Rising Tide. Part 2

He was given a new division. At Gettysburg there was more bloodshed. A Union officer watching from a distance reported: "The s.p.a.ce occupied by the division of Humphreys was the vortex of a cauldron of fire, the crater of a volcano of destruction...every horse killed and every man in the battery having fallen at his post. Against the weakened, struggling lines of Humphreys...Confederates were pressing with eager yells, trampling the wounded Union men under their feet."

Humphreys, himself unscathed, only noted with pride, "The newspaper correspondents have congratulated me too and said the handsomest things." A few weeks later he was promoted to major general and transferred. In his farewell speech to his troops he said nothing of them, their blood, nor even what they had achieved together. He spoke only of himself: "Why, anyone who knows me intimately knows I had more of the soldier than a man of science in me. I did not go to pure science or book science for that would soon have been unendurable, but to science that partook of practicable application, and looked besides to greater application eventually...in the development of the resources of the country."

Humphreys' new post was chief of staff to General George Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac. But staff officers received no glory. Quickly discontented, he complained, "I prefer infinitely command of troops to this position of Chief of Staff. It suits me in nothing, my habits, my wishes, my tastes. I hate to be second to anyone."

Again: "My mortification at seeing the men over me and commanding me who should have been far below me has destroyed all my enthusiasm and I am indifferent.... How much I could say! I have hardly begun yet."

And again: "I know that as a Division Commander I have done what no other Division Commander ever has done, and I know that my example has taught others what to do."

And again: "I have good reason to believe that if it was left to each of the Corps of this Army to say who should command them, I should be chosen in preference to any other."

Later, ignoring the illnesses that had forced him to leave active service for long periods, he even bragged of physical superiority, claiming, "I do not believe there was a stronger man physically in the whole Army than myself, and but few equally strong."

In 1864, General Grant was placed over Meade. Humphreys became even more disenchanted: "The reputation justly due to those labors, responsibility and deeds will go to General Grant, and not to General Meade, much less to myself. General Grant will reap all the glory, all the reputation of success, and share none of the obloquy of disaster if such should befall us."

IF H HUMPHREYS' HOPES in the war were not realized, neither were his fears. He ended the war not on Grant's staff but as one of Grant's corps commanders, chasing Lee down, with considerable power within the Army. His report on the river gave him more. in the war were not realized, neither were his fears. He ended the war not on Grant's staff but as one of Grant's corps commanders, chasing Lee down, with considerable power within the Army. His report on the river gave him more.

During the war his report had been hailed throughout Europe. Now, after the war, his own country gave him honors enough to satisfy even him. Every major scientific society in the nation elected him to members.h.i.+p, joining the many in Europe that had already done so. Both the scientific and lay press heaped praise upon him. Dozens of newspapers wrote encomiums like that of the New Orleans Daily Crescent: New Orleans Daily Crescent: "Its publication const.i.tutes an epoch in hydrographical science.... General Humphreys, in spite of so many previous failures on the part of so many eminent scientific men, succeeded." "Its publication const.i.tutes an epoch in hydrographical science.... General Humphreys, in spite of so many previous failures on the part of so many eminent scientific men, succeeded."

Humphreys' report would in fact become the single most influential doc.u.ment ever written about the Mississippi River. Indeed, it would become one of the most influential single engineering reports ever written on any subject. It would have such influence both because of the position Humphreys would soon attain and because of its quality. It included hundreds of pages of drawings, graphs, and raw data on sandbars, on riverbanks, on levees, on every imaginable river phenomenon, along with critical a.n.a.lyses of several centuries of scientific literature.

The t.i.tle alone was a monument to thoroughness: it began Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River and went on for ninety words. For brevity, it became known as "Humphreys & Abbot" (he graciously credited his a.s.sistant Lieutenant Henry Abbot as coauthor), and went on for ninety words. For brevity, it became known as "Humphreys & Abbot" (he graciously credited his a.s.sistant Lieutenant Henry Abbot as coauthor), Physics and Hydraulics Physics and Hydraulics, or simply the Delta Survey Delta Survey.

