Alva Review-Courier -

In the 1850s a prominent official in the U.S. government had a brilliant idea. And, like many ideas dreamed up by governmental officials, this one did not work out as planned.

Mississippi politician Jefferson Davis, who would become the president of the Confederate States of America in a few years, was serving as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce in 1855 when he had the aforementioned thought.

Davis decided that U.S. Army troops stationed in the American Southwest would be able to carry out their duties better if they had camels to haul supplies across the deserts of that recent...