The Mississippi Flows Through Corn Land 127 



we got the freedom of the river, and we kept Kaintuck, but for 

 how long?" 



"You think there's trouble coming?" 



"Listen, farmer, there'll always be trouble as long as there's 

 some foreign country got a-holt of N'Orleans. Supposen the 

 Spaniards just tear up the treaty and close the port? Or sup- 

 posen they put a tax on your corn and pork? Or supposen 

 Boney does get it away from the dons? Do you think he'd let 

 your truck go through free of duty? And what if he did take 

 it, and England was to go to war with him, and we had the 

 British customs officers back on the river? I was just a little 

 codger when they put the tax on tea, but I kin remember, 

 like it was yesterday. . . ." 



"So kin I remember. . . ." 



The man leaning on a hoe beside the Ohio could look back 

 to a day in late April 1777, when the apple trees in the Housa- 

 tonic Valley were bursting into bloom, and there appeared 

 over them in the west a cloud of dark smoke. He could re- 

 member the peculiar, acrid, burning smell. He could see his 

 father stumbling into the dooryard from the field where he 

 was plowing. "The British they've got to Danbury. They're 

 burning our stores. Damn 'em!" 



"We'd ought to own N'Orleans." 



"Own N'Orleans?" 



"That's what I say. How are you farmers going to sell your 

 corn and your hogs if the Spaniards or the French or the 

 British kin dam up the river with a customs tax? You came 

 out to the Reserve to make your living, didn't you? Same as 

 me. You make yours on the land, and I make mine on the 

 water, carryin' what the land grows. It's the land that keeps 

 both of us goin'. But it's the river that lets us take our stuff 

 to market. Think it over, neighbor. You'll see I'm right. We'd 

 ought to own N'Orleans." 



All up and down the rivers men were saying this. When an 

 Ohio man met a Kentucky man at the ferry, they talked of it. 

 Hadn't the first Continental Congress gone on record as say- 