More important, the report appeared in the first great age of science, a time when science was redefining the world, when man believed nature was governable and scientists were daily promulgating new laws to subdue it. The telegraph had made communication virtually instantaneous. Already there were plans to lay a cable across the Atlantic, binding Europe and America unimaginably close. In 1859, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species Origin of Species appeared. In Europe, Louis Pasteur was probing the world of microbiology, and Pasteur had written, "I am on the verge of mysteries, and the veil is getting thinner and thinner." appeared. In Europe, Louis Pasteur was probing the world of microbiology, and Pasteur had written, "I am on the verge of mysteries, and the veil is getting thinner and thinner."

Humphreys saw his own work ripping away the veils that had shrouded the great river, and promulgated his own laws to govern it. He declared that he had found "the crowning proof of the exactness of the new formulae as applied to water moving in natural channels.... It establishes beyond reasonable doubt, first that the same laws govern the flow of water in the largest rivers and in the smallest streams; second, that the new formulae truly express these laws; and, third, that the formulae heretofore proposed do not express them even approximately."

Humphreys considered his methodology, observations, and conclusions irrefutable, and on his t.i.tle page indirectly rebuked other engineers-especially Ellet-for theorizing without data, when he quoted Benjamin Franklin: "'I approve much more your method of philosophizing, which proceeds from actual observation, makes a collection of facts, and concludes no further than those facts warrant.'"

Science, however, is a process. Humphreys considered his own work final, proclaiming, "Every river phenomenon has been experimentally investigated and elucidated. Thus every important fact connected with the various physical conditions of the river and the laws uniting them being ascertained, the great problem of protection against inundation is solved. At the mouths of the river, a similar course has resulted in the development of...the principles upon which the plans for deepening the channels over them should be based."

TO CONTROL FLOODS, levees-only advocates called for confining the river to increase the volume of water, hence increasing the current velocity and scour, thereby deepening the channel.

Ellet had called for the reverse approach, building outlets and reservoirs to decrease the floodwater the river carried.

Humphreys' own observations seemed to favor outlets as well. His report repeatedly dismissed the levees-only approach, stating, "The investigations of the Delta Survey have rendered untenable that position [that] the exclusive use of levees...lowered the flood by deepening the bed." Again, "The legitimate consequences which result from Guglielmini's theory are all contrary to observation." Again, "Measurements demonstrate with a degree of certainty rarely to be attained in such investigations, that the opinions advanced by these writers are totally erroneous."

Significantly, he warned that calls by levees-only advocates for closing natural outlets of the Mississippi, especially the Atchafalaya River, "would, if executed, entail disastrous consequences." Regarding artificial outlets, he wrote: "The investigations of the Delta Survey prove that outlets, in the few localities where they are practicable, may be made to reduce the floods to any desired extent in certain divisions of the river.... [S]o far as the river itself is concerned, they are of great utility [S]o far as the river itself is concerned, they are of great utility. Few practical problems admit of so positive a solution."

Since this a.n.a.lysis suggested that Ellet was correct, Humphreys demolished Ellet personally. "The task of criticism is always ungrateful," Humphreys wrote unctuously, "and had [Ellet's report] been proposed by an obscure writer, it would have remained unnoticed. Coming, however, from a civil engineer so well known as Mr. Ellet, and furnis.h.i.+ng, as it does, the basis [of] practical conclusions believed to be most erroneous and most mischievous, it cannot be pa.s.sed by in silence."

Then he attacked. He d.a.m.ned Ellet with a mocking faint praise, calling Ellet's work on the Ohio River "admirably executed, as far as the field work was concerned, but...the computation...seems to be a repet.i.tion of Destrem's misapplication of p.r.o.ny's rule." He also lashed out: "Mr. Ellet shows he does not understand the essential requirements"; "the exactness of measurement deemed essential in the operations of this Survey was not attempted by Mr. Ellet"; "Mr. Ellet's opinion is based on erroneous measurements"; "the discharge of the Mississippi calculated by Mr. Ellet, cannot be relied upon as very accurate."

