of frontiersmen led by George Rogers Clark for her attempted
conquest of Louisiana in 1793. England tried to win support among the
western settlers. Indeed, when we recall that George Rogers Clark
accepted a commission as Major General from France in 1793 and again in
1798; that Wilkinson, afterwards commander-in-chief of the American
army, secretly asked Spanish citizenship and promised renunciation of
his American allegiance; that Governor Sevier of Franklin, afterwards
Senator from Tennessee and its first Governor as a State, Robertson the
founder of Cumberland, and Blount, Governor of the Southwest Territory
and afterwards Senator from Tennessee, were all willing to accept the
rule of another nation sooner than see the navigation of the Mississippi
yielded by the American government we can easily believe that it lay
within the realm of possibility that another allegiance might have been
accepted by the frontiersmen themselves. We may well trust Rufus Putnam,
whose federalism and devotion to his country had been proved and whose
work in founding New England's settlement at Marietta is well known,
when he wrote in 1790 in answer to Fisher Ames's question whether the
Mississippi Valley could be retained in the Union: "Should Congress give
up her claim to the navigation of the Mississippi or cede it to the
Spaniards, I believe the people in the Western quarter would separate
themselves from the United States very soon. Such a measure, I have no
doubt, would excite so much rage and dissatisfaction that the people
would sooner put themselves under the despotic government of Spain than
remain the indented servants of Congress." He added that if Congress did
not afford due protection also to these western settlers they might turn
to England or Spain.[187:1]

Prior to the railroad the Mississippi Valley was potentially the basis
for an independent empire, in spite of the fact that its population
would inevitably be drawn from the Eastern States. Its natural outlet
was down the current to the Gulf. New Orleans controlled the Valley, in
the words of Wilkinson, "as the key the lock, or the citadel the
outworks." So long as the Mississippi Valley was menaced, or in part
controlled, by rival European states, just so long must the United
States be a part of the state system of Europe, involved in its
fortunes. And particularly was this the case in view of the fact that
until the Union made internal commerce, based upon the Mississi