LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 495 406 3 Conservation Resources Lig-Free® Type I Ph 8.5, Buffered F 351 .026 Copy 1 THE Annals of Iowa, \ erty hy discovery was abandoned in the higher doctrine that "The earth is the Lords' and the fullness thereof, and they that dwell therein." Only the great events in which truth and justice have been the arbiters, are worthy of record or remembrance among nations or men. The combinations of circum- stances which gave to your State its high rank among civilized nations wears the air of romance whicli is at best but a feeble imitation of truth, for truth is stranger than fiction. The convulsions of the French govern- ment, our ancient and most faithful ally, gave to the Federal Union the Louisiana Territory. The great spirit of Jefferson, with the wisdom and foresight of the philosopher and statesman, sought the extension of the area of tree government, choosing rather to follow^ the spirit than the letter of the Constitution, to acquire half a continent dedicated to self-government. The French revolution was the occasion, the missionary spirit of re- publican government was the cause, which made Iowa the garden of America. In the inception of the French revolution, the chief iconoclasts scarcely dreamed of the compass, extent and magnitude of their work of de- struction; realizing still less of the magnificence of that superstructure of liberty, which failing in their own land, should be reared in the wilderness of an unex- plored territory, nominally held by France, really occu- pied in common by wild beasts and savages. Atheism, growing weary of the domination of churcli usurpation, unfitly enough, purporting to represent, govern and transmit the simple. Just and universal religion of Christ, 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 163 foolishly made war upon God, because too cowardly to assail the wrongs of the Hierarchy ; ridiculed the authen- ticity and genuineness of Divine Revelation, which is the only guarantee of free government and the equal rights of man. This Atheism was the fountain from which the French revolution in all its stages drew its sustenance. That which was called the church was a strange com- pound of the superstition, idolatry and ferocity of the old Paganism, mingled with the visionary metaphysics of the Pagan philosophers, the ceremonious formalities and gorgeous temple worship of the Jews, with the un- naturally interwoven and grossly misappropriated doc- trine of Moses and the prophets, of Christ and the Apostles. This church was the mistress of Kings and Emperors, Oligarchs and Aristocrats, who invoked its authority to enslave the masses, who worshiped at its shrine, and yielded abject submission to its commands. Voltaire, though not the first to assail, was beyond all comparison the ablest of all the assailants of the author- ity of the church. His mode of attack was powerful and overwhelming. The object of his attack was a mistake, and therefore not enduring. Had he attacked the cor- ruptions of the church, the Bible and Christianity would have been his invincible allies, whose conquest would have been enduring and eternal. But Voltaire chose otherwise ; he attacked the Bible, ridiculed its teachings, scoffed at its authority, burlesqued in cynical ferocity its great author and His simple Apostles. The church was wounded in its vitals, but Christianity arose from the fire all the purer from its contact with the fiames. Fene- lon, Bourdaloe, Massilon, Saurin, Bossuet, yet live as the lights of the temple whose shekinah will burn in daz- zling glory long after the fire of the sun has been quenched by weary ages. But Voltaire did his hercu- lean task well. The corruptions of the church were held up to public scorn. Voltaire was the sovereign of French literature, the French Ben Johnson of the Drama; the Samuel Johnson 164 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JOLY, ot'lior criticism, iniinitable in history, without comparison in versatility. His keen double-edged sword spared neither monarch nor bishop. The champion of neither doctrine, sentiments, or establishment, he made general war upon all existing things. The torch of his incendi- ary pen was applied to mansions, palaces, libraries, and museums; to religion, philosophy and history, indis- criminately. But in the train of the conflagration he left neither cottage nor tent in which the weary houseless traveler might find shelter from the storm, or rest to his limbs. Volney and Rousseau, each as torch bearers of the great chief, did their minor w^ork with alacrity and suavity, without his ferocity and without his power. Voltaire had been the companion of the German in- fidel King Frederick. The companion and at the same time his menial, he surrendered his own manhood for the sovereign patronage. The superior sagacity and powers of the German monarch gave to Voltaire audac- ity in his attack upon the French hierarchy. J3ut the French hierarchy was the corner stone of the French monarchy. The feudal system was its citadel. The church, the military and royalty, were the trinity of tyrants, who must stand or fall together. Under the ferocious attack of Voltaire a skepticism spread every- where through the French Empire. The people, w)io had no voice in the government, yet by nature born of God and ordained to self-government, combined in secret societies for self-improvement, self-government, and the protection of their families, and .the right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These societies spread, grew in nundiers, knowledge and power, until there was a government within the government stronger than the government itself. The profligacy of the French court, the corruptions of the church, the overbearing exactions of the feudal lords, growing with enormous power, enforced their mandate with an army, cruel and remorseless in the ex- ecution