, he unloaded refugees on the levee as the water was entering the town. "I go into Jim's Cafe and say gimme hotcakes," he recalled. "He says, 'Water's running in here now.' 'Well I can't help that. I ain't had dinner.' He says, 'I'm fixing to leave.' 'Put 'em on,' I said, 'I'll cook 'em.' When I finished eating, the water was up to my knees, but I cooked some more." Then he went back out. Two days after the creva.s.se, Caillouet's wife delivered his son. He left her to go out on the water again.

He did not always succeed. A black man with two kegs of whiskey in his house would not leave though waves were cras.h.i.+ng against it. When Caillouet returned the next day, there was no house anymore, only water. Another time he spotted a family of seven stranded in a floating house, moving with the current. He headed for them. Suddenly, the house hit something or a wave hit it and it splintered. He was only a hundred yards or so away, but... "I searched the boards and things...and never saw a soul come up, not a soul. When the house started breaking up and falling, you see, and the waves throwing that lumber over, it just covered 'em to where they couldn't come out from under.... Seven of them.... I went round and round, did not see a hand." But in three days and nights, working almost nonstop, Caillouet rescued 150 people.

Virginia Pullen remembered her father coming home from rescue work: "He found one family with two small children; they handed him the baby out of the tree. A lady and two small children and two teenage boys. He never did know if they all were the same family. She handed him the baby, and just as she handed him the baby, it breathed its last. That really upset the rescue workers-the idea that they didn't get there the day before, why didn't they push farther."

Mrs. Hebe Crittenden was one of those rescued, just as currents were undermining her house. She and a dozen of her sharecroppers could feel it shake. She recalled, "We could hear water slos.h.i.+ng up under the house. The coloreds started singing spirituals."

Ernest Clarke was less lucky. He and his family had had no warning until the cattle began to low. As he started to get his boat ready, the water was upon them, the rolling, deepening surf smas.h.i.+ng his boat to bits. He fled back to his house. The water tipped the whole house over, crus.h.i.+ng it, throwing him, his mother, his wife, and his four daughters into the water. He fought free and climbed a tree. Three days later he was rescued. At the Greenville hospital he learned his entire family had drowned. The bodies of three of his children were found later tangled in barbed wire; the fourth body was never found.

Many rescuers carried guns. One used it more than once to keep people from jumping into his boat and capsizing it. Another shot a cow that was trying to clamber aboard. Dogs were abandoned, left frightened and barking on rooftops in the vast expanse of water.

But some men were less than helpful. One planter put his black sharecroppers in his cotton gin and nailed it shut. They broke out. Just below Mounds Landing on the levee two armed white men stood with 200 blacks who sharecropped for them. A steamer stopped and lowered the gangplank, but the whites refused to allow any blacks to get aboard for fear they would not return. The captain argued with them. Finally, a physician on the steamer climbed down the gangplank. The men blocked him. He snapped: "I come here by the authority of the American Red Cross and the G.o.d of all creation. If either of you has guts enough to pull the gun you carry please start now or get out of my way and I don't believe either of you has the guts." The doctor pushed past them and the 200 black men, women, and children boarded the steamer.

Soon rescue became systematized. Large mother s.h.i.+ps, usually paddle-wheel steamers pus.h.i.+ng open barges that held 1,500 people, operated in the rivers and streams, not worrying about where the channel lay. Motorboats, skiffs with outboards, and even rowboats were attached to each mother s.h.i.+p; they penetrated inland and searched for survivors, or picked up those stranded on levees or Indian mounds. The work was always dangerous. Even where the water seemed still, a submerged fence post, or stump, or a dozen other obstacles could capsize or rip a hole in a boat.

From Greenville itself, and Greenwood and Vicksburg also, each morning at daybreak rescuers headed their boats out into the country, generally carrying a mechanic for the motor and a mailman who knew rural routes. They followed power lines down roads. Telephones still worked. People phoned in that they were trapped, or someone else was trapped. Planes flew over and acted as spotters. When a boat filled, the rescuer turned around and carried his load back to the Greenville levee or, if he was close to Greenwood, fifty miles and four hours by boat across the sea from Greenville, he took people there.

