The Government Of The United States Began To View With A Wary Eye
The Growing Influence Thus Acquired By Combinations Of
Foreigners, Over The Aboriginal Tribes Inhabiting Its
Territories, And Endeavored To Counteract It.
For this purpose,
as early as 1796, the government sent out agents to establish
rival trading houses on the
Frontier, so as to supply the wants
of the Indians, to link their interests and feelings with those
of the people of the United States, and to divert this important
branch of trade into national channels.
The expedition, however, was unsuccessful, as most commercial
expedients are prone to be, where the dull patronage of
government is counted upon to outvie the keen activity of private
enterprise. What government failed to effect, however, with all
its patronage and all its agents, was at length brought about by
the enterprise and perseverance of a single merchant, one of its
adopted citizens; and this brings us to speak of the individual
whose enterprise is the especial subject of the following pages;
a man whose name and character are worthy of being enrolled in
the history of commerce, as illustrating its noblest aims and
soundest maxims. A few brief anecdotes of his early life, and of
the circumstances which first determined him to the branch of
commerce of which we are treating, cannot be but interesting.
John Jacob Astor, the individual in question, was born in the
honest little German village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, on the
banks of the Rhine.
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