The West cannot live without the Mississippi—to possess the mouth of the river is for the farmers of the West a question of life and death. The United States have felt this from the first. When the Ohio and Mississippi were still only streams lost in the great forests of the Southwest—when the first planters were but a handful of men scattered over the wilderness, the American^ knew already that New Orleans was the key of the whole country. They would not leave it in possession of Spain or France. Napoleon understood this. He held in his hands the future greatness of the United States. It did not displease him to cede to America this vast territory, with the intention, he said, of giving to England a maritime rival which sooner or later would humble the pride of our enemy. Ele might have dispossessed himself merely of the left bank of the river, and thus have satisfied the United States, who at that time asked no more; but he did more (and here I think he was very wrong), he renounced, with a stroke of the pen, a country as vast as half of Europe, and gave up our last right to the beautiful river, we had ourselves discovered. Very soon sixty years will have elapsed since this cession. The states now called Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon, the territories of Nebraska, Dacotah, Jefferson, and Washington, which will soon become states, have been established on th^ immense domain abandoned by Napoleon. Without counting the slaveholding population, which seeks to destroy the Union, there are ten millions of freemen between Pittsburg and Fort Union, who claim the course and mouth of the Mississippi a? having bpen ceded to them by France. It is from us that they hold their title and their possession. They have the right of sixty years’ occupancy—a right consecrated by labor and cultivation—a right derived from a solemn contract, and better still, from nature and from God. And for defending this right, we reproach them. They are usurpers and tyrants, because they will not put themselves at the mercy of an ambitious minority. What should we say if to morrow, Normandy, in rebellion, should claim as her own Rouen and Havre? 'And yet, what is the course of the Seine compared to that of the Mississippi, wlWbh extends two thousand two hundred and fifty miles, and
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