But of all that this man did, nothing will be remembered longer than the fact that when he came to reconquer the region Clark had won, he trained more than a thousand men of his legion until they could load and fire their rifles with precision while charging at full speed on the enemy. Anthony Wayne was the best drill master the American army ever had. As said, this work is to give an account of the things done in the Great Valley, but necessarily a record had to be made of those proceedings elsewhere by which the destinies of the Valley were influenced. The Spanish, who were really the first to see the Valley, and who at the end of the Seven Years War, obtained New Orleans and the region between the Rockies and the Mississippi, took possession of Natchez and a large section of American soil during the War of the Revolution. They were determined, after the war was ended, not only to hold it, but to grasp all the unsettled part of the Great Valley, regardless of American claims. In this matter the French Government earnestly supported them, and the diplomatic complications that grew out of this condition of affairs, are interesting. In their efforts to "cinch" the territory the Spanish amuse or exasperate the student of history according to his mental attitude toward their peculiar characteristics. But the settlers of the Great Valley, in the days of the Spanish complications, never found the situation amusing, and the fact that the Spanish were not swept out of the Mississippi Valley by a flood tide of indignant backwoodsmen must ever remain a matter of wonder and pride to the American patriot. By unwavering persistence the Americans foiled the Spanish shufflings, evasions and obstinacy, so that a time came when Spain traded the great Louisiana territory back to France. The day of its salvation was then close at hand. Napoleon ruled France, and for a brief period, he thought to regain for her all the splendid region on which La Salle had filed the French claim. He bought the Louisiana territory; he thought to take the land east of the Mississippi with an army of 10,000 men. But when the eagle alighted before him with one naked claw representing 30,000 "Prime Riflemen," and the other offering him a purse, his vision was cleared. The transfer of Louisiana to the United States was made through the hatred of the British and the fear of America. He prophesied that the valley of the Mississippi would make the United States a “maritime rival" of the British, and a century after his prophesy was made, the greatest transatlantic lines of steamships are controlled by capitalists whose wealth has been drawn from traffic originating in the Great Basin. But, curiously enough, the development which Napoleon hoped for has only served to draw the English-speaking rivals closer together, instead of driving them apart. It is a long story, this of the Mississippi Valley, but from the year when Grosseiliers and Radisson first traded for beaver skin on the bank of the upper river, until the day when the Gridiron Flag, hoisted at New Orleans, covered the whole Great Basin, it is a story that can be summed up in one word-Work. From the first to the last, the men whose names are memorable in the history of the Valley, whether they were traders like the coureurs de bois looking for profit; or empire founders, like La Salle, looking for power; or migrators, like the hosts that followed the Ohio and the Wilderness Road, looking for home sites; or statesmen like Monroe and Livingston, looking for the good of the Nation, all have been men who could and who would work. Work is the one word emblazoned on the escutcheon of the people of the Great Basin. To show a part of what work has accomplished in the affairs of a mighty region is the chief object of this book, and it is therefore offered to the growing host of good Americans who see clearly that "The All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To Do." |