of the will of the court, and exhausting the re- 1874.] THK LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 165 sources of the industry of the country. Tlie lords tem- poral, and lords spiritual, were also lords of the soil, but were exempt from taxation. The dangerous experi- ment of freeing any class of property or of men from taxation was fully tested in France. The universal skep- ticism of Voltaire was followed by the universal license of Rousseau, which infused into the mind of the French people a strange contempt for personal reponsibility to law. The French people were divided into two most dan- gerous and unreasonable parties : the royal party, who were the advocates of government without liberty, upon the one hand ; the revolutionary party, who declared for liberty without restraint or government, upon the other hand. The coniiict of authority was felt in every part of the Empire. The State's General was assembled to effect a compromise, and to secure to the people b}' law what they declared their rights by nature. The differ- ences were too great to be settled amicably. Tiie king claimed absolute power to rule by authority of God. The people asserted the right to self-government by nature, which is but the empire of God. The contest was fully inaugurated ; propositions for settlement only lengthened the time, but could not change the result : only an appeal to the God of battles could settle a con- flict in which nature and God were respectively invoked as authority. Long continued power grasped by the great hands of strength is soon transferred to the hands of weak men who are born in, buy or bribe their way to place and power. This is ever so in gov- ernments. Immediately after our own revolution, Washington complained of the exceeding mediocre of Congress as compared with the giants who led the van of the great struggle. The great men of the second period of the American government did not appear until the second war with Great Britain developed Claj^, Webster and Calhoun. The tliird great American con- flict developed Douglass, Lincoln, Toombs, Alexander 166 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY. and Thuddcii.s Stevens, Seward, Chase and Snmner, with scHtterod great names here and there ; Randolph, Pinck- ney and Black. In times like these mere office holding dwarfs a great part of our public men, and office seek- ing dwarfs or corrupts the remainder ; so it was in the revolution, so will it ever be. With the elements of conflict all in subdued commo- tion, there was no great loader in France to crystalize the opposition, nor was one demanded until the aggres- sion of Louis drove the ruined [leople together ; then the leader came forth — the great Mirabeau, son of Vic- tor de Mirabeau. By lineage eccentric, extravagant and versatile, by birth deformed, the snuill-pox made him even more liideous in his childhood. Mirabeau had been driven from home, made miserable by the separation of his parents, to schooL From school he was arrested under sealed lettres de cachet by the application of his unnatural father. His life for years was spent under the arbitrary arrests of the government, by the connivance of his father, who was fond of calling himself " the friend of man." Mirabeau was the natural ofi'spring of oppres- sion. The causes of the revolution were the aggrega- tion of his own wrongs, and his attack upon the govern- ment was the simple defense of his own rights. The people had been driven raad by oppression ; their prop- erty had been squandered upon the voluptuousness, vices and cruelty of kings. Their children had been fed to armies as lambs of the flock are fed to ravenous wolves, to gratify revenge and minister to ambition. The church was the jackal of kings and armies to hunt down their prey. Kndurancc had wasted its powers. Human nature could bear uj) no longer against the com- binations of the lust of power, the tyranny of kings, the oppression of the nobility, the hypoerisy of the church and the despotism of armies. The condition of France was only different from that of an oriental despotism, as a reality is different tVoni a sham which conceals a wrong inflicted only different 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 167 in pretense. France had no real representation. Her elections were controlled by violence and fraud. There was no trial by jury, nor any fair administration of jus- tice. Leitres de cachet destroyed the security of the liberty of every person, without reo'ard to age or sex. The old feudal laws ot remorseless execution still held the tenantry as slaves, " The predial serfs of Cham- pagne were counted with the cattle on the estates." The nobility and clergy were exempt from taxation. Upon the farmers and laborers, with the untitled people, were laid all the burdens of church and state. General suffer- ing prevailed ; the church, the court, and the armies absorbed the money. Taxes were the only share had by the people in the government. The government ought to have been overthrown an age before. But to a people long inured to oppression, it required education to make them free. They first lose their liberty, and endure until custom and endurance destroy their love of liberty, then generations follow who have lost even the knowl- edge of liberty. Mirabeau came opportunely. He denounced the king, and was therefore called a rebel. He hurled anathemas at the corruptions of the church, and demanded the con- fiscations of vast estates, wrested from the people, and was therefore denounced as an infidel and repudiator of vested rights. When the king threatened the personal safety of the members of the Convention, Mirabeau moved that the violation of the personal safety of au}^ of the members of that body should be accounted worthy of death, and met the throne at the threshold of its power to defy it, and but for the graceful submission of the king, Mirabeau