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The basis for the law had its genesis in the Mississippi River floods of 1927, which wrecked whole areas of the Mississippi Valley and displaced tens of thousands of Confederate citizens and black residents from their communities. The then-governing Whig Party did nothing to help lower the plight of the people, and Featherston was bothered by their do-nothing attitude (albeit for political reasons, not humanitarian ones). Once in power, Featherston set out to make good on his campaign promise to control the rivers by building dams and levies - which went against Article Three, Section Two of the Confederate Constitution. This public-works program had the triple-sided effect of giving work to thousands of white Confederate citzens and to giving the impoverished region electricity and hope that their homes won't get washed away in the future - with the third side being that since the law would be overwhelmingly popular, the Confederate States Supreme Court would be making its position vulnerable when it moved to strike down the law as unconstitutional, which it did that autumn. And all of this was part of Featherston's ultimate plan to extend the power of the executive branch. A great outcry arose over the controversy, and Featherston went to the press to present his side of the story. Since his director of communications , and McReynolds went to Featherston's office to argue the matter. He exited an hour later as a shaken, broken man, and retired into obscurity. Semi-analogous to Franklin D. Roosevelt 's Tennessee Valley Authority , the River and Dam Act gave thousands of people work in the economic hardship of the Depression. Roosevelt even had trouble with the United States Supreme Court over the constitutionality of his program, although the judicial branch of the federal government remained intact, unlike its luckless counterpart in the fictional CSA. |
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