^ -5*6 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 REPORT OF 
 
 Delegate 
 
 TO 
 
 Deep Waterways 
 Convention 
 
 Herald Print m»^&Pt Honrtik, Ohio.
 
 
 Talk of Hon. C. H. Gallup Before the Norwalk 
 
 Chamber of Commerce on the Problem of 
 
 the Mighty Mississippi. 
 
 DECEMBER 8, 1909. 
 
 STENOGRAPHERS REPORT 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Fellow Members of the Board of Commerce: 
 
 You will remember that some time in October the Mayor of Norwalk 
 appointed a delegation to represent Norwalk at the Deep Waterways Con- 
 vention to be held at New Orleans on the 3 0th of October and the 1st and 
 2nd of Nevember. The Mayor has been criticized some for picking out two 
 Republicans and sending them away just before election, but the real spirit 
 of it was the Mayor wanted to certify to the political rectitude of Major 
 Adams and myself. He couldn't get our votes, so he sent us away. 
 
 Now you all know that the enjoyment of a journey depends large- 
 ly upon the company you have. I can say to you, Mr. President, that the 
 Mayor could have picked no better companion for me than Major Adams. 
 He is one of the pleasantest traveling companions it has ever been my lot 
 to wander with. On the way to St. Louius, I stopped off at Culver, In- 
 diana and spent part of two days with the Major at that military institute. 
 The Major represents the power, the dignity, the majesty of the United 
 fctates Government at that school, and they all respect and love him. I 
 v/as proud of the position he occupies there and I am glad to testify to it 
 here. He stands high there and we all have a right to be proud of his 
 position. 
 
 I have been asked to tell you of my trip down the Mississippi River 
 and my conclusions. That we may fully understand the conditions that 
 confront all efforts to regulate the Mississippi River, we want to go back 
 ;'u history of the world perhaps seven thousand years, when this whole 
 country was covered with a mass of ice from one to two miles deep or 
 thick, extending from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi. When that condi- 
 tion existed, all water that now drains through the Niagara River into 
 Lake Ontario drained over into the Mississippi River down through what 
 i.s now the Illinois River. It passed just north of us. This ridge was part 
 of the south bank of the stream and to this day water runs both into the 
 Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico from the south line of this county. 

 
 At that time the Mississippi River was a very much larger stream 
 than it is today. We don't know, but scientists say that the elevation of 
 the land here was greater than it is now; that it has since settled dowi 
 and they point to two particular instances as evidence of that fact. The 
 present bottom of the Cuyahoga River is five hundred and fifty feet above 
 what it once was and the Hudson River once was five hundred feet deeper 
 than it is now. In the recent effort on the part of the City of New York 
 to carry water from the Adriondacks to supply the City of New York, they 
 had to run a tunnel under the North River, the Hudson River. They had 
 to go down five hundred feet before they could get to solid material to put 
 that tunnel through, because that river once had its bottom way down. It 
 has been filled up. The same is true of the Mississippi River. When this 
 grand water shed poured its water over through that outlet to the Gulf of 
 Mexico, the Mississippi River was a stream two or three hundred feet deep- 
 er than it is today. It ran through a valley from forty to eighty miles wide 
 and had great bluffs on either side. When the immense body of ice began 
 to thaw and deposit its load of boulders, gravel, mud, rocks ground up and 
 everything that it had picked up in its onward march from the north to 
 the south that had been going on for hundreds of thousands years, moving 
 a little at a time, perhaps a foot a week, perhaps two feet a week, that im- 
 mense plow of ice swept out all the soft material in its way. It made the 
 basin of Lake Superior, of Lake Michigan, of Lake Huron, of Lake Erie, 
 ft scooped out all that earth and deposited here, there and all along. Our 
 ridges, all our gravel pits, all our sand hills, all our clay banks are the 
 deposit from the melting ice. When the sun began to assert its power, the 
 ice began to melt very rapidly, and in the spring time we have the evidence 
 along the bluffs of the Missouri River that that river in flood tide would 
 go up two hundred feet above its ordinary level, and that discharged into 
 the Mississippi Valley. There are narrow places now in the Mississippi 
 River where it is over two hundred feet deep; that is where it cuts the 
 ( hannel out. There are other places where it spreads out and is only three 
 or four feet deep. 
 
