The cotton-gin struck, in 1793, springs all over the slave States, whose multiplying flows so gathered head in 1821 as to require damming back. The Missouri dike was erected. The pent waters, however, were found so profitable for foreign mill-owners, for over-shot feeders to Northern shelves, for commercial pockets, and political ballot-boxes, as well as such wealth-distributing streams over the growing breadths and easy luxuries of their Southern owners, that expedients were devised to swell their volume, area, and back-water power. The dike, cut in 1854, let out the accumulated deluge into new sluice-ways, which promised to some increased profits, but which produced great ravages in many ways, and at last set towards maelstroms, down whose gurgling throats were sucked, not only the passive and floating citizen, and the compromising, timid politician, but much of the life and wealth of the nation at large. Over the angry ridges, rapidly rising on the 4th of March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln, uneasy at the white caps crisping the dark swells, and himself in disguise, landed at the national wharf in Washington. Without disguise, however, he at once, in a distinct, calm voice, announced the principles upon which he proposed to meet the menacing flood, namely, not to interfere with its black tides in States where they were legally channelled, nor to create any new courses in Territories in which they had not surged, and steadily to enforce, in spite of all obstructions, the existing rules, regulations, and laws both North and South. [Illustration: COTTON SUPREME. (p. 483) ] This announcement struck the knob of the national shield, and its metallic notes quivered through the air. The three commissioners, despatched from the somehow gathered Confederate assemblage at Montgomery, heard the vibrations the morning of their arrival, March 5th, but failed to shout loud enough to be heard themselves, and returned speedily with their cross-barred message.