March 1857: Congressman Albert Broussard proposes the Hippo Act, seeking $25,000 to import hippopotami into the United States in an attempt to solve the nationwide meat shortage.
July 1857: The Hippo Act is signed into law by an enthusiastic President James Buchanan.
August 4, 1857: President Buchanan cuts the ribbon on the United States of America’s first hippo ranch in Alabama; declares the hippo ranching industry “open for business.”
November 1857: The Federal Marsh Expansion Project begins, employing 40,000 men to dam sections of the Mississippi, creating a series of marshes so as to meet the great demand for “lake pig.” The series of marshes are named “the Harriet” after Buchanan’s favorite pet cow.
December 1857: The territory encompassing the Harriet and the hippo marshes are declared neutral, free territory in the Great Hippo Compromise. The Great Louisiana Hippo Rush begins. Ranchers stake their claims.
January 1858: Quentin Houlihan, a hired hopper on Samuel F. Greenlay’s hippo ranch just outside of Baton Rouge, falls asleep on the job. His lantern falls onto a pile of rushes. The fire is put out, but not before the hastily erected fencing that surrounds the ranch is compromised. All 97 hippos escape into the bayou. None are recovered.
May 1859: During the Great Hippo Bust, ranches throughout the Harriet are plagued by feral hippo attacks and disease.
February 1861: President Buchanan, nearing the end of his term, signs off on the construction and staffing of the Harriet Gate, a measure intended to trap feral hippos in the Harriet proper and to save the remaining hippo ranches in the South.
March 1861: President Abraham Lincoln enters his office, declaring that he will fix Buchanan’s mistakes. During his inaugural address, he promises that “the Bayou will belong to the hippos and the criminals and the cutthroats no longer!” Unfortunately, some things come up.
March 1865: President Andrew Johnson declares in his inaugural address that he will fix the one problem Lincoln couldn’t. “The Wild South days are over!”
March 1869: The newly inaugurated President Ulysses S. Grant promises to clear the feral hippos out of the Mississippi “once and for all!”
March 1889: President Grover Cleveland declares the Southern United States under martial law, calling it “an unresolvable den of thieves, mercenaries, hoppers, and scoundrels”—but promising to maintain a steady flow of subsidies to the hippo ranches that feed the rest of the country.