 This is one of the conditions that has got to be taken into considera- 
 tion in making the Mississippi River a deep waterway. What were its an- 
 tecedents? A vast valley filled up with the sediment that was deposited by 
 the glaciers along all the hills west of the Alleganies and which has been 
 washing down for perhaps seven thousand years and filling up that valley, 
 filling it up with the debris that has come down, and the stream lias been 
 filling up and getting higher and higher, until that valley from thirty to 
 eighty miles wide 'is full of that debris. As you go along the river and look 
 at the sand bluffs, they are all stratified. No matter how high or how low, 
 they are all stratified showing a water deposit. You see trees three feet 
 through, where the bank has been washed down straight you see the body 
 of the tree five or six feet above its roots covered with mud, yet away 
 below that for a hundred and fifty feet, it is still stratified mud that has 
 been settling there. 
 
 Now I speak of seven thousand years. That is a measure which is ob- 
 tained by watching the erosion of the Niagara limestone at Niagara Falls. 
 it moves back from one to two feet a year and the Falls are going up
 
 stream. When you take the distance from Lewiston to Niagara Falls, it 
 f;xes it at about seven thousand years. That is the nearest we can come 
 to putting our finger upon the time. When the Mississippi River was such 
 an immense stream and when the water began to go off in the other direc- 
 tion, it relieved the river of a large amount of water and that is why the 
 sediment filled in so fast there. That sediment from bottom to top is as un- 
 stable as you can imagine. The moment the river squints at any partic- 
 ular bank, that moment that bank begins to come down. It only has to 
 point at it and it comes down like "David Crockett's Coon." 
 
 The first capital of the state of Illinois, Kaskaskia, I think, (I haven' 
 j'et found out the correct spelling, — it isn't on the map today) was a cit.' 
 of seven thousand inhabitants. I saw five or six houses left of that city 
 When it was the capital of the state, the river ran a mile west of it; i 
 j'.ow runs where the city stood, and a little piece of it, perhaps a doze . 
 houses are left — over in Missouri. 
 
 Island Number Ten, you will remember that as being one of the places 
 fortified by the confedei'ates during the late Civil War. The batteries were 
 commanded by that fighting Bishop Leonidas Polk of Tennessee. Island 
 Number Ten was a large island; today it isn't there. There is nothing 
 but a little nubbin left with a few trees. The bluff that stood opposite Is- 
 land Number Ten is gone and the river runs where it was. They tell 
 the story about a Union sympathizer who lived at the next bend above Is- 
 hmd Number Ten when Commodore Foote wanted to go down the river, 
 this Union man got a log and put it in the river at night, floated down to 
 Island Number Ten, quietly slipped up over the breastworks, and before 
 they knew he was there, had the guns spiked and was gone. You will te- 
 member the Sultana blew up at Island Number Ten, killing some twelve 
 hundred union soldiers. It was said that the coal had been tampered with 
 and an explosive put in. But Island Number Ten isn't there today. 
 
 The Mississippi River has been called the "Father of Waters." I heard 
 Horace Greely once in the old Whittlesey Hall call it that, way back in 
 the early 50s, and I shall never forget the way he pronounced it. The first 
 tning he said was, "The Mississippi River is the Father of Waters" and 
 then went on and told the story about it. Now the Mississippi River is not 
 fcutitled to that name. It hasn't got a manly feature about it. Its every 
 movement is fickle. Whatever it undertakes to do, it does. "When it wills 
 it will, you may depend upon it, and when it won't, it won't, and that is 
 the end of it." It is feminine in every characteristic. 
 
 I have told you about the city of Kaskakia. Let me tell you about the 
 forests; acres, hundreds of acres of forests are sliding into that river, the 
 tops all falling inland and the roots out. You see acres and acres of old 
 lorests going that way, but every one of them built upon stratified earth. 
 