would have been an outlaw. And so it was and is, and ever shall be, that men long treated as outlaws become outlaws. Why should it be other- wise? Men owe no allegiance to government which offers them no protection. Such is the nature of the contract. Our allegiance is thus founded. " We love God Uecause he first loved us," 16H ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, Tlie magazine, dry and well tilled with powder, was care- fully jilaced benoath the French throne. Mirabcau went forth with tlie torch and api)lied it. The explosion was that of a volcano heaving uj) its burning lava only to ex- plodeagain andagaiuand again, until throne, government, church, state and liberty were alike enveloped in its flames. The ehxpu'uce of Mirabcau, strange compound of the di- vine and internal, struck down the feudal system. The divine right of kings and special privileges of the nobil- ity fell at the same blow. At the command of his voice feudal parchments were strewed over the House of the General Convention by feudal lords, who sought security for their lives in the surrender of the estates upon which servants were kept poor and starving. Lords surren- dered their immemorial privileges. The church gladly gave up its property and relinquished her titles in con- sideration for their safety. The king surrendered his prerogatives, and the people secured their natural right to religious liberty. All this without the shedding of blood. What Mirabeau would have done with life pro- longed, death has left a mystery. The loss of Mirabeau, the orator of the Christian era, gave assurance to the nobility, inspired the king with fresh courage, and left the peojtle without a leader given to command. After Mirabeau came Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, the triune fiends of the revolution. The tirst, of coarse eloipience, courage, and cruelty, hurried on by his own passions to the guillotine, already clotted with the blood of his victims, innocent and guilty ; old men and beautiful maidens, alike the victims of his sanguinary cruelty. Marat, the empyric, who readily changed his vocation of munler by medicines, to murder by law ; a wild beast let loose upon society, clothed with official power, came to his end by the well direct'^d dagger of Charlotte Corday. Robespierre, who had led Louis to the block; the learned idiot, the hypocritical monster, who paraded his condescending tliscovery that God has some limiteil share in the i^overnmcnts of men, carried on this murderous 1874,] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 169 crusade against law, order, religious liberty, and human rights, until the retributive justice of God arrested his murderous career, and mingled his base, wicked blood with that of the tens of thousands who had perished by his murderous hand. The Convention, which first assembled to assure to the people their natural rights and to secure liberty, was now an assembly of the representative assas- sins of Europe, establishing law for the ratification of murder, rapine and robbery. Then came Bonaparte to disperse the Convention. He upon whom eulogies and denunciation, poetry and rhet- oric, criticism and essays, the decrees of sovereign coun- cils, the anathemas of churches, and combination of armies, were show«jred with indiscrimination, came to give relief to the people from the horrors they had visi- ted upon themselves. A foreigner, who had cultivated the ambition and love of liberty of his Roman ancestry ; a stranger, wandering from the military schools of France in shabby clothing, hungry and careworn, he had worked his way into the army, from the army to victory. He won his first laurels in the home of his fathers ; he over- ran Italy with the soldiers who had been holding France in terror for a full decade, and utilized in conquest the elements which had made Paris hideous with anarchy. From Italy to Africa his sunburnt soldiers bore the col- ors of the land of Charlemagne to the tomb of the Pha- raohs, and were inspired with the sublime suggestion of their leader that forty centuries looked down from the summits of the pyramids to witness their prowess and approve their valor. From Egypt, Napoleon returned to France, first a sol- dier of fortune, then first consul holding the destiny of France in his grasp, with the thrones and dynasties of Europe trembling at his tread. Napoleon was at heart a friend to civil and religious liberty. So had he been reared. Great, broad, deep, and profound, he instinct- ively despised the narrow views and absurd theorieni o the monarchists claiming authority of God to govern the 22 170 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, people, and protbumlly condemned the mysterious mum- niericH and sensek'S^ trapi)ino:s of tlie c-hurcli and the eourt. Like Mirabeau and Jettersou, Napoleon was a sloven who wonld in undressing toss his hat in one cor- ner of the room and his boots in another. To such a man, always expressing Ids contempt for fops and dan- dies, the popinjays who hang around courts would have no attractions. Najioloon feared for the destiny of the French people. Their education had made the monarch}- and hierarchy part of tlieir existence. The well doing people could see no safety outside of the monarchy. The religious people could hope for salvation only through the estab- lishment of the church. Dark and gloomy as were the storms passing over the land, far above the storm, im- mortality and eternal life glowed through the black bosom of the clouds, and the hopes of their children and the homes of their fathers shone out clear as the sunlight and beautiful as perpetual spring, beckoning them upward and onward to realms of light. The kingdom of France was no longer. The republic of France was reeliiig to and fro like a drunken man. All Europe dreaded the revolutionary heresies of the Na- tional A8seml)ly far niore than they dreaded the horrible massacres of the revolution ; for all despotism are tem- ples reared upon human slavery and cemented with blood, whose richest music are the groans, sighs and agonies of oppression and its consequent suti'ering. Na- poleon trembled for the French colonies, French pos- sessions, and French dependencies, especially those of America. The Caiuidas in the north had been wrested from France by England with the aid of rhe colonics. San Domingo had never added to eithe. the wealth or the glory of the French })eople, w'ho of all civilized peo- ple are the least cosmopolitan in their habits. Their devotion is their mountains, valleys, sea home of France. France had never reproduced her own greatness in America, as the kingdom af Great Britain has done in 1874.] THE L0UI8IANA PUKCHASE. 