Nine years after this event was an important and memorable era in the
scenes of the Mississippi Valley; and never will it be effaced from
the memory of the thousands and tens of thousands who lined the banks
of the river to witness the crowning efforts of genius, and the almost
omnipotent power of man over matter. It was at this time, the first
steam boat was taken into the bosom of the father of waters. Although
it was but yesterday that the astonished multitude stood amazed,
yet they are still there, and are now witnessing thousands of these
floating palaces flying to and fro, bearing upon their huge frames
the productions of this vast region of our country. In the vision of
the master genius of our land, the immortal JEFFERSON, the reality
which now lays before us, was vividly drawn up, a short time before he
consummated the purchase of Louisiana, and in the language of another
it is thus presented:
“The purchase of Louisiana is considered the greatest political
event, next to the Revolution, commemorated in American history. The
circumstance ought not to be overlooked that this mighty conquest,
exceeding in territory the greatest monarchy in Europe, was achieved,
without the guilt or calamities of blood, from a military autocrat,
whose ceaseless ambition was an universality of empire, and who, in
the untamable pursuit of his purpose, went on demolishing nations at a
blow, and partitioning the earth at pleasure, until vanquished by the
consolidated power of Europe. The mind is lost in the magnificence of
the achievement, and the vastness of its consequences; its glories can
only be commemorated in the unceasing homage of the unborn millions
who will participate of its blessings. ‘There is no country,’ says a
writer, ‘like the valley of the Mississippi on the face of the globe.
Follow the mighty amphitheatre of rocks that nature has heaped around
it. Trace the ten thousand rivers that unite their waters in the mighty
Mississippi; count the happy millions that already crowd and animate
their banks, loading their channels with a mighty produce. Then see
the whole, bound by the hand of nature in claims which God alone can
sever, to a perpetual union at one little connecting point; and by that
point fastening itself by every tie of interest, consanguinity, and
feeling, to the remotest promontory on our Atlantic coast. A few short
years have done all this; and yet ages are now before us: ages in which
myriads are destined to multiply throughout its wide spread territory,
extending the greatness and the happiness of our country from sea to
sea. What would we have been without the acquisition of Louisiana? what
were we before it? God and nature fixed the unalterable decree, that
the nation which held New Orleans should govern the whole of that vast
region. France, Spain, and Great Britain, had bent their envious eyes
upon it. And their intrigues, if matured, would eventually have torn
from us that vast Paradise which reposes upon the western waters.’”