They surveyed the magnificent region which they were subduing from the dominion of Nature;--the inexhaustible resources of its soil already yielding an abundance, which needed only a free avenue to the ocean to make them rich and prosperous;--and they felt that the mighty river which swept by them, with a volume of waters capable of sustaining the navies of the world, had been destined by Providence as a natural channel through which the productions of their imperial valley should be made to swell the commerce of the globe. But the Spaniard was seated at the outlet of this noble stream, sullenly refusing to them all access to the ocean. To him they must pay tribute. To enrich him, they must till those luxuriant lands, which gave, by an almost spontaneous production, the largest return which American labor had yet reaped under the industry of its own free hands. Their proud spirits, unaccustomed to restraint, and expanding in a liberty unknown in the older sections of the country, could not brook this vassalage. Into the comprehensive schemes of statesmen, who sought to unite them with the East by a great chain of internal improvements, and thus to blend the interests of the West with the commercial prosperity of the whole country, they were too impatient, and too intent upon the engrossing object of their own immediate advantage, to be able to enter. What, they exclaimed, could have induced the legislature of the United States, which had been applauded for their assertion and defence of the rights and privileges of the country, so soon to endeavor to subject a large part of their dominion to a slavery worse than that to which Great Britain had presumed to subject any part of hers? To give up to the Spaniards the greatest share of the fruits of their toils,--to surrender to them, on their own terms, the produce of that large, rich, and fertile country, and thus to enable them to command the benefits of every foreign market,--was an intolerable thought. What advantage, too, would it be to the Atlantic States, when Spain, from the amazing resources of the Mississippi, could undersell them in every part of the world? Did they think by this course of policy to prevent emigration from a barren country, loaded with taxes and impoverished by debts, to the most luxurious and fertile soil within the limits of the Union? The idea was vain and presumptuous. As well might the fishes of the sea be prevented from gathering on a bank that afforded them ample nourishment. The best and largest part of the United States was not thus to be left uncultivated; a home for savages and wild beasts. Providence had destined it for nobler purposes. It was to be the abode of a great, prosperous, and cultivated people,--of Americans in feeling, in rights, in spirit, incapable of becoming the bondmen of Spain, while the rest of their country remained free. Their own strength could achieve for them what the national power refused or was unable to obtain. Twenty