171 her colonies. Bonaparte dreaded the necessity of the transportation of armies to the western shores of the Atlantic. His experience in Egypt had been unfavor- able to sea fighting, and Bonaparte was eminently a hero of land rather than sea forces. The necessity of the defence of the great Missi3sppi country was exceedingly probable, with the Canadas iu the north. Her posses- sions in the West India Islands would afford the British a stronghold in the south. The relations of France to Spain were equally delicate. Even then there was a contemplated alliance between Great Britain and Spain against the French, and Spain held Mexico, with all of Spanish America, Cuba, and Florida. The hope of re- gaining the colonies had not yet lost its hold upon British ambition. To hold the Louisiana Territory in the con- flicts of the Napoleonic wars, then fully planned in the great ambition of the first Consul, was deemed problem- atic. The French people knew of the Mississippi coun- try not more than the recent generation know of the unexplored mountains of the moon. The very recollec- tion of the Mississippi was naturally enough associated with John Law's Mississippi bubble, which had burst in ruin over the heads of the French people but little more than half a century before. The Mexicans, Americans, Spaniards, British or French had no conception of the extent, wealth and resources of this wonderful country. But Napoleon finally concluded to strip for the contest and conquest of the most enlightened continent of the globe, and throw ofi:' every weight, and placed in market a territory of greater extent and magnificence than all the coveted kingdoms of Europe, distributed among his kindreds. No people ever enjoyed religious liberty, who did not first secure civil lib^^rty, to protect it. The rights of conscience, sacred in themselves, are ripened by • ulture, and naturally seek their own defence. He who hath not a cultivated conscience, which comes of a cultivated mind, will care little for tlie rights of conscience. 172 ANNALS OF IOWA. [.JULY, The colonization of North America was the re-people- ing of another Eden with societies well lettererl and independent in their modes of thought, which l^egat a keen conscienciousness — convictions for which their fathers sutfered death in Europe, and in defence of which they imperiled their lives upon the altar of liberty, and poured out their blood like water spilled upon the ground. The American colonies were penal prisons for certain criminals of the parent govenmieut in Europe. But the crimes for which they were transported were those bold, divine vii'tues of too pure and of too rich and rank a growth to flourish on the soil of a despotism, under the shadow of thrones. The crime of " worshipping God according to the dic- tates of their conscience ;" the crime of " obeying God rather than man;" the crime of rejecting the doctrine of " the divine right of kings ;" the crime of despising " base submission to unjust laws ;" the crime of resist- ing the slavish doctrine of passive obedience;" the crime of refusing to join in throne worship — king worship — man worship or hero worship. Breasting the billows of the ocean and keeping time to the music of its storms, with their songs of liberty and religion, these brave people, banished by govern- ment, or exiling themselves to the protection of heaven, under the guaranty of their natural rights, came to peo- ple and cultivate a continent. They contemplated with faith, patience, and fortitude, the ultimate establishment of an enlightened republican government ; a special corporation under the government of nature and of God, under the supreme law of our being, that all men are born free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights. They adopted these maxims, clear as the sun, beauti- ful as the firmament, and enduring as the Deity ; an essential element of the manhood of man ; an immor- tality which shall glow with splendor long after the tire of the sun has died out, and " the elements have melted with fervent heat." " All the just powers of govern- 1874.] TPIE LOUISIANA PUKCHASE. 173 nieiit are derived from the consent of governed." "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." "Equal and exact justice to all men and especial privileges to none." "All power is inherent in the people." These people were scattered over the ocean frontier of a continent, surrounded by savages, attacked at their labor by wild beasts, and treading through a wilderness of venomous serpents, in an atmosphere poisoned with malaria, the rich outgrowth of a virgin soil which had never been disturbed by the plow. With what heroism these bold, brave men cast their eyes backward through a dense wilderness of thrones, prisons, armies, spies, stakes, and gibbets, which had puri- iied liberty, and trained heroes, martyrs, and philoso- phers to educate and lead mankind to this grandest, ulti- mate, glorious destiny ! The graves of their persecuted aiicestry in foreign lands became sacred as memorials of duty, and were remembered as vestibules through which they