Finally, after reviewing recommendations made over the course of three centuries by engineers from Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Britain, and the United States, Humphreys concluded, "Mr. Ellet's is the worst ever suggested."

Ellet had called for outlets. If Ellet's recommendations were the worst ever suggested, how could Humphreys recommend outlets?

He could not.

Humphreys had begun his survey with intellectual curiosity and honesty. But he had also always intended to write a masterpiece. No masterpiece can merely confirm another's findings. I hate to be second to anyone I hate to be second to anyone, he had said. He would not be second. Instead, he would become corrupt. The corruption did not infect his data-even today his data are considered reliable and instructive-but it did infect his reasoning and his recommendations.

The reasoning was key. He convinced himself of the validity of two new arguments against outlets that not even levees-only advocates had raised. Like a deus ex machina, they allowed him to alter the direction in which his own scientific observations pointed.

First, he claimed that outlets risked creating a new main channel for the river. Humphreys' own deputy Forshey, the man who provided the raw data that went into the a.n.a.lysis, had earlier called this fear "groundless," but Forshey was now, after the war, relying on Humphreys for patronage and did not protest.

Second, Humphreys insisted that creating outlets would cost too much for the benefits gained. There may have been considerable validity to this argument in 1861, but the cost-benefit equation would change as more land was developed. Humphreys made no mention of that.

So Humphreys rejected outlets, and Ellet with them. "It has been demonstrated demonstrated," he concluded, his italics implying that no reasoning man could dispute him, "that no advantage can be derived either from diverting tributaries or constructing reservoirs, and that the plans of cut-offs, and of new and enlarged outlets to the Gulf, are too costly and too dangerous to be attempted. The plan of levees, on the contrary, which has always recommended itself by its simplicity and its direct repayment of investments, may be relied upon for protecting all the alluvial bottom lands liable to inundation below Cape Girardeau."

Humphreys continued to reject the engineering hypothesis that underlay the levees-only idea. He continued to warn that the closing of natural outlets would be disastrous. Yet he was recommending that levees, and levees only, be used to contain the Mississippi River and its floods. He had found a facile way to reconcile his conclusion with seemingly contradictory a.n.a.lysis and data.

And who could challenge him? Certainly no one in the South. People along the river were dest.i.tute, exhausted physically, emotionally, and financially. The war had ripped enormous gaps in the levees, either through erosion or sabotage by Union forces. Humphreys' first a.s.signment after the war was to inspect the Mississippi levees, and he recommended the federal government spend several million dollars to rebuild them. Though Congress did not appropriate the money, no southerner would antagonize this new friend. And behind him he had the weight of the U.S. Army.

Ellet could not protest. He had been killed during the war, commanding a Union ram on the Mississippi. Humphreys seemed to stand alone, where he had always wanted to be. And he would soon have the power to enforce his will upon the nation.

CHAPTER FOUR.

IN 1866, HAVING CHAMPIONED the Army against civilian critics and having been honored by scientific societies throughout the world, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys became chief of engineers of the U.S. Army. Ironically, by then there was no scientist left within him. Only the soldier remained. the Army against civilian critics and having been honored by scientific societies throughout the world, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys became chief of engineers of the U.S. Army. Ironically, by then there was no scientist left within him. Only the soldier remained.

He cared now only about obedience, power, and rank. Rank in particular obsessed him. The Army shrank after the war, and officers returned to their permanent rank. Some brevet major generals became captains again. Humphreys, a brevet major general, fell only to brigadier general, a rank that automatically went with his command. Yet he resented even this. He began lobbying congressmen to make the chief of engineers a major general, arguing that his duties were "far more onerous, extensive, and responsible than of any department commander." Unsuccessful in that, he then asked the secretary of war that he "be relieved from duty as Chief of Engineers and a.s.signed to command under my brevet rank," although he soon wrote to "beg leave to withdraw" that request.

