90 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



the Mississippi and the tributaries flowing into itAvhich seemed 

 Nature's great highway ready for their use. Only one barrier op- 

 posed them, the obstinate refusal of Spain, who held the mouth of 

 the great river and its western bank, to permit its free navigation. 

 An interposition so autocratic, so unjust, and so injurious roused 

 the resentment of the strong men of the West and they resolved 

 not to submit to this limitation of their rights. The East, 

 fearing that the West would be lost if not held to its east- 

 ern connections, opposed the opening of the Mississippi, pre- 

 ferring a commercial treaty with Spain to free navigation. Con- 

 gress met the problem with the feebleness that characterized its 

 action after the Revolution. Diplomacy was bartering away the 

 rights of the young West, when suddenly a trader, whose ship- 

 ment had been seized by the Spanish authorities, returned to 

 tell the story of his wrong just at the moment when news ar- 

 rived that Congress intended to surrender the present use of the 

 Mississippi. The whole population of the western settlements 

 rose in wrath and indignation to protest against the folly by which 

 they were being sacrificed. Looking out over their magnificent 

 domain, whose soil they were redeeming from the idleness of its 

 natural state, they felt that their abundance was turned to pov- 

 erty if the mighty rivers which swept past their fields waving 

 with harvests abundant to sustain the populations of Europe, 

 were closed to them, and they themselves shut up in their fer- 

 tile valleys, unable to exchange their wealth of cereals for the 

 merchandise they could not create. But there at the outlet of 

 their noble river stood the obstinate Spaniard, sword in hand, 

 refusing them egress to the open sea and excluding them from 

 the commerce of the world. They must despoil their luxuriant 

 valleys to pour their tribute at his feet, and share with an alien 

 and an enemy, " the largest return which American labor had 

 yet reaped under the industry of its own free hands." No ; they 

 would not. They had fought the savage and the wild beast. 

 They had come here to accept their heritage from the hand of 

 nature and to find justice without relying on the power of kings. 

 They must go to the sea. If Congress opposed, it was to be 

 defied, as the Crown of England had been in the Revolution. 

 If the Spaniard opposed, they would drive him off the conti- 

 nent and rid the land of an incumbrance. They set their faces 

 like flint for the empire of the West. Twenty thousand men, 

 trained in the field and the forest, turned their backs to the 



