We who have the advantage of the retrospect understand the Mississippi and its tributaries far better than did the statesmen of a hundred years ago. Indeed, it was then the belief of many of the ablest minds that we ought not to accept this Louisiana Purchase even as a gift. Josiah Adams, in discussing the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a state, said: “I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the states which compose it are free from their moral obligations; and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must.” This from Massachusetts, later to be the home of abolition and of centralization! It may sit ill with the sons of Massachusetts to reflect that their own state was the first one deliberately to propose secession. Still more advanced was the attitude of James White, who painted the following dismal picture of that West which was to be: “Louisiana must and will be settled if we hold it, and with the very population that would otherwise occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citizens will be removed to the immense distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union, where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general government; their affections will become alienated; they will gradually begin to view us as strangers; they will form other commercial connections, and our interests will become distinct. These, with other causes that human wisdom may not now foresee, will in time effect a separation, and I fear our bounds will be fixed nearer to our houses than the waters of the Mississippi. We have already territory enough, and when I contemplate the evils that may arise to these States from this intended incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see the territory sold for a hundred million of dollars and we retain the sovereignty. . . . And I do say that, under existing circumstances, even supposing that this extent of territory was a valuable acquisition, fifteen million dollars was a most enormous sum to give.” How feeble is our grasp upon the future may be seen from the last utterance. The sum of fifteen million dollars seemed “enormous.” To-day, less than a century from that time, one American citizen has in his lifetime made from the raw resources of this land a fortune held to be two hundred and sixty-six million dollars.