traveled darkly into the temple of light. Their wild hamlets were schools where the children were taught that all men of right ought to be, and of a moral neces- sity would ultimately be, free and govern themselves. America was, from its discovery, the land of prison- ers. Christopher Columbus threw the light of the world upon a new continent only to expiate his crime of dis- covery in a loathsome prison. William Penn came with his friendly, peaceful followers to secure his release from imprisonment for his devotion to principles inimical to tyrants — the son of an admiral, yet the follower of Christ, and the teacher of brotherly love, came to America to teach savages, by example, " Peace on earth, and good will to men." A colony reared upon such a foundation and administering the government upon such principles, educated her people to love liberty, enjoy liberty, and cultivate its knowledge, and were schooled to the hardy virtues of freedom which were interwoven in the subtle web of society. Republican government grew naturally among such a 174 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, people, who were m»coiisciously freeing their limbs from the fetters never to be enslaved again. Driven by pro- scription from the cruelties of Old England, the first settlers of New England were devoted to religion, where they fled to enjoy it; and however the narrow-minded exclusiveness of the religious bigotry from which they sufl:ered tailed to teach them toleration to others, yet the ancestry who gave to the world Franklin, the Adamses, Samuel and John Hancock, Warren, the Ed- wardses, Websters, and Fisher Ames, were the nucleus of a self-government which inured immensely to the ulti- mate independence of the colonies. The llugenots, driven in exile through Europe, found a resting place in South Carolina, and founded the south- ern outposts of liberty in the colonies. Through persecu- tion and pain, torture and privation, these cultivated Chris- tian people were driven over every country in Europe in search of safety, until the winds of the ocean drove them to the Carolinas. Tempest-tossed in the revolutions of Europe, they found an asylum beyond the reach of the minions of courts, the inquisitors of the church, and the spies of the army, but never abated their zeal for liberty. .hen came the Dutch to New Holland. A brave peo- ple, inured to the hardships and risks of the ocean, who had opened tlieir dykes and invited the waters to take possession of their country, rather than to surrender it to invading t^^rants. In imitation of their northern colo- nial brethren, they commenced the work of crystalizing civilization, education, enterprise, and improvement, preparing the way for the ultimate struggle of the great national birth. In the very heart of the country Lord Baltimore came to people Maryland. Weary of Euro- pean persecutions, of the adulterous union of cliurch and state, the conflicts to perpetuate or change dynasties and personal governments, created in the interest of families and combinations to butcher the people in armies, and rob them by taxation, to fci-d llie extrava- gance and support the voluptuousness of nobilities and 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 175 courts, Lord Baltimore was the founder of the first of all the colonies who declared the divine right of the liberty of conscience to all men. With the spirit of their country free as the ocean and bold as the winds they added to the gathering army of freedom, forming the cordon of liberty along the Atlantic coast. Virginia was settled by the hardy yeomanry of Eng- land, who carried with them the memories of the right of trial by jury, and the rights of constitutional liberty, which for ages had made Great Britain the citadel of just government in Europe, the only organized power on earth which respected the rights of a fair and impartial trial by the peers of the accused. Very early the spirit of free thought gained possession of the people, and a jealousy of colonial privileges was succeeded by the dec- laration of natural rights, which assumed the right of self-government. The warlike spirit of this " great and unterrified colony," which Lord Cornwallis was wont to call Virginia, produced Washington, a military hero, the most eminent for his virtue in the annals of mankind. The encroachments of the church had precipitated a con- flict between the tithe gatherer and the worshipper at the shrine of a drunken priesthood and fox-hunting bishops. Patrick Henry, born of the occasion, sprang into the contest and defended the people against the aggressions of the parsons. The revolutionary war was the occasion but not the cause of the liberty of the American people. The cause was the education of the people. The germ of liberty had been transplanted to a virgin soil, and grew with its natural growth just as despotism had grown rankly under the fostering care of thrones, hierarchies, and armies. A crystalized government, now under the ad- ministration of Jefferson, just after the reflex of Amer- ican independence and liberty had thrown its glittering shadow across the ocean, drove terror into the hearts of old despotisms enthroned. The French soldiers who served under La Fayette, enamored of American liberty, 176 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, discoursed freely of the rights of man. Even under Bonaparte the French army, then the grandest that ever nuircljcd under martial orders, dreamed themselves the army of the repuhlic of France. At this juncture of affairs there were two republics. The one a glorious organized revival of the rights of man, the other the mere shadow of liberty, an ignusfatuus, that led a great army through the jaws of death in enthusiastic man- worship, under the delusion that this was the road to freedom. The republican enterprise of Mr. Jefferson met the imperial tactics of Napoleon, and tempted his