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 n New Orleans."

A huzza rang round the table. "We shall be here to help him."

"Every settlement that borders the Mississippi will join with us. Spain rules to Pittsburg, dictates prices, opens and closes markets. Will Americans endure that? From New Orleans to British America, Spain stretches an invisible cordon, 'thus far and no farther.' All beyond is the private park of Don Carlos IV."

"What will Congress do?"

"Congress?" echoed another. "What does it matter to those people beyond the Alleghanies? They are very far away. Europe is not so remote. Our interests lie with Mississippi and the sea."

"But that would dismember the Union."

"Will it dismember the Union for the Louisianians to break their fetter from Spain and thereby give us a market clear of duty? The Kentuckians, equally with us, are irritated at the Spanish Government. We have a right to strike Spain."

Charles De Pauw renamed his schooner the "Maria" and sailed out of the Gulf under the Stars and Stripes. On the way to New York he met the frigate returning that brought the French minister, Charles Genet, to Charleston.

Acres of flatboats lay freighted on the dimpling Ohio. Corn, wheat, oats, rye,—the worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia knew nothing like it. But the Spaniard stood at the gate and locked up the river.

"A King?" Americans laughed at the fancy. "A King to check or hinder us in our rights? Who shall refuse us? Are we not Americans?"

"The Mississippi is ours," cried Kentucky. "By the law of nature, by the authority of numbers, by the right of necessity. If Congress will not give it to us, we must take it ourselves."

And now France—

George Rogers Clark was profoundly moved by the French crusade for liberty. "We owe it to France to help her. Was not France our friend in the time of