$ 459]

districts of Indiana, and half that many penetrated even into southern Illinois. Even the older communities south of the Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee,-doubled their numbers, rising to two thirds of a million. In 1811, 1200 flatboats passed the rapids of the Ohio with cargoes of bacon, beef, and flour, bound down river. The West had found a way, also, to market large parts of its corn "on the hoof." Each fall, immense

CINCINNATI IN 1810. From Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio.

droves of cattle and hogs (4000 "razor-backs" in one drove) were driven over the wagon roads to the eastern cities, finding subsistence as they moved.

459. And now came the steamboat, with its promise of making the vast western territory accessible. The Watts stationary steam engine had been in use in England for several years and in 1800 there were four or five such engines in America. But in this country, with its tremendous distances, and its lack of roads, the first need was to apply steam to locomotion by

water.

As early as 1789, John Fitch, a poor man without education but with wonderful inventive genius, built a ferryboat with paddles driven by a steam engine of his own construction, and ran it up as well as down the river at Philadelphia for some months. In spite of this remarkable success, Fitch could not

raise money, East or West, to improve or continue his experiment; and he put an end to his life, in disgust and despair, in a Kentucky tavern (1798).1

Robert Fulton was more fortunate. He too had spent heartbreaking years, both in Europe and America, in attempts to find capital to back his invention. Napoleon repulsed him as a faker; but at last he secured money from Chancellor Livingston of New York. In 1807, amid the jeers of the bystanders,

2

he launched the Clermont. That boat amazed the world by a trial trip up the river from New York to Albany (150 miles) in 32 hours. The next year a line of steamboats was plying regularly on the Hudson, and men were planning them on Western rivers.

FOR FURTHER READING.- Channing's Jeffersonian S tem, chs. i, ii. Schouler's Jefferson is a brief readable biography.

1 During these same years, Philadelphia had another neglected genius, Oliver Evans, who likewise built a steam engine suited for locomotion; but again the inventor failed to secure money to finance the undertaking to practical success. Fitch's claim to priority in steam navigation is disputed also in favor of James Rumsey of Maryland. Rumsey certainly ran a steamboat on the Potomac in 1787. 2 Modern Progress, 364.

CHAPTER XLI

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

I. THE WESTERN HALF OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

460. The most important one event in Jefferson's administration was the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson had always sympathized with the attitude of the West toward Spain's hold upon the mouth of the Mississippi (§ 305).1 Man of peace though he was, he had said that such portions of the vast domain of dying Spain as we wanted must come to us in time, by force if necessary; but he had believed confidently that such territory must drop peacefully into our hands, as Spain's grasp weakened.

But late in 1801 fell a thunderbolt: America learned that Spain had secretly ceded Louisiana back to France, then the most aggressive of European nations. Congress hastily passed a war appropriation; and Jefferson, spite of his French sympathies, saw that we must fight or purchase. He instructed Livingston, our minister at Paris, to buy the island of New Orleans, and sent Monroe, as special envoy, to help him. Monroe found a great and unexpected bargain practically completed. Napoleon had suddenly changed front; and, April 30,

1 In 1786 Jay had proposed a treaty with Spain, whereby, in return for certain commercial concessions, we were to surrender for twenty-five years all claim to navigate the Mississippi; but Jefferson wrote from Paris, in solemn warning, "The act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation between us and the Western country."

...

2 Jefferson said that France had become our foe "by the laws of Nature." He wrote to Livingston: "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural . . . enemy. . . . France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us an attitude of defiance. . . . The day that France takes possession of New Orleans. . . seals the union of two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation."