Lincoln in New Orleans- Flatboat Voyage of 1828: Part 1
This brief and the Part 2 brief that will follow next month are primarily an abstract of Richard Campanella’s extraordinary re-construction of Abraham Lincoln’s two flatboat voyages to New Orleans in 1828 and 1831 in his book entitled, Lincoln in New Orleans, published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press in 2010. There is no written account of either of the voyages, so Campanella used related evidence and his deductive and inductive reasoning to develop a rational description of each of the voyages. This brief will be limited to a consideration of the 1828 voyage only whereas the brief that follows will be focused principally on the 1828 voyage but provide a limited summary of the 1831 voyage. If you are interested in a detailed analysis and discussion of both voyages, you are encouraged to order a copy of Campanella’s book from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.
At the age of nineteen (photo reported to be that of the “young Abraham Lincoln), Lincoln undertook a flatboat voyage from Rockport, Indiana, accompanying Allen Gentry, the son of James Gentry, a local farmer and general store proprietor. Their purpose was to transport to New Orleans and then market the produce and products that had been taken in trade for merchandise at Gentry’s general store. Allen, who had previously completed a New Orleans voyage, would pilot the flatboat, tending the rudder. Lincoln was needed to tend to the “sweeps” on either side of the flatboat or the “gouger” at the bow, as needed to assist with steerage, although Campanella posited that the “sweeps” may have been eliminated considering the size of the crew.
It is believed that Gentry and Lincoln actually constructed the flatboat used to transport the goods to New Orleans. Being manned by a two-man crew, the flatboat was likely 40-45 ft. long and 15 ft. or so wide. Such a flatboat would require one to two months to build and possibly a week or two to load. To facilitate launching, the flatboat was most likely built at Gentry’s Landing on the Ohio River near Rockport, Indiana.
The first significant unknown that Campanella addressed was the departure date for the 1828 voyage. No historical evidence exists that definitively establishes the actual date of the departure. It is clear that a springtime departure was generally desirable due to favorable air temperatures and higher river velocities associated with usual spring floods. How the scheduling of the construction of the flatboat was coordinated with a projected start date is unknown. As a result of a rather exhaustive analysis of the evidence that did exist, Campanella concluded that the voyage was initiated either Friday, April 18 or Saturday, April 19, 1828. Their launch location coincided with a point between mile markers 857 and 858 on the Ohio River measured from the source of the river at the joining of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers at Pittsburgh. The Ohio River leg of their voyage would take them 264 miles downstream to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. South of this junction, the Mississippi River is termed the Lower Mississippi River and now extends 954 miles to the Head of Passes (Mile Marker Zero for the Lower Mississippi River). The approximate mile marker adjacent to Jackson Square in New Orleans is approximately 94.6 AHP (AHP= Above Head of Passes). This would have meant an 859-mile segment in the Lower Mississippi River. However, Campanella cited the length of this leg of the voyage as 1009 miles. What accounts for this discrepancy? The answer to this question is the fact that during a period starting from the late 1920’s, the U.S. Corps of Engineers modified the course of the river at certain locations resulting in a decrease of its length by some 150 miles. Today’s length of 859 miles from the confluence of the Ohio River to New Orleans plus the shortening of 150 miles exactly equals to the 1009 miles that Campanella used to reconstruct the Gentry-Lincoln voyages of 1828 and 1831.
Having established plausible departure dates and the distance to be travelled for the 1828 voyage, Campanella then had two additional questions to address before being able to reasonably reconstruct the 1828 voyage. These two questions were: 1) the average speed of the flatboat and 2) the daily travel time. Regarding speed, Campanella recognized that flatboat speed was directly linked to the velocity of each of the rivers during flood conditions. It should be noted that there was a significant Mississippi River flood in 1828 that was generally considered to be the greatest flood of the 19th Century. As a result of his research efforts, Campanella was able identify citations to actual measured river velocities under these circumstances. These data indicated river velocities in the range of 5-6 mph. Given that, he chose to use an average flatboat speed of 5.5 mph to estimate daily distance travelled.
