128 Singing Valleys 



ing that "the free navigation of the River Mississippi is a clear 

 and essential right of the United States"? In the river valleys 

 men looked at the ripening corn and thought, "What's it 

 worth if they can close the port at N'Orleans? Where'll we be 

 then?" 



"Where will we be" meant where will I and my wife and 

 our children be, with no market place in which to sell our 

 corn? What's the good of owning one hundred acres of bot- 

 tomless farmland if you have no place to sell the crops you 

 raise? What was the good of that trip westward, over the 

 Alleghenies ("We buried little Dan'l under a flat rock by a 

 creek back in Penn State") if European wars and European 

 politics could snatch your harvest away from you? 



In Washington, in the unfinished White House, Thomas 

 Jefferson paced restlessly up and down the corridors still smell- 

 ing of damp plaster and whitewash. It had happened. Spain 

 had ordered the port of New Orleans closed to American 

 goods. There were tons of Yankee shipping tied up in the 

 harbor; and on the river, floating down, tons of farm produce 

 to be added to the jam at the river's mouth. 



In all the river valleys of the midwest resentment flamed. 

 Thomas Jefferson had farmed in the Shenandoah. He did not 

 need to be told that men who had grown crops for sale, and 

 had these crops ready to harvest, would brook no interference 

 between them and their market. 



"Make the Mississippi free," thundered the midwest. 



But how to do this? It was less than twenty-five years since 

 the country had been at war with England. The Congress 

 would never approve another war. At least the delegates from 

 the eastern states would never agree to another war to benefit 

 farmers in the Back Woods. 



"If you don't make the Mississippi free, then we will," the 

 midwest retorted. "We'll secede from the Union, if necessary. 

 We'll fight Spain. We'll fight France. We'll fight any dam' 

 foreigner who tries to stop our corn and hogs from going to 

 market." 