Greenwood marked the end of the flat Delta, the beginning of the hills. It was dry.

WILL P PERCY WROTE: "For thirty-six hours the Delta was in turmoil, in movement, in terror. Then the waters covered everything, the turmoil ceased, and a great quiet settled down.... Over everything was silence, deadlier because of the strange cold sound of the currents gnawing at foundations, hissing against walls, creaming and clawing over obstacles."

The terror lasted more than thirty-six hours. Eight days after the break a desperate wire said, "The Mississippi Delta is under water from two to eighteen feet and lots of people are drowning. 250 people in vicinity of Midnight, Miss., and Louise are begging for aid and if not moved by morning will be drowned."

Then the silence did come. Out on the water there was unimaginable silence. As far as the eye could see was an expanse of brackish chocolate water. There was not the bark of a dog, the lowing of a cow, the neighing of a horse. Even the trees turned dingy, their trunks and leaves caked with dried mud. The silence was complete and suffocating.

The water seemed stagnant, but it moved. The current showed itself and became fierce when it ran over railroad embankments or suddenly collapsed a building. At cross streets in downtown Greenville currents drowned people, until submerged cars were towed to the intersections to act as breakwaters.

A few days after the creva.s.se it turned hot, the steaming hot of the Delta. Outside Greenville, Henry Mascagni recalled hundreds of bodies of animals floating "just swelled up. I saw three people, colored, floating, swelled up." A week after the flood, he went out on a boat. "The first thing we saw was a 350-lb hog-they had put a lot of hogs on the levee. We had no motorboat, all rowed by hand. The fellows said, 'Well there's one we can kill and bring back and feed the people.' When we got close we see it was eating on a dead black woman, and he had done eaten quite a bit of her. She was bloated up.... The hog had drug her right to the edge of the water, trying to get her up on the bank where he could eat her with no trouble. I never will forget it. All we did, and could do, was kill the hog. What was left of the colored woman we just pulled her down to the ca.n.a.l ditch and just turned her loose and it floated on off.... We brought the hog back, killed it, cleaned it, the people were so hungry they were eating it before it was cooked.... I don't know what this disease was you got from uncooked pork but I think two people died."

One report quoted a responsible Corps of Engineers employee who had personally seen "fully two hundred bodies of dead persons in the flooded area between Vicksburg and Greenville."

Meanwhile, the river continued to pour through Mounds Landing. Five weeks after the creva.s.se, Caillouet took two engineers to survey it in a river commission steamer 50 feet long. Some waves still stood 12 feet high. Choosing discretion over valor, the engineers told Caillouet to drop them off on the levee before he shot the creva.s.se. He did, then picked them up inside the break. The creva.s.se was three-quarters of a mile wide. (Today a 65-acre lake remains a permanent legacy.) With a lead line 100 feet long, they took soundings and found no bottom.

HOOVER HAD LITTLE IMPACT on the initial rescue effort, but as the flood rolled south and spread across the land, he listened, set policy, delegated, and organized. As each day pa.s.sed, his hand was felt more and more, and the Red Cross and Army officials under him took firm control. By April 26, Colonel George Spalding, who commanded the official rescue fleet, was instructing scattered Army engineers to reject boats offered for use unless they had been carefully inspected. He also dictated such details as the amount of coal with which "[e]very relief boat should be equipped." Soon thereafter, as the waters were swelling on every river, stream, and bayou in Louisiana, Spalding controlled a fleet of 826 vessels, including Navy and Coast Guard s.h.i.+ps, along with 27 Navy seaplanes used for spotting stranded refugees and inspecting levees. Army engineers were filing daily reports with the Red Cross about weak levees, and, given this warning, the rescue fleet then concentrated nearby. on the initial rescue effort, but as the flood rolled south and spread across the land, he listened, set policy, delegated, and organized. As each day pa.s.sed, his hand was felt more and more, and the Red Cross and Army officials under him took firm control. By April 26, Colonel George Spalding, who commanded the official rescue fleet, was instructing scattered Army engineers to reject boats offered for use unless they had been carefully inspected. He also dictated such details as the amount of coal with which "[e]very relief boat should be equipped." Soon thereafter, as the waters were swelling on every river, stream, and bayou in Louisiana, Spalding controlled a fleet of 826 vessels, including Navy and Coast Guard s.h.i.+ps, along with 27 Navy seaplanes used for spotting stranded refugees and inspecting levees. Army engineers were filing daily reports with the Red Cross about weak levees, and, given this warning, the rescue fleet then concentrated nearby.