ambition with money, whilst in fear that the interposition of England and Spain might wrest the prize from his hand. Jefferson secured the wealth of a continent from a con- querer who had made the foundations of the dynasteis of ages tremble at his approach, w^ho was casting the dice of battle for thrones, crowns and sceptres, to be distrib- uted among his kinsmen. Such was the ignorance of the French respecting the magnitude of this great country, that Guizot, long after its acquisition by the United States, believed it possible for Europe to establish a balance of power in North America. Many years alter the transfer of the Louisi- ana terrritory a memorial was presented to the king of Prussia, assuring the world that the growth of American republicanism could be readily checked by a European alliance with the powerful tribe of Cherokee Indians, who would prevent the extension of our lines of civiliz- ation. Napoleon was tracing his conquests in lines of blood through the centuries of Roman grandeur, glory and heroisui, to give to his family the thrones of the Caesars ; turning away to the north he dreamed of dominion in the home of the Scythian. Spain, and Belgium, and Naples were but as country seats in which to quarter his kinsmen. In the madness of his delirium, he surren- dered to the republican president, for less than one- 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 177 fourth of the private fortune of our most wealthy Amer- ican citizen, the most magnificent land ever transmitted by inheritance orbought with money. The Mississippi river, that reaches out her hands and gathers up the waters of the lakes, holds up the snow of the mountains to the sun until rivers, streams and rivu- lets gather from the extremities of a magnificent land, the fountains of a vast inland sea streaming forth from the earth and watered by the clouds of a continent, with mountains filled with the richest minerals, coal to propel the machinery of the world, and gold to conduct its commerce; iron, lead and copper; forests of timber, with a soil as rich as the valley of the Nile, which needs not its irrigation ; embracing a climate of every varied temperature, a bracing atmosphere in the north, which creates nerves of steel, to revel in perpetual snows; through wheat fields and corn fields, until the hemp blooms with the tobacco plant, and the cotton opens its pulps beneath the shade of the orange grove, and the rice and sugar plantations are ripening in the realms of perpetual summer ; the apple and cranberry, with the hardy fruits at one end of the great line of railroads, the almond and tropical fruits at the other. This great river, which gathers its streams from the mountain re- cesses of every part of the land, is bound in closer bonds by railroads, which drive their chariots of fire through every avenue of commerce and trade, and will make us the richest self-government, the freest of all cultivated people. The grand system of valleys, of which the Mississippi is the immense garden, walled by the Alleghanies on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west, bounded by lakes and gulfs, and environed by oceans, with the great pasture fields of the plains, and cattle ranches of Texas, must ultimately feed Europe and dictate laws to the United States — dictate laws in the broad, deep spirit of a land of such physical grandeur. This land of ours was the first fruits of the reactionary influence 23 178 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JULT, of our revolutionary war. This was the tirst foot of land ever purchased or peacefully acquired from a sov- ereign civilized power in the history of the human fam- ily for the purpose of dedication to constitutional gov- ernment, and it was so guarantied in the treaty which conferred it. This triumph of diplomacy over a government which was proud of the astuteness of its Talleyrand, would have secured immortality for the memory of any other statesman. But Jeftersou had made himself immortal. The Declaration of Independence will live as long as the English language and assist to preserve it. The administration of justice without oppression had attracted the friends of freedom of every government on earth to Jefferson, the chief magistrate. The act of religious toleration, written by the pen of Mr. Jefterson, and incorporated in the laws of Virginia, would have crowned with immortality the life and memory of any statesman of antiquity. Neither so elaborate as Demos- thenes' speech on the crown, nor made with such state- liness as Webster's plea for the American Union, nor so magnificent as the great oration of Herod to the Jews to lay down their arms against the Romans, it was greater than any or all of them combined. This act was the golden key that unlocked the door of the State to relig- ious liberty, and at the same time the bar of steel that closed the gate of the church to religious persecution. Between Napoleon and Jefferson was the most re markable contrast, never better drawn by human pen than by the following contrast, written by Mr. Jefferson in a letter to a cardinal at Rome, February 14, 1816 : * * * " Your letter to the archbishop, being from Rome, and so late in September, makes me hope that all is well ; and thanks be to God, the tiger who reveled so long in the blood and spoils of Europe, is at length, like another Prometheus, chained to his rock, whore the vulture of remorse for his crimes will be preying on his vitals, and in like manner without consuming them. 