LETTER OF THE GOVERNOR OF MISSISSIPPI TRANSMITTING Resolutions of the legislature of that State in favor of an appropriation and grant of lands for rebuilding the levees of the Mississippi River. JUNE 14, 1870.--Referred to the Committee on Public Lands and ordered to be printed. EXECUTIVE OFFICE, Jackson, Mississippi, May 23, 1870. SIR: Accompanying this communication I have the honor to inclose you a memorial of the legislature, praying Congress to make certain grants of land and money to aid in the construction of levees for the reclamation of the Yazoo-Mississippi delta. In compliance with the terms of the resolutions under which the memorial has been placed in my hands, I have the honor further to address to you the following considerations in support of the prayer of the memorial. Revolutions so sweeping and destructive as that through which the South has passed have seldom taken place in history without crippling, if not destroying, some branches of the natural production; and the history of several heads of industry may be seen following them up through internecine or foreign war as they have waned in our country to flourish in another. In the nature of things we have, therefore, on general grounds, grave reasons to fear that the war of the sections may have dealt a deadly blow at the supremacy which had been won by the South under her great head of production-raw cotton. The growth of raw cotton is a branch of industry which has been seen, by even the present generation, to be migratory. Men are now living who have witnessed that agriculture thrive and wither in Hayti and the West Indies, in Italy and in the countries of the Levant; and they can bear evidence that the movement to decay in all these cases has gone on pari passu with the reduction of the price. Inasmuch as the migration of cotton industry, which has followed those cases to our own shores, has gone on under the pressure of cheap production, the supremacy which followed ultimately under the operation of that cause stands menaced from the moment at which the struggle for the supremacy had to be fought over again on the basis of high prices. And the danger which is seen on general grounds, threatening our cotton industry, has been made the opportunity of an attack upon it by a great European combination. England, France, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, are united in a simultaneous effort of their diplomacy and capital for the reversal of that triumph of American skill and energy which has made us supreme in the cotton markets of the world. The extent to which this co-operative movement among the great nations of Europe has gone, may be seen to have shown the objects of the movement to be alarmingly practicable, when it is known to have given already enormous accessions to the cotton productions of the world. from sources which had been long dried up, under the operation of the formerly cheap prices of the American fibers. The Manchester Cotton Supply Association is the brain of the Euro pean combination against the maintenance of our cotton productio And be it recollected that a production so uncertain in its yield from. year to year cannot be maintained on a great scale in any one country, save on the condition of that supremacy which compensates falling of in the production by the power to regulate the price. And the leaders of that association have laid down the axiom and predicated on it cottor culture in thirty different States, that America must continue as but a tributary, rather than as a master of the cotton market, so long as the price of her short staple shall exceed twelve cents per pound. The scepter is about to depart from us in the commerce of the world. if we do not break down at once the rivalry that is being developed by a combination of the great powers of Europe under the opportunity of high prices; and while we enter on this battle, which can only be won by us in the future, as it has been won by us in the past, by driving our rivals from the field before the force of cheap production, we stand confronted with the embarrassment of a labor system in transi tion, and a system of capital in but imperfect organization. But ins much as our upland production yields but one-third or one-half of. bale to the acre, while our production in the Mississippi-Yazoo delt: yields a bale to the acre, the plainest suggestion of policy demands tir. whatever disadvantages may be in the case, we must fix the field battle with the European combination against us on cotton culture the invincible stronghold of productiveness-in such rich soils as these of the delta of the Yazoo. And thus it is that the construction of th levees of the Mississippi, as a means of keeping our cotton power at « height which gives strength to our diplomacy, volume to our commem and gold tribute to our treasury, constitutes a work which rises to te very highest dimensions of the national. Give a substantial protection to the magnificent waste lands betwe the Mississippi and the Yazoo, and you throw open to immediate s tlement between three and four millions of acres of the finest coffe lands on the face of the earth. When Italy builds railways, constructs macadamized roads, makes elaborate surveys and offers large gifts fe settlement of a less extent of soil, inferior in yield, in order to crush the power of the United States in the cotton markets of the world, shail the United States hesitate to reassert that power at a small outlay, whit will enable her to bid defiance as a cotton producer to the whole work combined, from the unequaled yield of the cotton soils of the Missis sippi-Yazoo? Federal fosterage may be made to whiten the Yazoo-Mississip wastes with a crop of cotton equal to three million bales, and while this would represent an accession to the national wealth of at present rates a gold income of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, it would op: an immense demand for the breadstuffs, the fabrics, the machinery, th agricultural implements of the great States budding into empire on the Missouri, the Upper Mississippi, and the Ohio. And cheapening thos great civilizers the cotton shirt and calico dress, it will create the weat and prosperity of the hives of free labor that are destined before l to constitute centers of demand for the produce of the farmer, when manufacturing cities shall have been called into life at those points in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, where raw cotton shall have first come into contact with mineral coal. In reference, then, to the present interests of the States on the Ohio, the Upper Mississippi, and the Missouri, the grant to the levees of Mississippi will bring a demand for their products to their very doors. In reference to the immediate future interests of those States, the progress of events which promises to deposit the cotton of the Yazoo-Mississippi delta for refinement on the nearest coal-field will have those States on the great rivers of the West before many decades, large accessions to their wealth in the presence of several manufacturing cities. And in reference to the overthrow of the combination which aims from Europe a deadly blow at the cotton supremacy that has been a power in our diplomacy, and the grand factor in our commerce, the contribution sought by the memorial which I inclose, for the planting of our cotton supremacy upon invincible productiveness that may be placed at our service behind the levees of the delta of the Yazoo, will constitute a grant made in the interests of not only the States on the Ohio, Upper Mississippi, and