 It is a monstrous, huge snake, wriggling its way back and forth, to one 
 side, to the other side, times without number swallowing up every thing 
 in its reach on one bank and spewing it out upon the other side, tearing 
 down here, building up there. That is the character of the Mississippi 
 River from the mouth of the Missouri to Natchez. Natchez is about three 
 hundred miles from the mouth. From there down it is deep water, but 
 above everywhere its course is as unstable as water.
 
 How can it be regulated? It was said by Archimedes that "if you 
 would give him a lever and some place to stand on, he could lift the 
 world," so if you can get any place to stand on in the Mississippi River, 
 you can control it, but you have got to go down two or three hundred feet 
 before you get a foundation and that for twelve hundred miles or more, a 
 river three thousand miles long. How are you going to control it? You 
 simply can't do it. There isn't money enough in the world to control it; 
 there isn't power enough in the world to control it. The United States gov- 
 ernment has spent millions of dollars; the state governments have spent 
 other millions of dollars along the river in an effort to try and hold it back 
 and save valuable plantations, to save towns, to save the country lying 
 back from the river. That is now protected by levees. The state govern- 
 ments have spent millions upon millions building great embankments, and 
 you see every little ways a place where the river has just taken a turn and 
 gone right under the embankments, and you see the two ends of the em- 
 bankment standing there as monumental records of the failure of man to 
 control it. I say the government of the United States has spent millions 
 of dollars in trying to protect that land. They have gone to the forests 
 for poles, three or four to five inches in diameter and as tall as they can 
 find, fifty or sixty feet high. There are quantities of them along the banks. 
 I saw barge after barge, barge after barge upon that river loaded with 
 those poles laid across the barges until they piled up fifteen or twenty feet 
 high like immense loads of hay. They commence at some place where they 
 want to stop that cutting away. They lay those poles tops to the bank with 
 cross pieces and fasten them together with steel cables until they get a 
 j-trong mat. 'ihey make the mats very long up and down the banks about 
 fifty or sixty feet wide, then load them with hundreds of thousands of tons 
 of stone piled on top to try to hold the bank. The old river comes down 
 and goes on its way once in a while, and once in a while it is right in 
 behind the mat and cuts all around it. I saw quantities of that kind of 
 vork all gone for nothing. 
 
 There is much rich land lying along the river, the Garden of Eden if 
 i* could only be used, no richer land in the world. But there is that river 
 once or twice every year going way up forty or fifty feet and becoming 
 thirty to eighty miles wide over all that land. It makes itself a nuisance, 
 except where the states have put their levees to keep the water back, but 
 I have already told you how futile the levees are if the river takes a squint 
 at them. 
 
 I saw them driving piles in New Orleans, sixty to seventy feet long 
 It was just like sticking a pin in cheese. Every blow would settle it, per- 
 haps from a foot to eighteen inches or two feet. When it got down pretty 
 well, it didn't go quite as fast, but it never reached hard pan. And that 
 was in New Orleans where the channel is comparatively straight. If you 
 can have a straight channel, you can handle the river, but where it is 
 crooked, you can't. 
 
 The overfiow land, if it could be reclaimed, is immensely valuable. 
 The people who own that land are interested in having that river fixed so 
 that it does not overflow. They are very largely interested in that, as the 
 whole country is interested in the general enterprise, but the question is.
 
 how to solve that problem. There is a way they can to a certain extent 
 regulate the river, although as I have said, they never can control it. Be- 
 tween St. Louis and Natchez, about nine hundred miles, it could be short- 
 ened by cutting off the bends. I think about three hundred miles can be 
 gained in that distance. The current of that river is about four miles an 
 hour. To shorten the distance three hundred miles would mean to quicken 
 that current from four to five days in going that distance down the river. 
 In other words, a certain drop of water would pass down the river about 
 four days quicker than it now does. That would largely increase the rap- 
 idity of the stream. It at the same time would obviate the cutting at the 
 bends, and if they can only hold it a straight stream they can control it. 
 The trouble is to make it straight. 
 