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 179 Having been, like him, entrusted with the happiness of my country, I feel the blessing of resembling him in no other point. I have not caused the death of five or ten millions of human beings, the devastation of other countries, the depopulation of my own, the exhaustion of all its resources, the destruction of its liberties, nor its foreign subjugation. " All this has been done to render more illustrious the atrocities perpetrated for illustrating himself and his family with plundered diadems and sceptres. On the contrary, I have the consolation to reflect, that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow-citizen was shed by the sword of the law or war, and after cherishing for eight years their peace and prosperity I laid down their trust of my own accord, and in the midst of their blessings and impor- tunities to continue it. " Thomas Jefferson. " Such was the philosophy of the history of the acquisi- tion of the mere territory upon which we have built the great State of Iowa. Such was the character of our ancestry, to whose long continued culture of justice and liberty we are indebted for a country scarcely less to be coveted than the garden of our first parents. A government perfect in every thing except those infirmities of administration by mere men. But how like the inferior animals are we in our notions of justice and right. Each devours the other inferior to himself. Our treaty with France gave us the naked right of discovery purchased, the right of home and possession the Indians had enjoyed for ages. For full three centuries the encroachments of the white man upon the Indian had been aggressive and augured of the extinction of the red race, leaving only here and there a remnant of the admixture with the superior race, to live in romance and song, of the Poca- hontas tribe of Powhattan ; or in the reigning of John Ross, of the Cherokees. 180 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, Valley after valley was yielded to tLe cupidity and growth of the Caucassiaii race, who first begged a place to pitch his tent, as a refuge from persecution, then beg- ged a little ground to till and cultivate, to feed his chil- dren ; then begged a little more for his persecuted brethren, who were flying from persecution under the dominion of kings and hierarchies. Then wanted a little more for the church wliicli brought Christ and his precious doctrines, with salvation ofl:ered freely as the bul)bling waters that ran down from the mountains, pure as tlie snows that melted and gushed down from the moi ntain side. Then wanted more on which to build their churches; then wanted more to establish a government, to rule the churches and the people; then wanted more, to tax and pay tithes and stipends to give to the church a more ce. tain support ; then wanted more to keep an army to enforce the gospel of peace, with a few soldiers, ever ready to cut the throats of men not willing to believe or ready to obey the peaceful doc- trines of the gospel. In this small way did our honest fathers get their first fast foothold on the continent of the aborigines. But governments grow, power increases and becomes arbitrary; this was Archimedes' immovable fulcrum on which to place his lever to move the world. The In- dians yielded ; King Phillip gave way to the encroach- ments of the New England English ; Powhattan yielded to the encroachments of the Virginia English. The Shenandoah, the most beautiful, romantic and fruitful of all the eastern valleys, was surrendered by the In- dian tribes without i> battle or a massacre. That beauti- ful land surrouuded by mountain palisades, and over- hung by vast and wildly clustered villages of rocks, became the peacefully acquired possession of the Cau- cassian intruder, who begged an entrance into the home of the Indian and then robbed the Indian of what he could not get as a successful mendicant for the begging. Moving westward in a solid and aggressive column upon 3874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 181 the rights and homes of the red man, he approaches the sources of the Monougahela. Here is the grandest mountain plateau in all America ; where, standing, you can cast a stone into the springs that gather the lirst waters that sweep away through the mountains of the southeast into the Potomac — which divided the free from the slave States — and swept through its rich valleys to the ocean ; turning to the left, another stone could be cast into the waters of the Monongahela, which swiftly gathered the waters which drained the western slope of the Alleghanies ; turning again to the setting sun, a stone could be cast into the waters of the Kena- hawa and New rivers, which are the grand natural canals which concentrate the waters of the southwest into the Ohio ; turning to the south, springs that burst forth as fountains swept in cascades to the James river, and mingled the cool mountain waters with the ocean. From this beautiful plateau, by a gentle descent, the traveller soon reaches the Mingo Flats, out of which bursts the everlasting fountains of the Tygart Valley. This wild sublime scenery of the mountains — not ex- celled by anything drawn by the hand of romance — w^alled in by the last grand range of the Alleghanies, hundreds of feet above the level of the placid stream which flows in rippling floods beneath the mountain, then extends lor nearly fifty miles, cultivated by a gen- erous people. On the east, again walled by the great Cheat Mountain, on the very height of the mountain, at nearly two thousand feet above the level of the Tygart Valley, the dark and treacherous Cheat river pours its mountain floods over precipices, and through ledges for miles, then sinks, leaving only sun-smote rocks to mark the natural pathway of the ancient river; after subter- ranean passages for many miles, like a flood, it bursts forth again to pursue its tortuous course over precipice and ledge. This rude, beautiful, wild and romantic valley was the birth place of Logan, the Mingo chief, whose plaintive appeal upon the murder of his family 182 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, will live side by side with the oration of Judah to Joseph for the release of Benjamin, and outlive all of the