Missouri, but in the interests of every State in the Union concerned in the maintenance of our power and the restoration of our prosperity. Asking you, sir, to bring the whole influence of your delegation to bear in support of the inclosed memorial, I have the honor to be, very respectfully, Hon. ADELBERT AMES, United States Senator for Mississippi. J. L. ALCORN, Governor. RESOLUTION memorializing Congress on the subject of reclaiming overflowed lands on the Mississippi River. Whereas the delta between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers contains an immense body of land unsurpassed in richness; and because of these further considerations, namely: that those lands lie at the very heart of the American cotton zone; that, while the richest of the cotton uplands do not yield an average of half a bale to the acre, the lands lying between the Mississippi and the Yazoo yield an average per acre of a full bale; that, with the exception of some tracts found scattered through it at a level above ordinary floods, the agricultural industry of the country had been excluded from that luxuriant waste by inundations of the Mississippi; that to such an extent had all the places available for settlement under that state of the case been settled before 1850 that the five river counties which produced forty-two thousand bales of cotton in that year had produced even ten years previously so many as thirty-nine thousand bales; that the government of the United States, seeking to convert the immense areas of rich lands which had remained thus useless, into an element of wealth, granted them to the State of Mississippi in trust for the reclamation by levees; that the following statement will show the results of that grant on the production of five counties already referred to: In 1840, before the grant, the counties being unleveed....... Bales. 39,000 42,000 156,000 that the policy of promoting the construction of the levees of the Mississippi by resources of the federal government is thus shown to have proved sound in our public arithmetic, for the luxuriant lands which remained, for the decade previous to the grant by the United States, uncultivated wastes, had in ten years after the conversion of the grant added to the commerce of the country one hundred and fourteen thousand bales of cotton, and to the income of the country $5,000,000; and whereas, previously to the grant for the reclamation of the lands contained between the Mississippi and the Yazoo, those lands had remained on the hands of the government unsalable; and because of these further considerations, namely, that from the day on which the donation made by the government had given assurance of their reclamation they became valuable in the market, that their sale yielded thenceforth large sums of money, and that the invest. ment of those sums in the construction of levees had made the lands thus sold an avalable basis of credit for the completion of the work; that after the conversion of the federal donation, after the exhaustion of local taxation and local credit, the people whe had gone into the alluviums of the Yazoo in expectation of the final success of the reria mation found themselves as a body corporate, on its accomplishment, not only without further resources at their disposal, but also in debt to the capitalists at the North and the South to the last limits of their powers of payment; and whereas, bringing hom to them the disasters of war, under a form of special hardships, military necessity de manded that the great improvement in whose construction the people of the delta hai become utterly exhausted, be destroyed; and because of the further considerations, namely, that notwithstanding its wonderful productiveness as a field for cotton, the country lying between the Mississippi and the Yazoo has, as a result of the war. verted back to substantially the condition of waste from which it had been reclaime and that the people who have, as a consequence, been ruined with it are not only nev as they were previous to the grant of the federal government, face to face with the inpossible task of building new levees without money or credit, but are excluded fro the execution of those works still more absolutely by a formidable debt; that, unpr tected by levees now, as it was originally, the cotton planting of the traet lying be tween the Mississippi and the Yazoo is now, as it was then, reduced within the dimersions of those small areas of an exceptional elevation, which present reasonable hope of saving the capital invested in the crop from the destruction of midsummer floss and because of these further considerations, namely, that apart from the loss cos quent on the stoppage of the rapid rate of increase of production due to the levee, the actual loss incident to its destruction will amount this year, as compared with 100. eighty thousand bales; that this deficit, consequent on the want of levees in the Stap of Mississippi, represents, at prices, a deficit in the income of the country to the amoÜH of $8,000,000 in gold; that the work of improvement, which will place the people e the tract bounded by the Mississippi and Yazoo in a position to add millions of dolas to the gold income of the country, will, if carried out, now that it is impossible of e cution otherwise, by the assistance of the general government, prove still more thanTM did in the past a sound measure of financial policy; that this great immediate res in the construction of the levee is but the initial term of a long progression of rescli. of the same importance; that this progression will not have reached its final term ve til three-fourths of that delta of incomparable productiveness given to the plow, the wisdom of the construction of the levee by the aid of the general government have been put in proof by an addition to the annual surplus of the nation to the e tent of between one and two million bales of cotton: Therefore, Be it resolved by the legislature of the State of Mississippi, That adhering to the natio policy which gave such great results to the wealth of the nation by the constructe of the Mississippi-Yazoo delta, that policy, now that no other means remains for th accomplishment of those great results, demands that the Congress of the United States in tender care for this great enterprise, in the spirit of comprehensive statesmanshi shall appropriate two millions of dollars from the public treasury, and five mill acres from the public domain, to aid, by the restoration of those levees, in the conva sion of the immense resources of that delta into national supplies of gold. Resolved, That the governor forward a copy of this preamble and these resolutions: his Excellency the President of the United States, to each of our senators and ret sentatives in Congress, and that he urge said senators and representatives, in an addies to bring the same to the attention of Congress at the earliest period. Passed the house of representatives April 27, 1870. Passed the senate April 16, 1870. Approved May 23, 1870. F. E. FRANKLIN, R. C POWERS, J. L. ALCORN, Governor, OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF STATE, I, James Lynch, secretary of state, do certify that the act hereto attached entitie “A resolution memorializing Congress on the subject of reclaiming overflowed land a the Mississippi," approved May 23, 1870, is a true and correct copy of the original Do on file in this office. Given under my hand, and the great seal of the State of Mississippi hereunto affixes. this third day of June, 1870. [SEAL.] JAMES LYNCH. Secretary of Stat. |