New Carthage, Louisiana

"[9]: 81 The Carthage crevasse initially broke through in May 1840, which raised the water level in nearby swampland and eventually reached as far as the Tensas.

)[11] According to the Mississippi Free Trader of Natchez, the crevasse was "about fifty yards in width and about thirty feet deep, from the river to the bayou in the rear of the town.

[10] As of 1846 the Mississippi River crevasse was continuing to inundate land near New Carthage, so local landowners and businesspeople were attempting to organize funding for a levee improvement project.

[18] The great Mississippi flood of 1859 inundated vast stretches of land near Vicksburg, including at Warrenton, Palmyra Settlement, and New Carthage, which at that time had about 200 residents.

[21] By the time of the American Civil War, Madison Parish had a total of five towns of any size: Richmond (the county seat), Tallulah, Milliken's Bend, Delta, and New Carthage.

[23][24] As told by the defeated Confederate governor of Louisiana shortly after the war: [In 1862], Colonel Harrison, with a small body, composed of the Tensas cavalry and some other troops, were stationed as pickets near New Carthage, a pretty village on the Mississippi River, in Madison Parish.

Harrison had a sharp fight near New Carthage, with Grant's foremost troops; but finding that the vanguard, who were beaten back at first, grew every moment more and more in numbers and in strength upon his hands, as fast as the armed men did from the serpent's teeth of Cadmus, Harrison was compelled to fall back, burning the bridges and disputing the road, as he slowly retired.

[27] According to a Mississippi state agricultural report of 1878, the River, the swamp, and the forests were conspiring to reclaim Madison Parish: "...along nearly all of these numerous bayous the lands are high enough to be cultivated, and generally have been so.

The plantations formerly cultivated, along Willow and Joe's bayous, Tensas river, and Bayou Macon, are now, with but few exceptions, abandoned and lying idle, growing up in cockle weeds, cottonwood groves, and swamp underbrush.

We have a postmaster and postoffice, but no mail route or mail boat...Bayou Vidal is the boundary line dividing Tensas and Madison Parishes and fifth and seventh Wards of the respective parishes...In times agone, Bayou Vidal had a bridge across it at Point Clear, but during the war this bridge was destroyed.

[30] Carthage Landing was ultimately wiped off the map by the combination of the American Civil War and Mississippi River flooding and erosion.