Inside the Corps his rule was absolute. He sought to have all engineering officers formally "detached" from the Army, thus making them answerable only to him. This effort earned him a reprimand, but he still sent a chilling message to underlings when one of the Corps' civilian engineers, a man named Daniel Henry, invented a new instrument to measure water outflow; it gave far more precise results than a method Humphreys himself had developed for the Delta Survey. A scientist would have welcomed the advance, and the innovation was important enough to be displayed later at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. But when Henry used the new method in Army work, Humphreys relieved Henry's military commander-a general-of his command for allowing its use, and forced Henry out of his job.

Humphreys tolerated no criticism. Even less would he tolerate a rival. But a rival far more formidable than anyone he had ever encountered was emerging.

Humphreys and this rival would soon meet in a great collision over control of the Mississippi River. The rival was James Buchanan Eads. Their collision began over a bridge.

THE CONSTRUCTION of what came to be known as the Eads Bridge at St. Louis was an epic in itself. The story began with money, and commerce. Prior to the Civil War, steamboats from St. Louis could navigate 15,510 miles of rivers, and an enormous and growing river trade seemed to guarantee the city's future, helping the city grow from a population of 77,860 in 1850 to 160,773 in 1860 and 310,864 in 1870. Of railroads, the of what came to be known as the Eads Bridge at St. Louis was an epic in itself. The story began with money, and commerce. Prior to the Civil War, steamboats from St. Louis could navigate 15,510 miles of rivers, and an enormous and growing river trade seemed to guarantee the city's future, helping the city grow from a population of 77,860 in 1850 to 160,773 in 1860 and 310,864 in 1870. Of railroads, the Missouri Republican Missouri Republican said in 1854, "It may be properly a.s.sumed that trade, s.h.i.+pping, or business cannot be diverted by mere artificial means, from channels which nature...[has] given it...nor can any amount of capital supply the place of the rivers which const.i.tute her great highways." said in 1854, "It may be properly a.s.sumed that trade, s.h.i.+pping, or business cannot be diverted by mere artificial means, from channels which nature...[has] given it...nor can any amount of capital supply the place of the rivers which const.i.tute her great highways."

But capital built railroads and railroads made Chicago explode. Its population skyrocketed from 4,479 in 1840, to 29,963 in 1850, 109,260 in 1860, and, officially, 298,977 in 1870. (Chicagoans charged, probably correctly, that St. Louis boosters manipulated the 1870 numbers to keep Chicago from surpa.s.sing St. Louis in population.) The compet.i.tion between the two cities, and between steamboats and railroads, was vicious. It came to a head when railroads bridged rivers. The first bridge across the Mississippi came in 1856 at Davenport, Iowa. Poorly designed, it was promptly hit by a steamboat, which sank (Eads salvaged it). St. Louis interests financed a famous lawsuit, seeking to tear down the bridge as a hazard to navigation. Abraham Lincoln argued for the railroad. His success-actually, a hung jury-was a major blow to river transport, and to St. Louis.

But as a result, the Corps of Engineers demanded, and Congress gave it, authority to review future bridges over the Mississippi to ensure their safety to s.h.i.+pping.

The Civil War meanwhile cut off St. Louis from much Mississippi River trade. Chicago took up the slack, and more. In 1860, not a single Chicago mercantile house did $600,000 worth of business a year; in 1866, with several bridges across the upper Mississippi open or under construction, twenty-two Chicago firms did over $1 million worth of business. The St. Louis Merchants Exchange finally recognized that without a railroad bridge across the river at their city, its business would evaporate; the exchange asked Eads to chair a subcommittee to reconcile bridge and steamboat interests.

Though long identified with steamboats, Eads was intrigued with bridging the Mississippi. He knew more about the river than any man who had ever lived. His experience with ironclads and naval artillery had taught him much about iron, and even about the then experimental metal steel.

