That was the mood they were in, and they were in it to the chin. Submit a wholesale fighting order, and they bid for it like neither bulls nor bears, but like wolves.
“About taxation?” asked Clay of Carroll dubiously.
But as a good general, or as another Romulus, Driscoll had figured it all out. His answer brought comfort.
“We’ll not have any. We will levy on commerce, as republics have the right to do.”
“Then,” said Carroll of Clay, “we’ll need a seaport?”
“Of course. Ain’t Tampico simply waiting for us? The French aren’t there now. They are concentrating in Mexico 328City for evacuation. There’s no more of a garrison than what Old Tige left, a few hundred Cossacks. If we get there before the Liberals––” ...
... And why not? They were nearly five hundred and greater than Romulus. They were Missourians, sir. They were from that State which gave the best fighters to both sides; which, population considered, gave more to the North than any other Northern state, more to the South than any other Southern state, and yet as a state would be a Republic unto herself. What, then, might not be possible to these her sons on a foreign shore? Intrepid youngsters, they were of royal State lineage, Missourians from Kentucky, Kentuckians from Virginia, which was in the beginning. Dauntless cavaliers of the Blood, if they chose to carve themselves a kingdom, why not?
But they themselves answered the questions, questions that had men’s lives in them thicker than hard words in the Blue-back speller. The business was as already done, and Mose Bledsoe could go back to his chant with an easy mind. And once more Missouri’s revered saga echoed among the crags:
“I come from old Missouri,
Yes, all the way from Pike.
I’ll tell you why I left there,
And why I came to roam
And leave my poor old mammy,
So far away from home.”
Then, the bard leading in a fashion vociferous, the whole command helped out: