Only in the state of Mississippi was some progress made on levee construction between the Civil War and the 1882 flood.  In 1865, a group of planters in the lower Delta formed a regional board to oversee the raising of monies and the repair of the levees.  In 1877, the state legislature set up the Mississippi Levee District to assist them.  Mississippians led the charge for federal aid, and Congress responded in 1879 by establishing the Mississippi River Commission.  The federal agency's mission was to enhance the river's navigability, but it offered some aid to levee boards.

The great flood of 1882 ravaged communities along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and their tributaries.  In Cincinnati, heavy rains began on Sunday night, February 19, 1882, and lasted for two days, causing the Ohio River to rise at a rate of two inches per hour.  The flood blocked railroad tracks entering the city, submerged homes and factories, displaced hundreds of families and put thousands out of work temporarily.  Similar scenes occurred along the Ohio in southern Indiana and Illinois.

Even more serious was the flooding along the Mississippi River, from Illinois and St. Louis virtually all the way down to the delta of New Orleans.  The 1882 flood was one of the most devastating to the lower Mississippi River Valley.  The water easily broke through most of the levees, burying entire towns, killing livestock and other animals, and forcing thousands of residents to flee for safety.  In Arkansas alone, an estimated 20,000 people were left homeless.  In some places the overflowing Mississippi River transformed the adjacent communities into a lake, 15-miles wide.  Private steamboat companies rescued those stranded by the flood, as did the Army Corps of Engineers and the Quartermaster Corps, which also distributed rations to the victims.

The political wake of the 1882 flood flowed into a Congressional debate over the annual rivers and harbors bill.  Little federal aid had been given to what were called the "internal improvements" of the nation's rivers and harbors before the Civil War.  In the post-war years, however, funding rose significantly to nearly $4,000,000 each year, 1866-1875.  The annual rivers and harbors bill, however, became pork-barrel legislation in the House (where spending bills originate) as Congressmen tacked appropriations for their favorite projects onto the bill.  

Despite calls for increased aid because of the recent flood, on August 1, 1882, President Chester Arthur vetoed the Rivers and Harbors Bill, explicitly labeling it pork-barrel legislation.  Arthur did not oppose internal improvements on principle, and had endorsed the commission's report calling for federal aid to repair and extend levees along the Mississippi.  However, he concluded that the legislation as drafted only benefited select localities, was not in the national interest, and would set a bad precedent for the "extravagant expenditure of public money."