Low Water in the Mississippi

Currier & Ives issued more than thirty lithographs of the great Mississippi River; those pictures showing steamboats ranked among the most popular. In the nineteenth century, steamboats provided important and practical large-scale transport of passengers and goods both up and down this mighty river; such riverboats navigated the shallow waters, as well as upriver against strong currents, thereby helping to develop trade between America's heartland and the Gulf Coast. In this print, despite the low water level exposing the steep, eroded slopes of the riverbanks, the steamboat "Robt. E. Lee" (named for the Confederate States Army general) approaches, while another is well on its way in the opposite direction. While Lee's American Civil War command ended in surrender in1865, his steamship namesake survived in this print: it is shown overtaking a floating grocery raft (at right), although the steamship ultimately became an obsolete mode of transporting provisions as the United States evolved from an agrarian society to an industrialized one.

This print also shows (at left) a glimpse into antebellum plantation life, as several Black adults and children dance to banjo music played by a Black man seated in front of a small log cabin. Beyond the trees behind the rustic abode, in the left background, is a grand two-story house facing the river; a white man descends the house stairs, while a white couple strolls on the property. After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, and after the U.S. government freed enslaved Black people, Currier & Ives began to make and sell prints of Southern plantation life. Yet these pictures avoided reminders of the harsh conditions formerly enslaved people actually experienced. Thus, "Low Water in the Mississippi" evokes a seemingly peaceful coexistence between white plantation owners and the formerly enslaved, who are shown here engaged in merriment albeit while still living in poor, humble quarters. Scholars have provided varying insights into the complexities of such presentations.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography business had thrived since 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life. After1857, when Currier made James Merritt Ives a partner, the renamed Currier & Ives firm continued until 1907. Frances Flora (Fanny) Palmer was one of the most important artists working for Nathaniel Currier, and later Currier & Ives, between 1849 and 1868, when she produced approximately 200 of the firm's best landscapes and most engaging scenes of daily life.