use. The story is told in the
diary of Manasseh Cutler, a member of the Ohio Company, who writes:
"Assisted by a number of people, we went to work and constructed a machine
in the form of a screw, with short blades, and placed it in the stern of
the boat, which we turned with a crank. It succeeded to perfection, and I
think it a very useful discovery." But the discovery was forgotten for
nearly three-quarters of a century, until John Ericsson rediscovered and
utilized it.

Once across the divide, the early stream of immigration took its way down
the Ohio River to the Mississippi. There it met the outposts of French
power, for the French burst open that great river, following their
missionaries, Marquette and Joliet, down from its headwaters in
Wisconsin, or pressing up from their early settlements at New Orleans.
Doubtless, if it had not been that the Mississippi afforded the most
practicable, and the most useful highway from north to south, the young
American people would have had a French State to the westward of them
until they had gone much further on the path toward national manhood. But
the navigation of the Mississippi and its tributaries was so rich a prize,
that it stimulated alike considerations of individual self-interest and
national ambition. From the day when the first flatboat made its way from
the falls of the Ohio to New Orleans, it was the fixed determination of
all people living by the great river, or using it as a highway for
commerce, that from its headwaters to its mouth it should be a purely
American stream. It was in this way that the Mississippi and its
tributaries proved to be, as I have said, a great influence in developing
the spirit of coherent nationality among the people of the young nation.

Indeed, no national Government could be of much value to the farmers and
trappers of Kentucky and Tennessee that did not assure them the right to
navigate the Mississippi to its mouth, and find there a place to
trans-ship their goods into ocean-going vessels. From the Atlantic
seaboard they were shut off by a wall, that for all purpose of export
trade was impenetrable. The swift current of the rivers beat back their
vessels, the towering ranges of the Alleghanies mocked at their efforts at
road building. From their hills flowed the water that filled the Father of
Waters and his tributaries. Nature had clearly designed this for their
outlet. As James Madison wrote: "The Mississippi is to them everythin