 Now as I say, the people along the stream are largely interested in the 
 control of that river and the straightening of it, so that the overflow will 
 be prevented. It means hundreds of millions of dollars to those people. It 
 means something to all of us too. We d,re interested in that. I mentioned 
 that fact in a talk I had on the steamer where we were holding a public 
 meeting, and I said the whole United States was interested with the people 
 along the river in having a deep waterway and a control of the river as 
 far as possible. They were interested as a matter of defense. I said to 
 them that the commerce upon our great lakes is greater than all the com- 
 merce of the rivers in the United States put together, outside of perhaps 
 me North and East Rivers. That commerce today is protected in a military 
 P'ay by two little one-gun gun boats. Under the provision of the treaty of 
 18 18, we can't put any more there, but let us get into difficulty with the 
 British government and how quickly they could run their gun boats up the 
 Welland canal into Lake Erie, how quickly they could sweep every ship off 
 the lakes, how quicly they could come and sweep the cities out of existence 
 along the great lakes, unprotected except by field gun batteries and they 
 can get out of reach of those. A deep waterway from Lake Michigan into 
 the Gulf of Mexico would give us an opportunity to run our gun boats up 
 and meet them. A bright lawyer from Missouri followed me, and he madH 
 a good deal of fun of me because I was afraid of Great Britain. He 
 said, "Why. they can never reach us out here." I have but this to say to 
 those who make light of the question of national defense upon our lakes. 
 Do you know that at Halifax in Nova Scotia and on Vancouver Island the 
 iSritish government has fortresses almost as impregnable as Gibraltar. 
 What are they there for? For no other purpose on God's earth but as the 
 basis of war against the United States. That is what they are there for. 
 "But," said my friend from Missouri, "Great Britain daren't touch us." 
 No, at the present time, no. Great Britain is under bonds to keep the peace. 
 She is having about all that she can attend to over in India. Canada and 
 Australia feel pretty independent. When called upon by the British govern- 
 ment to contribute to the increase of the King's navy, they said, "We 
 will build ships and keep them, but we will lend them to you if you get 
 into trouble." That 4s the condition between Great Britain and her colon- 
 ies. But go back with me less than fifty years and you will see the whole 
 front of Great Britain blustering with threats against us at the time of 
 the Trent affair. Perhaps one or two here may remember that but less 
 
 5
 
 than fifty years ago, the whole power of the British Government was ready 
 to annihilate us simply because we took two Confederate delegates from a 
 British ship who were going to Euiope to get a recognition of Southern 
 Confederacy. Nothing saved us but the wise statesmanship of Lincoln. He 
 told Seward that we must apologize for trespassing upon the British flag 
 .ird surrender Mason and Slidell. The magnificent work of Henry Ward 
 Beecher and Bishop Mcllvain, that Lincoln's wisdom sent to England, 
 saved to us the friendship of the people of Great Britain. 
 
 Now, I say, let something happen between us and Great Britain. 
 Things change in a little while. Fifty or a hundred years may make a 
 change and we may have to fight for ou^ existence. The man who smiles 
 cr sneers at the question of preparing a defense would rest quiet over a 
 sleeping volcano. He don't knov/ what he is talking about. If he will only 
 look at those fortresses that stand at both sides of our continent, he will 
 eee why we are all interested in getting our ships up through to the lakes. 
 ■^1 hat is the interest v/e have here very largely. Of course, we are interest- 
 ed in the general welfare of our fellowman wherever they may be. We are 
 :ill interested in improving the overflow lands of tlie Mississippi Valley. 
 What benefits those people will benefit us. I can see no reason why they 
 should not be treated as our government is now treating the desert lands 
 that it is spending millions of dollars to reclaim by irrigation. It charges 
 a tax for the use of the water and by and by the money is all going to come 
 liack. I don't see why, if we improve the lands along the Mississippi River, 
 the same principle should not apply, so we may have a rolling fund to car- 
 rj on the improvements. Whatever improvements are made cannot be per- 
 manent. It will have to be all the time repaired and added to. The river is 
 never going to let Uncle Sam boss it 
 
