Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/204

 144 HISTORY OP SOUTHEAST MISSOURI finally dissipated. The dream of a great Spanish empire with its capital at New Or- leans was dispelled. War between the United States and Spain for the possession of the Mississippi river was avoided. It is quite clear that this transaction was one of the most momentous incidents in all history. The territory is a vast one embrac- ing a million square miles and stretching from the Mississippi to the Rockies. The territory of Louisiana contained within its borders some of the richest mineral districts, some of the richest soil, and some of the greatest forests in the world and was, even at that date, exceed- ingly valuable. Fifteen million dollars was a large amount of money for the United States, in 1803, but fifteen million is the merest frac- tion of the value of Louisiana territory. Its value to the United States was not solely to be measured by the soil, or its forests, or the mineral wealth of the territory. It is difficult to say how our country would have become a great nation without the possession of Louisi- ana. Its possession carried with it the free and unobstructed use of the Mississippi river; it rounded out our territory; it gave us posses- sion of the greatest tract of food producing soil in all the world. The Mississippi valley is the heart of our country and had the Lou- isiana purchase not been made the Mississippi valley would have been owned by the United States only in part. The purchase meant much for the people who lived in Louisiana at that time, but it meant a great deal more to the United States and to the people of our country at the present day. We can hardly imagine what our country would be now if the Louisiana territory had remained in the pos- session of Spain, or in the possession of France; instead of being one of the great powers of the world, the United States would have been one of the smaller nations and its wealth would be but a fraction of what it now is. This purchase deserves and holds a great space in history. The restrictive laws of Spain, her unjust restrictions upon commerce, her censorship of religion, her oppression of free speech and the press, her antiquated ma- chinery of government, her ideals, which were those of the middle ages, were all swept away with the coming of the United States govern- ment and a new era set in then for Louisiana. We may not say, of course, that all the results that immediately followed were good. As has been the case everywhere, new-found liberty was made an occasion for license, and the free- dom with which the people of the territory of Louisiana found themselves clothed upon their transfer to the United States, was in some cases an excuse for lawlessness and violence. These disorders, however, were temporary in their character and when the ideas of Anglo- Saxon liberty, liberty restrained by law, of self-government, were realized, then followed good order throughout Louisiana. Not only did the change of ownership bring a greater degree of liberty, not only did it enable the people who lived in Louisiana to govern them- selves and to carry on the concerns of their lives without interference and fear from the hampering regulations of Spain, the change of ownership brought a great flood of immigration. The river had acted as a bar- rier to the westward movement of our popu- lation, it had dammed that movement up and lield it in the states on the east side of the river, and when the barrier was removed and Louisiana passed out from the control of Spain and into that of the United States im- migration flowed into the district in streams, new towns sprung up, industries were re- vived and within a few years the population of Louisiana was doubled many times over.