On April 30, the day after Hoover had watched the dynamiting of the levee at Caernarvon, he was back in Memphis. There he spoke by radio to the nation in a fund-raising appeal for the Red Cross. It was his first national address, one of the first by anyone. "I am speaking to you from the temporary headquarters which we have established for the national fight against the most dangerous flood our country has ever known," he began. "It is difficult to picture in words the might of the Mississippi in flood.... A week ago when it broke the levee [at Mounds Landing], only a quarter of the river went through the hole. Yet in a week it poured water up to twenty feet deep over...an area up to 150 miles long and 50 miles wide.... Behind this crest lies the ruin of 200,000 people. Thousands still cling to their homes where the upper floors are yet dry. But thousands more have need to be removed in boats and established in great camps on the higher ground. Other thousands are camped upon broken levees. This is the pitiable plight of a lost battle."

Now, he warned, the struggle was continuing along battle lines to the south. "Everything humanly possible is being done by men of magnificent courage and skill. It is a great battle against the oncoming rush, and in every home behind the battle line there is apprehension and anxiety. Every night's reading of the water gauges is telegraphed to the remotest parts of those states-a sort of communique of the progress of the impending, threatening invasion of an enemy. It is a great battle which the engineers are directing. They have already held important levees against the water enemy. What the result of the fight may be no one knows. But the fort.i.tude, industry, courage and resolution of the people of the south in this struggle cannot fail to bring pride to every American tonight.... Another week will be a great epic. I believe they will be victorious."

But almost as he spoke, a man in an airplane above Vicksburg watched as the waters that had inundated the Delta rejoined the main river and reported, "The swiftly moving current...[was] clearly visible as it pounded its way back into the Mississippi, from which most of it escaped two weeks ago when the levee north of Greenville gave way."

It pressed against the levee on the opposite bank. It was relentless, its weight and force immense. Two days after Hoover's broadcast, the levee at Cabin Teele, Louisiana, yielded. Now water roared over land to the west. Soon the Memphis Commercial-Appeal Memphis Commercial-Appeal announced, "Today it is possible to go from Vicksburg to Monroe, Louisiana, by boat." Monroe was 75 miles distant. The Cabin Teele creva.s.se extended the width of the inland sea to 125 miles. announced, "Today it is possible to go from Vicksburg to Monroe, Louisiana, by boat." Monroe was 75 miles distant. The Cabin Teele creva.s.se extended the width of the inland sea to 125 miles.

A New York Times New York Times reporter described his flight over the region: "For mile after mile all the land in view was the tops of the levees, to which thousands had fled for safety. In places the tops of giant cypress and oak trees still swayed in the breeze, the only green spots in the picture. The lake extends far into Arkansas and probably 100 miles...from the banks of the Mississippi into Louisiana." reporter described his flight over the region: "For mile after mile all the land in view was the tops of the levees, to which thousands had fled for safety. In places the tops of giant cypress and oak trees still swayed in the breeze, the only green spots in the picture. The lake extends far into Arkansas and probably 100 miles...from the banks of the Mississippi into Louisiana."

These waters were draining south through the flat land into rivers already at record height, into the Tensas, the Boeuf, the Ouachita, the Red, the Atchafalaya, rivers whose waters were climbing higher and higher, pus.h.i.+ng against walls of rising sandbags.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

THE RIVER was conquering everything. was conquering everything.