 It may be regulated to a certain extent. I have suggested that thre>3 
 hundred miles could be taken out by shortening bends. Another improve- 
 ment would be retaining dams at the head waters of the streams, so that 
 immense quantities of water could be held back at fiood time and released, 
 at periods of drought, and in that way regulate largely the flow of those 
 streams. That has got to be, not the Mississippi alone, but all the tributar- 
 ies that come in; they have all got to be treated in that way to hold back 
 the flood water. 
 
 Along the line of the river, take it from St. Paul to New Orleans, there 
 are but few prosperous cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Dubuque, Daven- 
 port and Burlington are fairly prosperous, St. Louis is growing, now a 
 city of over 700,000 inhabitants and a magnificent city, Memphis is 
 growing. New Orleans is growing, ali because of railroads but the rest of 
 the cities, while they exist that is about all you can say. We stopped and 
 went up into a number of them, but the life of business was not there. 
 
 Fifty-one years ago I was living in Cincinnati, and then its quays were 
 alive with the shipping of the rivers. Hundreds of steamers were coming 
 and going. Nearly fifty years ago I commenced to travel up and down th( 
 lakes, from Duluth to Cleveland. The lakes were lined then with manj 
 nice villages, steamers stopping at every one of them. You could buy s 
 ticket at Buffalo, Cleveland or Detroit, to any one of those ports all witl 
 deep water. Today you cannot do it, nor can you go to Cincinnati and bu:
 
 a ticket to any place down the river. The steamers are not there. Why i: 
 it ? There has been a march of progress since then. Railroads have come 
 in. It takes time to transport anything by water. I started from St. Louis 
 to go to New Orleans, eleven hundred and some odd miles, and I was from 
 Monday at 5 p. m. until eleven a. m. Saturday and that going down stream 
 On the way back, I left New Orleans on Tuesday at six p. m. and on tht 
 next Wednesday week at eight a. m. jumped the boat and got oi the cars 
 lo go 80 miles to St. Louis. It was too slow for me. Now gentlemen, that 
 explains the whole thing. Time is a value today in commerce. That is one 
 of the difficulties of inducing the government to make appropriations to 
 Sf;uander o nthe river. You cannot get over the water as you can over the 
 land. 
 
 Take those two illustrations, the little towns that have gone down 
 and don't exist now along the chain of lakes with deep w^aterway and the 
 little towns two or three miles inland where the railroads have come and 
 V hich are prosperous. It is just so with the rivers, the railroads have 
 taken the settlement away from the rivers. Then why should we spend 
 millions of dollars to deepen the river? We cannot do it unless we join 
 v.ith it national defense. Look at the Panama canall What carried that 
 vote through congress. Do you know? I will tell you. It was that mag- 
 nificant trip of the Oregon from Sar Francisco around the Horn to meet 
 the Spanish fleet that moved congress. It ^as the strategic feature of get- 
 ting our fleets across quickly to defend the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. 
 
 I said in our public meeting, when my Missouri friend was making 
 light of the military feature, and I say to you here, never can a vote pass 
 Congress for a deep waterway appropriation for the river unless connected 
 ^vith this feature of the national defiiSe. It is that may help it through. 
 
 Nov>' if we should spend monej there, how should we spend it, in 
 what way? What is to be done first? I don't believe we should ever 
 spend a dollar until we have it thoroughly surveyed, and a full and com- 
 plete "knowledge of- all the elements that go into the question are reported 
 ri.nd reported favorably. I am in favor of an appropriation foi: that kind of 
 an investigaiiou and I think that is as far as we should go at the present 
 time. Unless that report is favorable, I would not appropriate a dollar on 
 the Mississippi, because the business is not there that warrants it and be- 
 cause of the absolute impossibility of controlling the river. If we do make 
 an appropriation, I think it should be coupled with a condition that the 
 overflow lands that are reclaimed should pay a portion of the expense. I 
 believe with those conditions we can afford to investigate the matter and 
 that is my conclusion. 
 
