The Mississippi Flows Through Corn Land 129 

 Letters to Carmichael in Madrid . . . 



Two hundred thousand of our citizens are settled on the rivers. 

 . . . These have no other outlet for their tobacco, rice, corn, 

 hemp, lumber. . . . The free navigation of the Mississippi is 

 necessary to us. ... More than one-half of the territory of the 

 United States is on that river. . . . 



Spain was moribund. But north of the Pyrenees was a living 

 France, with a soldier-dictator at its head. It was scarcely to be 

 believed that Spain had made this move without advice from 

 Paris. What would France do next? 



Then word that Spain had ceded New Orleans and the 

 Floridas to France. 



"Frenchman or Spaniard," the river farmers shouted, "it 

 doesn't matter which of 'em holds New Orleans. They must 

 open the port. They must let our crops go through, free." 



To Livingston, in Paris, Jefferson wrote: 



The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France 

 works sorely in the United States. . . . There is on the globe one 

 single spot the possessor of which is our natural and habitual 

 enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three- 

 eighths of our territory must pass to market. 



In Paris, Livingston, the American buyer, was no match 

 against the French seller. Napoleon held out; the United 

 States must take the whole of Louisiana or none. When Liv- 

 ingston hesitated, the Emperor hinted that there was also a 

 time limit on the offer. Livingston agreed, and trembled over 

 what the President and his countrymen would say. 



Entrenched New England raised a long wailing cry over 

 the purchase; forgetting their own brothers and cousins and 

 sons in the Ohio country; forgetting that New England's ships 

 carried midwestern foodstuffs. All they thought of, apparently, 

 were the fifteen millions of dollars added to the national debt. 

 How did that madman in the White House think the debt 

 was going to be paid? Did he expect to get so many votes 

 from the raccoons and polecats of the Back Woods that he 



