“We endured almost unconquerable difficulties in settling this Western country,” they said, “in full confidence that we should be enabled to send our products to the market through the rivers that water the country; but we have the mortification not only to be excluded from that channel of commerce by a foreign nation, but the Indians are rendered more hostile through the influence of that nation.”
To add to the intricacy of this situation, now came one General James Wilkinson, late of a quasi-connection with the Continental army, who early discovered the profit of the trade to the mouth of the Mississippi. Discovering, likewise, the discontent of the West, which was almost wholly dependent upon that river for its transportation, he conceived the pretty idea of handing over this land to Spain, believing that in the confusion consequent upon such change his own personal fortunes must necessarily be largely bettered. The archives show the double dealings of Wilkinson with Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. He played fast and loose with friend and foe, until at length he found his own level and met in part his just deserts.
Meantime the stout little government at Washington, knowing well enough all the dangers that threatened it, continued to work out the problems crowding upon it. Some breathless, trembling years passed by—years full of wars and treaties in Europe as well as in America. Then came the end of all doubts and tremblings. The lying intrigues at the mouth of America’s great roadway ceased by virtue of that purchase of territory which gave to America forever this mighty Mississippi, solemn, majestic, and mysterious stream, perpetual highway, and henceforth to be included wholly within the borders of the West.
The acquisition of this territory was due not so much to American statesmanship or foresight as to either the freakishness or wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte, then much disturbed by the native revolts in the West Indies, and harassed by the impending war with England. Whether England or France would land troops at New Orleans was long a question. The year that saw the Mississippi made wholly American was one mighty in the history of America and of the world.
The date of the Louisiana Purchase is significant not more in virtue of the vast domain added to the West than because of the fact that with this territory came the means of building it up and holding it together. It was now that for the first time the solidarity of this New World was forever assured. We gained a million uninhabited miles—a million miles of country that will one day support its thousands to the mile. But still more important, we gained the right and the ability to travel into it and across it and through it. France had failed to build roads into that country, and thereafter neither France nor any other foreign power might ever do so.
We who have the advantage of the retrospect understand the Mississippi and its tributaries far better than did the statesmen of a hundred years ago. Indeed, it was then the belief of many of the ablest minds that we ought not to accept this Louisiana Purchase even as a gift. Josiah Adams, in discussing the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a state, said: “I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the states which compose it are free from their moral obligations; and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must.”
This from Massachusetts, later to be the home of abolition and of centralization! It may sit ill with the sons of Massachusetts to reflect that their own state was the first one deliberately to propose secession. Still more advanced was the attitude of James White, who painted the following dismal picture of that West which was to be:
“Louisiana must and will be settled if we hold it, and with the very population that would otherwise occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citizens will be removed to the immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general government; their affections will become alienated; they will gradually begin to view us as strangers; they will form other commercial connections, and our interests will become distinct. These, with other causes that human wisdom may not now foresee, will in time effect a separation, and I fear our bounds will be fixed nearer to our houses than the waters of the Mississippi. We have already territory enough, and when I contemplate the evils that may arise to these States from this intended incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see the territory sold for a hundred million of dollars and we retain the sovereignty. . . . And I do say that, under existing circumstances, even supposing that this extent of territory was a valuable acquisition, fifteen million dollars was a most enormous sum to give.”
How feeble is our grasp upon the future may be seen from the last utterance. The sum of fifteen million dollars seemed “enormous.” To-day, less than a century from that time, one American citizen has in his lifetime made from the raw resources of this land a fortune held to be two hundred and sixty-six million dollars.
One Western city, located in that despised territory, during the year just past showed sales of grain alone amounting to one hundred and twenty-three million three hundred thousand dollars; of live stock alone, two hundred and sixty-eight million dollars; of wholesale trade, seven hundred and eighty-six million two hundred and five thousand dollars; of manufactures—where manufactures were once held impossible—the total of seven hundred and forty-one million and ninety-seven thousand dollars.