However, the other quantity required to estimate the daily distance travelled was the number of hours travelled daily. Considering the seasonal period of time, the corresponding average number of hours of daylight, and, possibly, the motivation of Gentry and Lincoln to complete the voyage and return home as soon as possible, Campanella chose a daily travel time of 12 hours. Having made these selections on a reasonable and rational basis, the progress of the Gentry-Lincoln flatboat could then be estimated on the basis of traveling 66 miles per day.
Given the distance from their point of launch to the confluence of the Mississippi River, Gentry and Lincoln would have been approaching the junction at the mid-afternoon of their fourth day. Campanella suggested that they would have likely paused at that point rather than negotiate the transition from the Ohio to Mississippi River comparatively late in the day considering that they would likely have to deal with confusing currents and eddies. As noted earlier, once entering the Lower Mississippi River the following day, the Gentry-Lincoln flatboat faced a 1009 mile slightly over two-week voyage to New Orleans if it maintained a daily progress of 66 miles.
Given that issues of The Navigator, as described in the immediately preceding brief, that chronicled the location of Mississippi River ports, settlements, towns, and tributaries were available starting as early as 1814, it was possible for Campanella to rationally place the Gentry-Lincoln flatboat at identifiable locations along the river at the end of any given number of days. Noted in Campanella’s book was the fact that 230 miles above the Ohio River confluence, the Missouri River emptied its waters and sediments to what is termed the Middle Mississippi River. Over 2,000 miles long, the Missouri River drains a watershed of more than 500,000 square miles. Obviously, a river of such size would significantly impact the flow in the Mississippi River. However, more significant than the impacts of the Missouri River are those of the Ohio River. A surprising fact- the volume of flow of the Ohio River at its point of confluence with the Mississippi River (i.e., the beginning of the Lower Mississippi River) actually exceeds that of the Middle Mississippi River. South of the beginning of the Lower Mississippi River, the only significant Mississippi River tributary is the Arkansas River. Almost 1500 miles in length, this river drains an area of nearly 170,000 square miles and produces a mean discharge of about 40,000 cubic feet per second.
At the 57th mile of their journey on the Lower Mississippi River (mile 57 LMR), Gentry and Lincoln would have passed the community of New Madrid, Missouri, the site of a series of strong earthquakes in December 1811 and continuing until February 1812. The U. S. Geological Survey estimates of the magnitude of the earthquakes ranged from 7.5- 7.7 based on the Richter Scale. That classifies them as Major earthquakes. At approximately mile 210 LMR, the Gentry-Lincoln flatboat would have passed the beginnings of the City of Memphis but at the time only a few dozen structures existed- stores and houses- to support a population of 100 or so residents. At mile 395 LMR and 10 days into their voyage, Gentry and Lincoln would have identified a major tributary flowing into the river from the west- the Arkansas River. Other prominent features that the pair would have possibly noted as they proceeded downstream were: at mile 591 LMR the outfall of the Yazoo River from the east and the nearby settlement of Nogales, later the site of the City of Vicksburg, and at mile 695 LMR the thriving City of Natchez, MS, atop a prominent bluff of the river. Campanella postulated that Gentry and Lincoln only travelled one-third of their normal mileage on May 2nd or 3rd to account for the possibility that they might have lingered and traded at Natchez. At the close of one of those days, approximately 300 miles lay ahead until Gentry and Lincoln would reach New Orleans.
At this point in the Gentry-Lincoln flatboat voyage, this brief will be “paused”. Because of self-imposed word limits for the maritime history briefs, describing the remaining and very significant aspects of the 1828 voyage will be addressed in Part 2 of this brief. Part 2 will also include a brief summary of the 1831 voyage.
Sources:
Lincoln in New Orleans, Richard Campanella, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2010.