Navigable rivers are of great importance to a country's trade now;
but a hundred years ago their importance was relatively far greater.
Steam, railroads, electricity, have worked a revolution so stupendous,
that we find it difficult to realize the facts of the life which our
forefathers lived. The conditions of commerce have changed much more in
the last hundred years than in the preceding two thousand. The
Kentuckians and Tennesseans knew only the pack train, the wagon train,
the river craft and the deep-sea ship; that is, they knew only such
means of carrying on commerce as were known to Greek and Carthaginian,
Roman and Persian, and the nations of medieval Europe. Beasts of draught
and of burden, and oars and sails,--these, and these only,--were at the
service of their merchants, as they had been at the service of all
merchants from time immemorial. Where trade was thus limited the
advantages conferred by water carriage, compared to land carriage, were
incalculable. The Westerners were right in regarding as indispensable
the free navigation of the Mississippi. They were right also in their
determination ultimately to acquire the control of the whole river, from
the source to the mouth.
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