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Robert E. Lee also battled Mississippi River
(by Robert R. Archibald, president of the Missouri History Museum - May 28, 2008)
Robert E. Lee, tragic hero of the Confederacy, Southern gentleman, proud son of the South and conflicted patriot, had a different persona some 20 years before the Civil War. A young lieutenant in the U.S. Corps of Engineers, he was sent to St. Louis in August of 1837 to see what he could do about the might of the Mississippi River that was threatening the thriving commerce of our town.
River commerce was the lifeblood of St. Louis. No bridges brought traffic from the east until James B. Eads finished his masterpiece in 1874. Trains, planes and trucks were far in the future. The boats and the barges were the transport of choice and of necessity, and navigable waterways were essential.
Since 1800 or so, sandbars and islands composed of matted driftwood were gradually built by the river’s accidental passengers of silt, mud and other debris. By the 1830s, Bloody Island, near Bissell’s Point and Duncan’s Island, down closer to Soulard, were significant hazards to river traffic. Moreover, the river current began to creep toward the Illinois shore. If the main channel followed that direction, the two islands would block the St. Louis harbor, the town would be virtually landlocked and commerce would move on to friendlier waterfronts.
Basic methods having failed, St. Louis requested help from the federal government, and the engineers, under the command of Lt. Robert E. Lee, arrived in the humid summer of 1837. After a comprehensive survey of the Mississippi all the way up to the Rock Island Rapids, Lee devised an extensive system of dikes and dams that increased the strength of the river flow which would deepen the channel between the city and Bloody Island and begin to wash away Duncan’s Island. Completion of the project in 1840 proved his plan immediately successful. St. Louis commerce was saved. Duncan’s Island completely disappeared after a few decades, and Bloody Island now hugs the Illinois shore.
Yet who was he — and who are we — to think we can truly tame this mighty and capricious “strong brown god”? Lt. Lee redirected its powerful flow in the 1830s, but stand on the old Chain of Rocks bridge and watch the waters plunge past. The Father of Waters maintains its might, and we do well to respect it.
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