"First the Cairo to Memphis sector was lost," reported the New York Times New York Times. "Next the river triumphed as it surged south through the Memphis to Vicksburg sector. Its victory has been complete and overwhelming in the sector that stretches from Vicksburg to the mouth of the Red River. Now comes the struggle to hold the levees of the Red and the Mississippi, westward in the Red for a distance of seventy-five miles.... Tonight 250 rescue boats are being concentrated at the mouth of the Red." "[Failure would] increase the refugee army now depending on the Red Cross for food, clothing and shelter to nearly 400,000 in six states."

In advance of the flood, Louisiana State University students were trained to operate the outboard motors for boats. Engineers set up ten wireless radio stations, and twenty-four seaplanes and twelve airplanes were used to spot stranded refugees. A hailstorm knocked out four planes in one day, the hailstones going through the propellers like bullets. No topographical maps existed, and every railroad operating in the state cooperated with Isaac Cline, who also collected details about forestation and other obstructions and devised a formula to predict the movement of the flood over land, then issued bulletins daily, and sometimes twice daily. These bulletins went straight to Hoover and were also issued publicly; they were astoundingly accurate.

Based on Cline's predictions and Army engineers' warnings about levee weak points, Hoover and Fieser set up what they called "concentration camps" in advance of antic.i.p.ated creva.s.ses, sending telegrams to mayors or chairmen of local Red Cross committees, warning them of the oncoming flood. Typically, Hoover wired L. G. Porter of New Iberia, Louisiana, a town in Cajun country sixty miles west of the Mississippi River, "We wish that the Red Cross chapter at New Iberia would take in hand at once the construction of a camp at some point between New Iberia and Burke as your surveyors may determine laid out for 10,000 people." Included were precise instructions on building tent platforms, latrines, pipelines, drilling wells, and connecting power lines. "The National Red Cross will bear the expense, but we are depending upon your citizens to undertake the work and do its supervision on a voluntary basis."

While Hoover saw to the building of refugee camps, thousands of men struggled to save the levees. The Bayou des Glaises levee was key. If it went, others would fall like dominoes and the "Sugar Bowl" region of Louisiana would likely go under water. Much of this land, protected by ridges that had contained all previous overflows, had never been flooded.

Here men mounted one of the most intense and longest struggles against the river. It also seemed the most hopeless. The levee had not been designed to hold such a volume of water. The flood, hemmed in by hills to the west and, ironically, the Mississippi levees to the east, had formed another inland sea that reached a depth of twenty-four feet and rose five feet above the levee. Sandbags could not keep back such a height for long. On May 9 waves began to break over the top of the levee. Thousands of men piled more sandbags higher. Miraculously, they continued to hold.

Then the rains fell again. In two days the spring's final major storm dumped eleven more inches of rain on the area. On May 12 miles of the Bayou des Glaises levee simply crumbled. Hundreds of millions of tons of water began pus.h.i.+ng through the creva.s.se. The waters were immense, hurtling south to the sea through the Evangeline country.

Hoover had earlier told the 105,000 people in the area to evacuate. Few had. But Hoover and the Red Cross had prepared. Thousands of trucks rolled into the area just ahead of the first wave of water. Four trains carrying boats, motors, and now-experienced rescuers headed in from different directions, and the rescue fleet entered just behind the first wave of water. All 105,000 people, along with most of their cattle, horses, and mules, were evacuated with crisp efficiency and few deaths.

Cline announced that the flood crest had itself escaped the channel of the Mississippi and was now traveling over land. It was twenty-five miles wide and "of tremendous proportions, exceeding in height the previous highest water in that basin, which was in 1882."

The Mississippi flood could never have reached New Orleans. But it was covering areas where no white man had ever seen it, heading toward Melville, Louisiana, a town on the west bank of the Atchafalaya River. Before the Bayou des Glaises water arrived there, on May 17 at 5:30 A.M. A.M. in Melville, the Atchafalaya itself broke through the levee. Guards ran through the town firing guns, shouting, "Creva.s.se! Creva.s.se!" One man clanged the church bell over and over and over. Melville's 1,000 residents fled to the levee. in Melville, the Atchafalaya itself broke through the levee. Guards ran through the town firing guns, shouting, "Creva.s.se! Creva.s.se!" One man clanged the church bell over and over and over. Melville's 1,000 residents fled to the levee.

