Mississippians

“ So firmly and furiously did they resist the Mexicans, that the plundering wretches gladly made their escape, leaving the plain strewed with their dead and dying. They were now pursued by Colonel May’s squadron of dragoons, who, with two pieces of Captain Bragg’s battery, had just come up. They were driven along the foot of the mountain into a gorge, where they joined a force that the Mississippians, reinforced by the two Indiana regiments and a twelve-pound howitzer, had been firing upon with great execution. ”

“ I was surprised at this, As I had understood from our Great Father that the Mississippi was to be the dividing line between his red and white children, and he did not wish either to cross it. I was much pleased with this talk, and I knew it would be much better for both parties. I have since found the country much settled by the whites further down, and near to our people, on the west side of the river. I am very much afraid that in a few years they will begin to drive and abuse our people, as they have formerly done. ”

“ There is the humming of bees, singing of birds and a fragrance indescribable. The Mississippi stretches away like a great silver serpent between golden meadows and headlands on either side, until it becomes a mere glint of light in the distance. ”

“ The mighty Mississippi, however, the great and everlasting highway on which these people are for ever to intermingle their interests and manners, will effectually soften down those prejudices, and eventually result in an amalgamation of feelings and customs, from which this huge mass of population will take one new and general appellation. ”

“ And o'er its breast their gorgeous image fling.
The Mississippi needs no herald now—
But here within this glen unknown to fame,
It flows content—a bubble on its brow,
A leaf upon its breast—without a name!
Banks of the Mississippi II.
Strange contrasts here—for on the glacier's height,
The tempest raves, and arrowy lightnings leap—
Yet deep beneath, the wild flowers lone and light,
On slender stems in breezeless silence sleep. ”

“ The uprising of the people of Mississippi against Negro rule was a most magnificent example of that spirit of Southern patriotism that animated the hearts; first of such men as Walthall, Lamar, George, Featherston, Stone, Lowry and Harris, and then spread to the hearts of every true man in Mississippi. The young men of the State, the rising generation, have the greatest reverence and love for the brave men who fought such a gallant fight for the preservation of white supremacy in Mississippi. ”

“ Here is the favored land—alas! it is a fever-land, too—of sugar-cane and Indian corn. To those who have very magnificent conceptions of the Mississippi, founded on mere arithmetical computations of leagues, or vague geographical data, it may be astonishing, but it is nevertheless true, the Mississippi is artificial for many hundreds of miles. Nature has, of course, poured out the waters, but man has made the banks. By a vast system of raised embankments, called levees, the river is constrained to abstain from overflowing the swamps, now drained, and green with wealth-producing crops. ”

“ Above all, the valley of the Mississippi was ordained by God as the residence of a united people. Over every acre of its soil must forever float the banner of the Union, and all its waters, as they roll on together to the Gulf, proclaim that what 'God has joined together, man shall never put asunder.' The nation's life-blood courses this vast arterial system, and to sever it is death. ”

“ Here the Indians come with their furs from that immense country lying between the Mississippi and the Missouri, the western boundary of Minnesota, and the forests still undespoiled of their primeval wealth, and the rivers and lakes abounding in fish, offer their inexhaustible resources, whilst the great Mississippi affords the means of their conveyance to the commercial markets of the world, flowing, as it does, through the whole of Central America down to New Orleans. ”

“ A foreign power holding the mouth of the Mississippi! In the early stages of our history it was regarded as a self-evident truth that such power must be or become our natural enemy. But if at that time, when the great Mississippi Valley was a silently brooding wilderness, it was thought that we must have the mouth of the river, because the foreign hand that held it might choke our future development, what shall we say now when the Mississippi Valley has become the garden of America, the seat of empire? ”

“ The Mississippi, itself, has lost none of its taunts to daring spirits, as a river, and it has added countless varieties of venturesome amusement; even savage human nature does not change, but the resources of the mind give the Mississippi today what La Salle himself could never have found. ”

“ The twenty years after 1865 were a period of economic depression, the result of the havoc wrought by the war and of the difficulties encountered in readjusting production to the new conditions of labor, but later the rise of manufactures marked the beginning of a bright era. The racial problem assumed a momentous aspect in 1844, when a vast migration of colored men into the swamp lands of Mississippi seemed to threaten the rise of a negro State within the State of Mississippi. ”

“ Forever the yellow Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles to destroy;—and amid their eternal strife the islands and the promontories change shape, more slowly, but not less fantastically, than the clouds of heaven. ”

“ It is packed full of things people ought to know. Not only is there a full and well-written account of the finding of the true source of the Mississippi, but a wonderful amount of fact and incident picked up along its shores from its headwaters clear down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ Many Americans have made long trips to see the beauties of the Rhine and the Danube; the far grander beauty of the Mississippi is to our own people still an unexplored country. There are awaiting those who would go and see a thousand Inspiration Points on the upper Mississippi and ten thousand miles of semi-tropical wilderness, cane-brake, forest, lakes, and bayous on the lower river and its southern tributaries. Most Americans know the Mississippi only as a crooked black line on the map. ”

“ What right have we to tell any people, 'You shall not cross the Mississippi River on any pretext whatever'? When the Sauk and Fox Indians wish to cross the Mississippi, to visit their relations among the Pottowattamies of Fox River, Illinois, they are prevented by us, because we have the power! ”