After studying the problem, Eads proposed an arched bridge made of steel with either one span of at least 600 feet, or two of at least 450 feet. At the time he made this recommendation, not a single steel bridge existed anywhere in the world; in addition, the proposed arches would be the longest in the world. But on April 18, 1866, in the Merchants Exchange Building, his subcommittee adopted his proposal unanimously. Such was the faith St. Louis businessmen had in Eads.

An existing company already owned a state charter to build a bridge, but after a year in which it made no move toward actual construction, Eads and his a.s.sociates bought it. He became the company's chief engineer. Suddenly, things began to move swiftly.

First, Eads met with his old friend Missouri Senator Benjamin Gratz Brown, who won congressional authorization for the bridge over opposition from ferries, steamboats, railroads with established connections, and Chicago politicians. The authorization pa.s.sed, Brown said, only because it stipulated at least one span of at least 500 feet or two of at least 350 feet, which was considered "impossible.... In fact, the utterance was then and there boldly made that the genius did not exist in the country capable of erecting such a structure."

Eads had never built any bridge, and this would have the longest arches ever built, with a material never before used for such a purpose-indeed, the British then forbade the use of steel in bridges. It would span the Mississippi below below the mouth of the Missouri, after that river's tremendous volume joined the upper Mississippi. No bridge on the upper Mississippi itself nor anywhere else crossed a comparable flow of water. the mouth of the Missouri, after that river's tremendous volume joined the upper Mississippi. No bridge on the upper Mississippi itself nor anywhere else crossed a comparable flow of water.

Yet in an expression of almost suicidal self-confidence, Eads decided to design this bridge himself. He did hire outstanding a.s.sistants, including Henry Flad and W. Milnor Roberts, who both later became presidents of the American Society of Civil Engineers. But the basic design was his, many of the calculations his, many of the technical innovations his.

His plans called for a center arch 520 feet wide resting on piers sunk to bedrock, and two side arches 502 feet wide. The key to success would be steel. Steel was as revolutionary as his plans. Though Eads probably knew more about steel than any engineer in the world, and most metallurgists, it was still a new medium; not until 1867-the year Eads committed himself to the metal-was the open-hearth process even developed.

This did not rea.s.sure. Bridges built by experienced engineers, including Ellet, across lesser rivers had already collapsed, costing lives and money. In fact, roughly one out of every four bridges built in this period collapsed. The cost estimate for the St. Louis Bridge approached $6 million. Almost certainly it would rise. Eads would need to find capital not only in New York and Boston, but in London and Paris. To build investor confidence Eads hired as consulting engineer Jacob Linville, former bridge engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and president of the Keystone Bridge Company, which Linville and Andrew Carnegie had formed. But after examining the plans in July 1867, Linville said: "I cannot consent to imperil my reputation by appearing to encourage or approve its adoption. I deem it entirely unsafe and impracticable."

Linville's criticism was only one blow. A few weeks later a rival bridge builder tried to undermine further Eads' ability to raise capital by convening a meeting in St. Louis of twenty-seven engineers. Their report announced "unqualified disapproval of spans of five hundred feet...for which there is no engineering precedent"; it was printed as a pamphlet and distributed nationally.

Yet Eads never took a backward step. Elmer Corth.e.l.l, a third Eads a.s.sistant who later became president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, wrote of him: "It is absolutely certain that no obstacle of an engineering, financial or any other kind ever for a moment disturbed or discouraged him. His complete knowledge of the conditions and the forces he was dealing with gave him unfaltering faith in the plans of the work, and yet there was something more than knowledge.... There was genius of the highest order that gave to him unalterable determination...and a sublime faith in what he always believed were the clearly written laws of the Creator."

Eads answered his critics three ways.

First, he fired Linville and eliminated the position of consulting engineer.

Second, he gathered in the financial resources at his immediate command-mostly investors who had faith in him personally-and, on August 21, 1867, began construction of a cofferdam even as the twenty-seven engineers met. Supposedly, he chose as the site the same spot on which he had first landed in the city, dragged wet and dest.i.tute from the river three decades before.

