The Bare
Suggestion Of Such A Policy Roused The Population Upon The Banks Of
The Ohio, Then Inconsiderable, As One Man.
Their confidence in
Washington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of
New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real, in 1795,
stipulated for them a precarious right of navigating the noble
river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans.
This
subject was for years the turning-point of the politics of the
West; and it was perfectly well understood that, sooner or later,
she would be content with nothing less than the sovereign control
of the mighty stream from its head-spring to its outlet in the
Gulf. AND THAT IS AS TRUE NOW AS IT WAS THEN."
This is well put. It describes with force the desires, ambition,
and necessities of a great nation, and it tells with historical
truth the story of the success of that nation. It was a great
thing done when the purchase of the whole of Louisiana was
completed by the United States - that cession by France, however,
having been made at the instance of Napoleon, and not in
consequence of any demand made by the States. The district then
called Louisiana included the present State of that name and the
States of Missouri and Arkansas - included also the right to
possess, if not the absolute possession of all that enormous
expanse of country running from thence back to the Pacific: a huge
amount of territory, of which the most fertile portion is watered
by the Mississippi and its vast tributaries. That river and those
tributaries are navigable through the whole center of the American
continent up to Wisconsin and Minnesota. To the United States the
navigation of the Mississippi was, we may say, indispensable; and
to the States, when no longer united, the navigation will be
equally indispensable. But the days are gone when any country such
as Spain was can interfere to stop the highways of the world with
the all but avowed intention of arresting the progress of
civilization. It may be that the North and the South can never
again be friends as the component parts of one nation. Such, I
take it, is the belief of all politicians in Europe, and of many of
those who live across the water. But as separate nations they may
yet live together in amity, and share between them the great water-
ways which God has given them for their enrichment. The Rhine is
free to Prussia and to Holland. The Danube is not closed against
Austria. It will be said that the Danube has in fact been closed
against Austria, in spite of treaties to the contrary. But the
faults of bad and weak governments are made known as cautions to
the world, and not as facts to copy. The free use of the waters of
a common river between two nations is an affair for treaty; and it
has not yet come to that that treaties must necessarily be null and
void through the falseness of politicians.
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