 I could talk to you a good deal along this line but I want to tell you 
 a little about other things 1 saw for I think they are interesting. I went 
 u). through New Orleans. I traveled around it; I went to the outskirts; 
 i went w^iiere they bury their dead; to the museum of the State Historical 
 oociety, and down through Royal street where the curio shops are kept. 
 
 New Orleans is in two parts, up town and down town. Down town is 
 the old French Quarter; up town is the new part. It is a magnificent city 
 and growing rapidly, but the interesting part was the old French quarter. 
 The river comes around here in a great crescent. Right in the heart of the
 
 old quai'ter is Jackson Square, where stands an equestrian statute of 
 Andrew Jackson. When it was unveiled, that ceremony was performed by 
 Henry Clay. You remember, during the War of the rebellion, Ben Butler 
 ■Has military governor of New Orleans. The base of that statue is an im- 
 mense pedestal of granite. On either side he caused to be engraved, "The 
 rnion must and shall be preserved." That was during the war. The in- 
 scription remains there today just as he carved it. I well remember the 
 indignation it caused throughout the South when Butler put that upon the 
 Fjonument, but no sacrilegious hand has ever attempted to erase it. It is 
 there, perhaps will stay there forever. I hope it will. That is an inspira- 
 tion from Jackson's proclamation. It was in 1832 when Jackson issued his 
 South Carolina nullification proclamation and said that "if it hadn't been 
 obeyed I would have hung them as high as Haman and posterity would 
 have pronounced it the best act of my life." 
 
 Right opposite this square is the old St. Louis cathedral, nearly two 
 hundred years old. On either side of that cathedral are two fine build- 
 ings, just exactly alike architecturally. One is occupied by the supreme 
 court and the other by the civil courts. The supreme court is soon going 
 to leave what is called theCabildo and the State Historical society is going 
 to use it for its museum. This is right in the center of the old French 
 quarter, once the most prosperous, the most fashionable poriion of the 
 city. There was more wealth, more luxury, more extravagent living here 
 than any where on the continent. Today it is dead; the dead heart of a live 
 city. I saw magnificent buildings there with granite columns, fluted mon- 
 olith, with the windows knocked out and boarded up. Through the cracks 
 I saw the empty disordered rooms, once arristocratic hives of business and 
 on the other side of the street a new marble two million dollar court 
 house just finished. There is the contrast between today and the past. 
 
 If you care to study the old families, the French and Spanish, go into 
 the curio shops and see the beautiful furniture there for sale, household 
 goods of every conceivable nature, chandeliers, candlebra, sideboards, bed- 
 steads with great high carved posts, with the prices running into hundreds 
 of dollars. There were candlebra with brilliants on for $600, a four post 
 bedstead with carved posts for |150, a pair of andirons with goddesses on 
 for $120. What story do we read there? Before the war, those people 
 lived upon the labor of slaves. They owned slaves. They were wealthy. 
 They bought, bred and sold slaves. They spent their money freely and all 
 this luxury came from Paris, London or Madrid. They lived like princes, 
 but the war swept slavery away and with their slaves went their wealth 
 and their earning capacity and their living. As time went by that chair 
 had to go to the curio shop and then this one to get the wherewith to live. 
 They had been brought up in luxury. They had never been taught to do a 
 useful thing and they couldn't earn their living. 
 
 On the other side of Jackson Square, flanking it, are two magnificent 
 buildings the whole length of that square. Handsome architecturally, they 
 were built during the time of the southern prosperity, based upon slavery. 
 Way back in 1846 those buildings were put up by the Baroness de Poutal- 
 ba. They represent the Tulleries in Paris somewhat. Today they are occu- 
 pied by "washy, washy houses," old clothes storage rooms, negro quar-
 
 ters and as tenement houses. A good many of the rooms are shut up. That 
 was the result of the sweeping away of slavery and it left those people 
 poor, their educatic>i, bringing up and habits left them poor indeed because 
 they had no other resources. Those curio shops are full of the luxuries 
 they had. There you can study the old time folk-lore of the creole days. 
 