Third, he prepared his first report to the bridge company directors. The report, actually an open letter to investors, typified Eads. Much of the force of his personality lay in his ability to explain the most esoteric science in terms an intelligent layman could grasp. The report began, "Anyone who can be made to understand the principles of all mechanical powers, the lever, can readily comprehend the explanation I propose making." Step by step, each one laid with mathematical certainty atop the preceding, he presented his plans. Reaction around the world in engineering journals was, finally, universal praise. Newspapers published the plans. They were talked about everywhere.

And he applied his charm. He charmed the roughest of men working on the bridge; although he always carried a knife and pistol around them, they addressed him as "J.B." and he competed with them in weight-lifting contests on the blacksmith boat-he finished second. He was professional and focused on the task in the extreme, explaining, for example, that an employer must "have constant control of his temper, and be able to speak pleasantly to one man the next moment after having spoken in the harshest manner to another, and even to give the same man a pleasant reply a few minutes after having corrected him. Self must be left out of the matter entirely, and a man or boy spoken to only as concerns his conduct; and the authority which the controller has over the controlled, used only when absolutely necessary, and then with the utmost promptness."

More important, he charmed investors in New York, London, and Paris. His logic made the boldest goal seem attainable. His enthusiasm made it seem inevitable. Even Andrew Carnegie was charmed and first became involved in international finance selling the bridge's bonds in London.

The bridge rose. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, nearly 2,000 men were swarming about on twenty-four large derrick-equipped barges and boats and scaffolding as the steel and masonry took shape. (Thirteen men who worked as deep as 125 feet below the surface would die of caisson disease, later known as the bends, caused by nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood under pressure; problems continued until Eads' personal physician cut the s.h.i.+fts to forty-five minutes.) Thousands more worked in quarries in New England and machine shops and foundries in Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and Philadelphia.

But the money pressure did not abate. The estimated cost was soon up to $9 million. In one crisis the arches had to be closed by a certain date or the bridge would collapse financially. Temperatures of 100 degrees had caused the steel to expand, making it too long by fractions of an inch. Eads was in London negotiating a new loan from Junius Morgan, J. Pierpont's father, when his a.s.sistants wired that even applying hundreds of tons of ice had failed to cool and contract the metal. Eads had antic.i.p.ated the problem and wired back the solution (telescoping the metal and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it into place, in the same way one might adjust a shower rod). Eads astounded Morgan when he, supremely confident of success, left for Paris without waiting to hear the result.

Eads made only one compromise. The same Jacob Linville whom he had fired as a consultant was president of the Keystone Bridge Company, an iron and steel contractor. His partner was Carnegie. Both Linville and Carnegie had close ties to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was represented on the bridge company's board. Eads also needed Carnegie's financial connections. So Eads made the Keystone company chief contractor. Carnegie knew the pressures on Eads and repeatedly squeezed him, demanding new financial concessions and secretly maneuvering to control-and milk-every subcontract. Typically, Carnegie wired one steel maker not to inform Eads "about our confidential efforts to throw the steel contract your way...no one knows about this in St. Louis and no one should know."

But Eads pushed Carnegie as well. Eads was demanding, demanding of everyone, demanding of seemingly impossible standards. Each individual piece of key materials-not random samples from a production run-was tested. Eads' a.s.sistant Flad invented a testing machine capable of detecting deformations of 1/200,000 of an inch, a heretofore unimaginable tolerance. In one instance, the Keystone factory worked for six months to produce a single steel plate good enough to test. It failed.

To William Taussig, chairman of the bridge company-Eads was nominally only chief engineer-Carnegie complained, "The very machinery to make the raw material has in large part to be created.... Your man of decided real genius is the most difficult to deal with practically.... Nothing that would please and that does please other engineers is good enough. Capt. Eads must only require the custom of the trade.... You must keep Eads up to requiring only what is reasonable and in accordance with custom."

