Memorial from the Board of Levee Commissioners of the State of Louisiana...Asking National Aid and Assistance in the Reconstruction of Levees on the Mississippi River

New Orleans, 1866. Very good.. 12pp. Original printed wrappers, sewn. Minimal soiling, light edge wear to wrappers. Vertical center crease throughout. Light even toning to text, otherwise very clean. A scarce work issued by the Reconstruction government of the state of Louisiana seeking funds from the United States Congress to make repairs to the Mississippi River levees, "together with its tributaries, the Arkansas and Red rivers." The Board of Levee Commissioners was seeking federal aid because the state of Louisiana had become so impoverished by the end of the Civil War, stating here that "The State, crippled as she is in her resources, is still making herculean efforts to protect her citizens." Before the war, argues the Board, the state as well as the proprietors of the lands along the Mississippi River were able to maintain the levees, albeit "at an immense outlay of labor and money" but "at a time of general prosperity, when labor was abundant and cheap." In other words, slave labor was formerly employed to maintain the levees, and now that the people of Louisiana can no longer use slaves, the state wants make the federal government pay, literally. One passage in the work even discusses in detail the impact of slaves and free persons of color who have abandoned thirteen parishes which are now "almost altogether desolated." The report cites census and crop yield data to make the point that without this practically free labor force, as well as the cotton, sugar, molasses, and corn they produced, the labor and economic impact on Louisiana of taking away a free labor force was onerous. Works by the Board of Levee Commissioners are rather rare in institutions, with just eight copies of the present work in OCLC, at LSU, Tulane, the University of Alabama, the Library of Congress, the Minnesota Historical Society Library, Duke, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, and UT-Austin.