 Right in tnat Quarter, a little ways from this Square is the old 
 French theatre. I went there. I saw a magnificent spectacular display of 
 a Jewish character where an old Jew had incurred the enmity of a high 
 church dignitary. It was a play that brought out the best society in New 
 Orleans. I had my opera glasses with me and Major Adams and myself 
 had a chance to witness a display of diamonds — seldom seen in any other 
 theatre. 
 
 I stood upon the deck of our steamer and watched the officers of an- 
 other steamer hire a crew on the levees. Perhaps there were two hundred 
 colored people, all wanting a job to go up the Red River on a steamer. It 
 took those officers until nearly midnight to pick out from that crowd of 
 applicants those they would trust to take with them. The clerk of the boat- 
 we were on said: "Those people are all known. So many of them are 
 broilers, mischief makers, they can't take them." 
 
 The slaves or descendants of slaves are now as thick as grasshoppers 
 all through the south New Orleans and other cities are full of them. On 
 the boat we were on, and I was told that was true of other boats, they were 
 paying 20c an hour for every hour in the twenty-four that those boats 
 v^ere out. The deck hands had to v. ork, no matter where or when. It 
 might be midnight or three or four o'clock in the morning. They had to 
 be ready when work was to be done. They had no beds or bunks; they 
 laid down on the deck wherever they could get a chance and slept between 
 stops. They were fed with victuals put into their hands, and then they 
 hunted a quiet place to eat. Your dogs are better cared for. 
 
 I stood one day upon the upper deck of the steamer when we were 
 coming up the river and every little while when we came to a Fand bar, 
 saw them "run their boat with the lead." They would have to sound for 
 the depth. Down on the lower deck stood a negro pitching the lead; on the 
 deck above stood another and away up in the pilot house was the pilot. 
 The fellow on the lower deck in a guttural snarling voice would call out 
 "Five feet;" "five feet" cried the next one in the same tone of voice. I 
 stood where I could see their faces. No lion ever looked fiercer than they 
 did when they were making that cry. 
 
 One crew that had just got through coaling had been paid off. They 
 immediately got down on their knees upon the deck and began to shoot 
 craps and they growled at each other like a pack of wolves. 
 
 These are the laboring men of the South. They won't work when they 
 have any money in their pockets. When they learned the fiotilla carrying 
 the President of the United States was on its way, they all stopped work. 
 From one end of that river to the other, their laborers would not work. 
 They were waiting to see the boats go by. We saw thousands of them on 
 the banks watching us day after day. This shows a little of the results 
 that have followed the emancipation of the slave. They are free today.
 
 Once they were not free. They couldn't go anywhere without a written 
 permit and they had to work when they were able to, but they were fed 
 well in order that they might work. Today they are their own masters and 
 they have to eat what they can get. I don't think they live as well today 
 as when they were slaves but they are free. Two hundred years ago tne 
 poet Campbell in his "Pleasures of Hope" asked this question: 
 
 "When shall the world call down to cleanse her shame. 
 
 That embryo spirit yet without a name. 
 
 Who sternly marking on his native soil 
 
 The blood, the anguish and the toil, 
 
 Shall bid each righteous heart rejoice to see 
 
 Peace to the slave and vengeance on the free?" 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was that spirit. He called down freedom for the 
 slave. He proclaimed it, and today we are seeing the vengeance on the 
 tree, for those slaves are the masters of the business of the South. Thev 
 paralyzed it the days we were going down the river that they might see the 
 flotilla. In all the cities lying along that river, business was dead, because 
 the negroes would not work. The South cannot get white men. They have 
 got to have the negro. That is the vengeance upon the free they have got 
 to suffer and God only knows when they will be relieved. 
 
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