studied art of eloquence. From the Monongahela to the Muskingum, from the Muskingum to the Sciota, from the Sciota to the Miami, and finally to the Wabash, were the tribes driven, to make room for the white man, who wanted only a little more land to extend his civilization. Tecumseh and his wicked brother, the Prophet — it is well to call him wicked, because he was not a Caucassian — was not our champion — fought against us — made the last bold stand that looked like national war to resist the encroachments of civilization upon the natural rights of the Indian. The natural heroism of Tecumseh, united to the carefully planned fanaticism of the Prophet, combined with the British in an organized war, was a systematic resistance, such as had never before been made by the Indians since the settlement of the north- ern portion of the continent. The prophet was another Mahomet, using only the power at his command upon the superstitious nature of his people, another Joe Smith, improvising the tradi- tions of his tribes, another Miller, arousing the primitive nations to prepare for the millennium of his race, now at hand. The prophet was a bloody, vindictive dreamer. Tecumseh dreamed not ; he had all of the ability of King Philip, all of the sublime independence of Logan, all of the personal bravery of Cornstalk ; he was more than the superior of any Indian chieftan who had lived before him ; he was to the Indians whom he commanded what Hannibal was to the Carthagenians, what Cfesar was to the Romans, what Bonaparte was to the French, what Cromwell was to the English ; he failed only because he was the greatest of an inferior race, struggling against the superior. No mere human, however, gains a victory over nature. Defeat brought to life its worst vices — drunkenness, idleness, degradation. After the defeat of Tecumseh the enterprise and its first born child — ag- 1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 183 gression of the white man — brought its power into im- mediate contact with the Indian. Then came Blackhawk, the last of the Shawnees, who had fought side by side with Tecumseh, whose people had been robbed of their lands by the cupidity of the white man and the treachery of the red man. 'No longer a proud people, with the history of their warriors pre- served in the wampum belt and repeated on the battle- field, Blackhawk, parti}' in grief for the lost glory of his race, now melting away " like a snow flake on the river," and partly in desperation, organized an Indian army to prevent the occupation of their lands on the rich and picturesque Rock river valley. Believing that a contest here Avould — at least for a generation — postpone the settlement of the whites west of the Mississippi valley, Blackhawk made his war determined and vigorous, but not with the usual savage cruelty known and practiced by the earlier tribes. But Blackhawk was overcome. The heroic frontier warrior, Henry Dodge, whose family had suffered from frontier cruelty, who had heard in the cradle the war-whoop of the Indians, in after years had wrested the tomahawk from their stoutest braves, de- feated Blackhawk. So must it ever be, the inferior yielding to the superior race. Keokuk, Wapello, Appanoose, Kish-ke-kosh, Powe- sheik, with the long list of chiefs, those who were hered itary, and those who received their position from their tribes, were simply so many children of nature, who grew up with the rosin-weed, and had wolf dogs and ponies for their companions, hunted the buffalo, deer, elk, with the other wild game, and the wild fruits, died and left behind a progeny to perish like the Wild flowers, with nothing to perpetuate their remembrance among nations, leaving their memories among their tribes as names in a dreamy vocabulary' upon which to ground a tradition or amplify an old legend. Nature is itself de- structive, and produces only to destroy, and measures its powers to produce by its capacity to destroy. To this 184 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JULY law man is no exception to tlic universal rule. The fisL eats the worm; the snake eats the fish ; the swine eats the snake ; man eats the swine. Men destroy each other until the first victim, the worm, eats the man, and finally the worm imitates the example of the men and devour each other. In this fearful circle of destruction nature produces, destroys, reproduces, and again destroys her- self. American history has no more mournful page than that of the gradual disappearance of the Indians, the firet proprietors of the soil. The history of the disappearance of the Indian in civilized America is unique, uniform, sorrowful, and natural. The land was possessed by the Indian; the buffalo, elk, and deer were his herds, par- taking of his nature, and participating in his nomadic habits. The bear, panther, and \volf prowled around his wigwam until the Indian made friends with the wolf, and imparted to him a domestication wonderfully like his own. The pony, wild as the Indian, served him well in the chase. The wild apple, plum, and grape, with those other fruits thai disappear upon the approach of the plow and other implements of culture, afforded to the Indian his pleasant summer sweets and acids; the wild man, the wild beast, the wild fruits lived and flour- ished together. But the white man came, and before him the enchanting dream of perpetual dominion fled as a vision forever. The buffalo heard the strange voico of the white man, and moved his herds as an army stam peding from the enemy. The Indian saw the retreating herd of buffalo, and mounted upon his pony — the rea- son was natural — the Indian's food and raiment was in the buftalo and kindred beasts. The wolf-dog followed the Indian, for he lived upon the oft'al of the chase. Then came the change. The white man, close upon the heels of the Indian, commenced his^ work of improve- ment and culture. Everything changc