Almost in the center of the town, water from the two creva.s.ses collided. They met violently, with, as one resident said, "the sound of a thousand freight trains." The collision ripped apart a steel railroad bridge and drowned its tender, and left, according to a later Red Cross report, "immense deposits of sediment throughout the town and surrounding countryside [creating] tremendous sand dunes, practically burying the community...was.h.i.+ng away houses, s.h.i.+fting others from foundations." The New York Times New York Times reported "a veritable wall of water...running in places thirty or more feet high,...sweeping everything in its path." reported "a veritable wall of water...running in places thirty or more feet high,...sweeping everything in its path."

Later that day in Plaucheville, Louisiana, a family of nine drowned when their house collapsed, undermined by the current. Their bodies were found floating in 16 feet of water.

On May 20, Hoover, concerned about another creva.s.se at McCrea, Louisiana, on the east bank of the Atchafalaya, ordered the evacuation of 35,000 more people. This time they left immediately.

Engineers insisted they had a chance to win this fight, to save the east-bank Atchafalaya levee. For weeks they had been strengthening it, and the creva.s.se on the opposite bank had relieved some pressure. In addition, the Mississippi River was falling. It was falling only by inches a day, but from St. Paul to New Orleans, it was falling. The great crest had pa.s.sed.

Now 2,500 men worked at McCrea in s.h.i.+fts. They used every technique, s.h.i.+elding the levee with lumber, backing it up with sandbags, revetting it with rocks. Repeatedly, some small part of the levee crumbled into the river, but each time hundreds of men rushed to the spot with timber, rocks, and sandbags. "They are soldiers, every one, heroes, too," Hoover said of them.

But at three-thirty in the morning of May 24, muddy water suddenly appeared behind the levee. A few moments later a stretch of levee 700 feet long crashed into the river. The river had just ripped open the last creva.s.se of the 1927 flood.

The current near the creva.s.se roared past at 30 miles an hour. An a.s.sociated Press report said: "A wall of water 40 feet high and almost 20 miles wide tonight was...cutting a path of desolation across the length of Louisiana.... Immediately behind the advancing waters scores of residents of the lower Atchafalaya were being rescued by tiny boats which ploughed precariously through the raging current to remove them from housetops.... Further back, along the Bayou des Glaises sector, only the swis.h.i.+ng of the water could be heard."

The image of a 20-mile-wide 40-foot-high wall of water was hyperbole, but the Atchafalaya had breached levees on both its banks and was spreading still another sea across central Louisiana. The flood rose to 42 feet above sea level, while the land through which it flowed had an elevation of less than 10 feet. Another 150,000 more people became refugees. Hoover informed Coolidge, "All population that could be flooded is already covered."

IN J JUNE came the final blow. Another flood crest began moving from Cairo south. June rises, usually coming from the Missouri, were common. As early as May 13, Hoover had wired the War Department: "Imperative that refugees be not discouraged by fear of crop destruction by...possibility of June rise.... Desirable Mississippi River Commission stretch to utmost their authority." The War Department had a.s.sured him it would protect the area from a new rise. In fact, it did nothing. It could do nothing. It, and all the people along the river, were spent. came the final blow. Another flood crest began moving from Cairo south. June rises, usually coming from the Missouri, were common. As early as May 13, Hoover had wired the War Department: "Imperative that refugees be not discouraged by fear of crop destruction by...possibility of June rise.... Desirable Mississippi River Commission stretch to utmost their authority." The War Department had a.s.sured him it would protect the area from a new rise. In fact, it did nothing. It could do nothing. It, and all the people along the river, were spent.

Many areas that were flooded in March and April, especially in Missouri and Arkansas, had begun emerging from the water. People had planted cotton. Now the river poured through the breaches already made and drowned much of that cotton.