Eads cared nothing for custom. He drove on, turning to an other company that pioneered chrome-alloy steel, a product he helped develop. The bridge rose up and reached across the river.

Then, abruptly, six years after Congress had specifically authorized the bridge and years after the Corps of Engineers had approved the plans for it and construction had begun, the Corps threatened to tear the bridge down.

IN REALITY, the Army's objection had little to do with the bridge. It had to do with who would control the Mississippi River.

The fight for control began on May 13, 1873, when Eads read a resolution he had written, endorsed by the city's businessmen, to a huge river convention in St. Louis attended by a dozen governors, more than one hundred members of Congress, and several thousand delegates representing every commercial interest in the Mississippi valley.

The bridge made Eads the biggest man at the convention. The sight of it was more eloquent than any acclaim, and it was the talk of the delegates. Its piers had long since been sunk to bedrock, and now its steel arches, like dancers whose outstretched arms did not quite touch each other, extended across the great river, while hundreds of men teemed about on giant derricks and great workboats.

But Eads said nothing about the bridge. Instead, he addressed the problems at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where sandbars were choking commerce.

The bars were not a new problem. In 1718 the French had noted, "It is necessary, by all sorts of methods, to open the entry of the river." In 1859, General Winfield Scott, commander of the Army, had examined the sandbars and found thirty-eight s.h.i.+ps in the river trying to get into the Gulf, twenty-one in the Gulf waiting to get into the river, and three s.h.i.+ps aground on the bar itself; another fifty s.h.i.+ps were waiting to depart New Orleans. One of the s.h.i.+ps at the bar had been waiting eighty-three days. Bad as that situation was, the problem-like the floods-was growing worse. Larger and larger s.h.i.+ps were being blocked more and more often.

The Corps of Engineers had been trying different approaches for forty years to solve the problem. None had succeeded. Only recently the Corps had p.r.o.nounced the sandbar a permanent, immovable barrier. So it planned to outflank it by building a ca.n.a.l to connect the river to the Gulf. The ca.n.a.l idea had gained nearly universal support throughout the Mississippi valley, from Louisville to Davenport and especially in New Orleans, where the issue of the sandbars was of vital concern.

So his words were controversial, even inflammatory. When Eads rejected the ca.n.a.l idea, he declared, "The solution of this problem, it is believed, will be achieved...by a system of jetties."

Eads called for constructing two parallel piers far out into the Gulf. This would narrow the river and increase its current, and Eads believed that the concentrated current would cut its own channel through the bar. In 1837, Eads had watched this happen in St. Louis. Sandbars had grown into tree-covered islands so large that they threatened to cut the city off from the river. Robert E. Lee, then a captain in the Army engineers, had built a jetty into the river that directed the force of the main channel against the islands. They had quickly melted away. Now Eads wanted to do the same thing at the Mississippi's mouth.

Eads made few converts at the convention. But after the convention many delegates, including Eads, members of Congress, and reporters from major Mississippi valley and eastern papers, traveled to New Orleans to examine the sandbar.

There Captain Charles Howell of the Corps of Engineers, author of the report calling for the ca.n.a.l, took them on a two-hundred-mile roundtrip to the mouth of the Mississippi. Eads spent the entire trip explaining to an interested audience why jetties were superior to the ca.n.a.l. Howell, increasingly irritated by this civilian who questioned the judgment and authority of the Army engineers, immediately reported the interference to Humphreys.

Humphreys was already warding off plans pushed by critics to create a U.S. Geological Survey and transfer to it the Army's authority to survey the West, and-an even more serious attack-to transfer control of the Mississippi River from the Corps to a new commission of both Army and civilian engineers. In resisting these proposals, Humphreys had advised a subordinate: "We must get ready for a combat at the next session [of Congress]-not only defensive but offensive if necessary.... The contest must be sharp and merciless."

He had won those contests. In triumph he turned to Eads.

