On this day in 1861, a late season hurricane slammed into a fleet of U.S. Navy warships assembled off the Georgia and Carolina coast. It was the largest armada ever assembled to date and it had steamed South to blockade Rebel ports as part of U.S. General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan to snake around the Confederacy. But the storm, which was named the “Expedition Hurricane” after the expeditionary force it nearly destroyed, scrambled Washington’s plans and saved the South (hat tip: Strange Maps).
Fast-forward to 2007. Today, the White House brokered a deal between Alabama, Georgia and Florida, whose governors have been battling over precious water resources as their states fight through an epidemic drought.
It was Washington stepping in to assist the Southern governors afflicted by an act of God. In 1861, it was an act of God that saved the Southern governors who were rebelling from Washington. History sure does have a way of turning on itself.
Here’s a map of the Anaconda Plan (again, hat tip: Strange Maps), followed by a U.S. Drought Monitor map of the situation in Southeast:
Admiral
9 November 2007 at 9:54 pm
I just wanted to point out that the natural solution to this problem would really be to let the market decide. The greatest and fairest allocator of resources ever devised has been competitive market pricing, and the same would go for water, which, at least in Florida and California, is wildly underpriced. People don’t like to hear that because they’re used to dirt cheap prices, but it’s time we started being responsible.