1857
This Currier & Ives print titled “Wooding up on the Mississippi” depicts the steamboat Princess taking on firewood for its engines. Scenes like this painted a romanticized picture of life along the Mississippi River that continues to endure. However, the reality was far from idyllic. By the mid-19th century, over 4,000 people had died on riverboats due to boiler explosions alone. Beyond such hazards, the institution of slavery permeated everyday life in the South. The Antebellum South, having “erected its economic edifice...on the shifting sands of opportunism and moral brigandage,” was an unpleasant and hellish society for most of those who lived it.1 An 1857 menu from the Princess provides unwitting historical evidence about this part of the American past.