Eads considered his comments about the ca.n.a.l and jetties impersonal, a question of science, efficiency, and truth. Humphreys considered them a personal insult directed at the single greatest failure, and embarra.s.sment, of the Corps.

But Humphreys had never engaged a man like Eads. In his own way Eads was colder than Humphreys, far larger of vision and thus impersonal. Eads was, said a friend, "a bitter and unrelenting foe.... To him the unfolding of great and correct principles was more than personal friends.h.i.+ps. His beliefs were his friends."

HUMPHREYS INTENDED to teach Eads a lesson, and his weapon was the Army's authority over obstacles to navigation on the Mississippi. He wielded that weapon when a formal complaint about the bridge was filed with Secretary of War William Belknap by the Keokuk Steamboat Company and several ferries, each of which would be hurt by compet.i.tion from the bridge. Belknap, who later resigned after the House voted to impeach him over an unrelated matter, was from Keokuk and a partner of the steamboat line's owners. The charge was that some of their steamboats had smokestacks too high to fit under the bridge. Ten years earlier a solution to this problem had been found: smokestacks could simply be hinged, and lowered when pa.s.sing under bridges. to teach Eads a lesson, and his weapon was the Army's authority over obstacles to navigation on the Mississippi. He wielded that weapon when a formal complaint about the bridge was filed with Secretary of War William Belknap by the Keokuk Steamboat Company and several ferries, each of which would be hurt by compet.i.tion from the bridge. Belknap, who later resigned after the House voted to impeach him over an unrelated matter, was from Keokuk and a partner of the steamboat line's owners. The charge was that some of their steamboats had smokestacks too high to fit under the bridge. Ten years earlier a solution to this problem had been found: smokestacks could simply be hinged, and lowered when pa.s.sing under bridges.

Although the bridge complied precisely with the earlier congressional legislation and plans for the bridge had been widely discussed for years and approved by both Belknap's predecessor and Humphreys himself, now, a few weeks after Eads first criticized the ca.n.a.l idea, Humphreys ordered a board of Army engineers to investigate the complaint.

Major G. K. Warren was the board member closest to Humphreys. His own career, once filled with such promise, had been derailed a few days before Appomattox when he had been unfairly relieved of his command. He had not only worked under Humphreys on the Delta Survey but fought beside him during the war, and Humphreys was helping him convince a board of inquiry that he should not have been relieved. Warren may also have felt personal animosity toward Eads. Eads was suing Warren's brother-in-law Was.h.i.+ngton Roebling, the great engineer building the Brooklyn Bridge; Eads had given Roebling a tour of his own work, and Roebling had then used caissons similar to Eads' design. Finally, Warren himself was building a railroad bridge at Rock Island, Illinois, which would compete with the St. Louis bridge.

The Army board convened at St. Louis on September 2, 1873, without officially informing the bridge company of its inquiry and while Eads was in England raising capital. In a small room with Warren suggesting appropriate answers, bridge opponents presented two full days of ch.o.r.eographed testimony. Then Warren drafted a statement for bridge opponents to sign saying that "the river interests" considered the bridge "a serious obstruction to navigation."

Only then, late on a Friday afternoon and minutes before the scheduled end of the hearing, was Taussig, chairman of the bridge company, invited to speak. He asked for an additional day of hearings to allow experts and steamboatmen who did not object to the bridge to testify, requesting "as many hours hours as the complainants had had as the complainants had had weeks weeks with which to prepare their testimony." with which to prepare their testimony."

Warren snapped, "If a thousand steamboat men should come and say that this bridge was no obstruction, it could not change my opinion." The request for another day of testimony was denied.

A week later the board issued its report. Humphreys quickly approved it. It was merciless indeed. Eads had criticized a ca.n.a.l near the river's mouth. The Corps would now ram a ca.n.a.l down his throat. The report not only concluded that the bridge would obstruct navigation but stated: "The Board have very carefully considered the various plans proposed for changing the present structure but find none of them satisfactory. They would therefore recommend that a ca.n.a.l be formed behind the east Abutment of the Bridge."