Only in one place would man even attempt to hold back the June rise. This final battle would take place in Greenville, Mississippi.

NO OFFICIAL FIGURES summarize the deaths and flooding along tributaries from Oklahoma to West Virginia, but along the lower Mississippi alone the flood put as much as 30 feet of water over lands where 931,159 people-the nation's total population was only 120 million-had lived. Twenty-seven thousand square miles were inundated, roughly equal to Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Vermont combined. As late as July 1, 1.5 million acres remained underwater. Not until mid-August, more than four months after the first break in a mainline Mississippi River levee, did all the water leave the land. summarize the deaths and flooding along tributaries from Oklahoma to West Virginia, but along the lower Mississippi alone the flood put as much as 30 feet of water over lands where 931,159 people-the nation's total population was only 120 million-had lived. Twenty-seven thousand square miles were inundated, roughly equal to Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Vermont combined. As late as July 1, 1.5 million acres remained underwater. Not until mid-August, more than four months after the first break in a mainline Mississippi River levee, did all the water leave the land.

An estimated 330,000 people were rescued from rooftops, trees, isolated patches of high ground, and levees. The Red Cross ran 154 "concentration camps," tent cities, in seven states-Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. A total of 325,554 people, the majority of them African-American, lived in these camps for as long as four months. An additional 311,922 people outside the camps were fed and clothed by the Red Cross. Most of these were white. Of the remaining 300,000 people, most fled; a few cared for themselves, surviving on their own food and on their own property.

Deaths occurred from Kansas, where thirty-two towns and cities were inundated, to West Virginia. Officially, the Red Cross reported 246 people drowned; the U.S. Weather Bureau reported 313. (The Red Cross confidentially warned Hoover its figures on deaths were "not necessarily reliable.") Official sources attributed an additional 250 deaths indirectly to the flood. But the death toll almost certainly ran far higher. It was impossible to know how many bodies were buried beneath tons of mud, or washed out into the Gulf. The head of the National Safety Council estimated deaths in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta alone at 1,000.

The Red Cross estimated direct economic losses at $246,000,000. The U.S. Weather Bureau put direct losses at $355,147,000. Unofficial but authoritative estimates exceeded $500,000,000; with indirect losses, the number approached $1,000,000,000, large enough in 1927 to affect the national economy.

The river itself left a legacy. The Mississippi carried only 1,500,000 cubic feet of water per second past New Orleans to the sea, while the artificial creva.s.se in St. Bernard carried 250,000 cfs. An additional 950,000 cfs moved down the Atchafalaya to the Gulf; had the Mississippi River Commission closed the Atchafalaya, as it had wanted to do, the increased Mississippi flow might have destroyed New Orleans.

The enormous Atchafalaya current helped create a new problem. Before the Civil War, one could cross the head of the Atchafalaya at low water on a plank 15 feet long. The river had long since enlarged, and the 1927 flood further scoured the channel, widening and deepening it, making the Atchafalaya hungry for still more water. It began threatening to claim the entire flow of the Mississippi, luring the Mississippi away from Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

And the flood made Hoover a national hero.

COOLIDGE had done nothing. After he initially refused to visit the flooded area, the governor of Mississippi wired him again: "I urgently request and insist that you make personal visit at this time.... I appeal to you to come and make this inspection." The had done nothing. After he initially refused to visit the flooded area, the governor of Mississippi wired him again: "I urgently request and insist that you make personal visit at this time.... I appeal to you to come and make this inspection." The Manufacturer's Record Manufacturer's Record declared "that a visit by you to that region would be worthy of the highest statesmans.h.i.+p and enable you to accomplish results of untold indeed of inestimable value." A Philadelphia Republican asked "that you go forthwith to some city near the flooded district.... If you did this a thrill would go through the country." declared "that a visit by you to that region would be worthy of the highest statesmans.h.i.+p and enable you to accomplish results of untold indeed of inestimable value." A Philadelphia Republican asked "that you go forthwith to some city near the flooded district.... If you did this a thrill would go through the country."