"When the Mississippi Ran Backwards"

I borrowed this book from the library wanting to learn more about the New Madrid earthquakes, and discovered that the book uses the earthquakes as a linking point to discuss a wide range of topics about life in the U.S. in 1811, including the mistreatment of slaves, the first paddlewheelers on the Mississippi, and the Native American resistance to expansion.  Here are some things I didn't know before reading the book:

Re Inbreeding in Early America

“In fact, the Jefferson, Randolph, and Lewis families were rife with many generations of first-cousin intermarriage. Colonel Lewis [cousin of Meriwether Lewis] and his wife, Lucy Jefferson (whose mother was a Randolph), were themselves first cousins. The three families were riddled with many of the genetic infirmities that accompany such consanguinity, frequently showing up as physical, mental, and/or psychological disabilities. Writing about the Lewises, Jefferson referred to the “hypochondriac affections” that seemed to be “a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family.”

…Thomas Jefferson had three siblings who were, as one of his biographers has written, either “simple-minded” or markedly “deficient” in intellect. Three of his five children died in infancy, and one of his grandsons was epileptic…

The Randolph family in particular was riddled with mental and physical instability, including retardation, insanity, epilepsy, alcohol abuse, morphine addicition, and criminal behavior. According to Rev. Hamilton Wilcox Pierson, who knew them, “The Randolphs were all strange people.” (p. 92)

Re Eye-gouging as a Combat Technique

Vincent Nolte, a frontier merchant, described one appalling custom in his memoirs. “A frightfully cruel practice prevailed at that time among the greater part of the rude inhabitants of the western states,” wrote Nolte. “It consisted in allowing the finger-nails to grow so long, that, by cutting them, you could give them the form of a small sickle, and this strange weapon was used, in the broils that constantly occurred, to cut out the eyes of the hostile party. This barbarous action was called gouging. In this excursion through Kentucky I saw several persons who lacked an eye, and others, both of whose eyes were disfigured.”

Gouging – which was punishable by imprisonment for two to ten years and a fine of up to $1,000, two thirds of which went to the victim – was vigorously prosecuted, and eventually began to disappear. [It was replaced by stabbing] (p. 95)

The author is Jay Feldman, When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes. Free Press, New York, 2005.  It is reasonably brief, lucidly written, and can be read or skimmed in an evening.

p.s. - re the title, as best I can tell the Mississippi never literally "ran backwards."  Many boats were driven upstream or up tributaries, but this appears to have been a result of tsunami-like waves, not actual flow reversal.

Reposted from November 2010 to commemorate the bicentennial of the quakes.  This map from the Geology.com link: