on the eastern fringe of the vast region which
then went by the name of Louisiana. All the stalwart freemen who had
made their rude clearings, and built their rude towns, on the hither
side of the mighty Mississippi, were straining with eager desire against
the forces which withheld them from seizing with strong hand the coveted
province. They did not themselves know, and far less did the public men
of the day realize, the full import and meaning of the conquest upon
which they were about to enter. For the moment the navigation of the
mouth of the Mississippi seemed to them of the first importance. Even
the frontiersmen themselves put second to this the right to people the
vast continent which lay between the Pacific and the Mississippi. The
statesmen at Washington viewed this last proposition with positive
alarm, and cared only to acquire New Orleans. The winning of Louisiana
was due to no one man, and least of all to any statesman or set of
statesmen. It followed inevitably upon the great westward thrust of the
settler-folk; a thrust which was delivered blindly, but which no rival
race could parry, until it was stopped by the ocean itself.

Pressure of the Backwoodsmen on the Spanish Dominions.

Louisiana was added to the United States because the hardy backwoods
settlers had swarmed into the valleys of the Tennessee, the Cumberland,
and the Ohio by hundreds of thousands; and had already begun to build
their raw hamlets on the banks of the Mississippi, and to cover its
waters with their flat-bottomed craft. Restless, adventurous, hardy,
they looked eagerly across the Mississippi to the fertile solitudes
where the Spaniard was the nominal, and the Indian the real, master; and
with a more immediate longing they fiercely coveted the creole province
at the mouth of the river.

The Mississippi formed no barrier whatsoever to the march of the
backwoodsmen. It could be crossed at any point; and the same rapid
current which made it a matter of extreme difficulty for any power at
the mouth of the stream to send reinforcements up against the current
would have greatly facilitated the movements of the Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee levies down-stream to attack the Spanish provinces. In the
days of sails and oars a great river with rapid current might vitally
affect military operations if these depended upon sending flotillas up
or down stream. But such a river has never proved a serious barrier
against a vigorous and aggres