“ As to the unbounded region west of the Mississippi, it is, with the exception of a very few settlements of Spaniards and Frenchmen bordering on the banks of the river, a wilderness through which wander numerous tribes of Indians. And when we consider the present extent of the United States, and that not one-sixteenth part of its territory is yet under occupation, the advantage of the acquisition, as it relates to actual settlement, appears too distant and remote to strike the mind of a sober politician with much force. ”

“ Wood-pulp and cheap editions have opened the flood-gates of genius upon the world; and the days of our noble forests are numbered; for one tree is sawn into shelves to hold another ground into paper. And already, through the denudation of the land, the Mississippi grows uncontrollable, taxing even the wisdom of Congress. ”

“ I know not what most men see in voyaging down the Mississippi. If gay and hopeful, probably much of beauty and interest. If eager merchants, probably a golden river, freighted with the wealth of nations. I saw nothing but portents of woe and despair. Wretched slave-pens ”

“ One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. ”

“ Since the population of Mississippi before the Civil War was almost identical in composition with the population of the other Mississippi Valley slave States, most of which owed their inhabitants originally to Virginia and subsequently to the States which Virginia had colonized, it was not surprising that these people found it easy to move from one part of this region to another. Of nearly 800,000 population at the outbreak of the Civil War, the foreign-born, still mainly Irish, constituted only one in a hundred. ”

“ The population of Mississippi at that time was of a very mixed sort, being made up of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Indians, negroes, half-breeds of all grades of parentage, renegade Americans and British, and at the same time [500] a ruling class of exceptional uprightness and intelligence. The fact that the better element was outnumbered by the heterogeneous class beneath them, fully justified the governor’s apprehension of lawless outbreaks, which he sought to forestall by urging the organization and arming of a strong militia force. ”

“ In this view, how noble an object is the Mississippi!
In extent, fertility, variety of scenery, and diversity of climate, its valley surpasses any other in the world. It is the great aorta of the continent, and receives a score of tributary rivers, the least of which is larger than the vaunted streams of mighty empires. It might furnish natural boundaries to all Europe, and yet leave, for every country, a river greater than the Seine. ”

“ People were too scattered down the Mississippi to think of congregations. All days were Sunday, and for him there could be no day of rest. If he could not do big work, at least he could meet men and women, and he could get to know little children, to understand their needs. He knew it was a good thought, and when he looked across the Mississippi, he saw night coming on, but between him and the dark was sunset. ”

“ As if not content with the mischief, the Mississippi sometimes takes a fancy to make a cut off; instead of following the curve or bend which it has made into the country for perhaps twenty miles, it dashes with fury against the earth in front until it cuts its way through and reaches its former channel, tearing away with it houses, lands, and whatever had stood in its path. ”

“ Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi, and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant room for a population of a hundred million. ”

“ The Mississippi was high and raging. All the low-lying country for half a hundred miles was flooded till it looked like a vast sea, with forests of trees standing in its midst. Here and there, too, a plantation, higher than the surrounding country, was noticeable. The first pass into Moon Lake was but a mile long. But through that pass swirled and roared the waters of the Mississippi, so suddenly let loose by the break in the levee.
At just four in the evening our little steamer got the order to turn out of the river and into the rushing waters of the pass. ”

“ To-day the timber of the hickories from its bottoms are the spokes of automobiles, and the handles of golf-clubs are sought among the dark corners of its brakes. Millions eat its fish, and the sheen of pearls from its tributaries delights countless women. There is scarcely a garment in the country that might not be improved by a button from a Mississippi clam-shell.
Whatever men may do to the Mississippi, the Father of Waters does not neglect their interests, nor does he fail to rebuke their impertinences and to stimulate their imagination. ”

“ For weal or for woe, for prosperity or adversity, for the preservation of the great blessings which we enjoy, or the trial of a new and separate condition, I trust Mississippi never will surrender the smallest atom of the sovereignty, independence, and equality, to which she was born, to avoid any danger or any sacrifice to which she may hereby be exposed. ”

“ Your eye saw what John Gravier did not. You read the page written by the hand of God, legibly enough—the Mississippi with all its tributaries, rolling through lands of an unequalled fertility, and of every variety of clime, and you had faith. ”

“ At this rate the White must surely overtake and pass the Black, and another half century will almost certainly see the white numbers greatly preponderant.
The case of Mississippi is especially interesting as showing the prospect of the Blacks at its brightest and of the Whites at its darkest. This state has no large city, but few towns of moderate size, and no manufactures. It is almost exclusively agricultural. Here, then, the conditions that make for the Whites are at their worst; those that make for the Blacks are at their best. ”

“ Thus, then, living in undisturbed repose, and in the innocent enjoyment of the bounties of nature, there came in an evil hour to their peaceful shores, a party of French emigrants, who, about the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century, navigated the Mississippi in quest of wealth and territory. ”

“ Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity. ”

“ Meanwhile, the adventurous French were spurred on by the discovery of the upper Mississippi. Radisson called the Mississippi, in conjunction with the Missouri, the Forked River “because [Pg 190] it has two branches, the one towards the west, the other towards the south, which we believe runs toward Mexico.” Jesuit priests, probing the hinterland, wrote that the savages assured them the Mississippi was “so noble a river that, at more than three hundred leagues’ distance from its mouth, it is larger than the one flowing before Quebec; for they declare it is more than a league wide.... ”