Louisiana and the Mississippi
New York Daily
News, December 25, 1860
Among the many fatal consequences of a disruption of the
United States, the freedom of navigation on the Mississippi River is beginning
to attract attention. If Louisiana goes out of the Union with other Southern
States, she will probably make the “Father of Waters” as exclusively
advantageous to herself as possible; and it is supposed that a combination
of influences prejudicial to Northern interests would cause New Orleans to
partake largely of benefits which are now pretty equally divided between that
city and New York. At present, notwithstanding the great canal and railroad
works constructed, a large portion of Northwestern produce and almost all
the cotton grown South finds an outlet to the ocean in the Mississippi. While
the country holds together of course the prosperity which this fact guarantees
to Louisiana is profitable to the common Union, which has alike at heart the
interests of all its parts; but in case of secession the division of advantages
would be, in this connection, all on the side of the South. The Cotton growers,
who are now somewhat liberal, would do all their transporting business through
the medium of the Mississippi; and the course the products of the Northwest
would take, might be inconvenient to us. Such are the views of several Republican
journals, who laugh at real evils, while argumentatively combating this imaginary
one. An enthusiastic advocate of allowing the secessionists to do as they
please, inconsistently occupies the position that Louisiana, on account of
the Mississippi trade, should be an exception to the rule, which practically
illustrates what we have stated repeatedly, that Republican “principle”
often means pecuniary aggrandizement!
The “principle” which is applied to States
that have no great rivers to enrich a Government, cannot be permitted to apply
to one that has. Another Republican authority, as an offset to the deleterious
effects of a secession of the Mississippi, gets up a long editorial to prove
that the railroads and canals are daily making us independent of the Mississippi,
and that the big river is not at all the indispensable accumulation of fresh
water and navigatory peculiarities which it has been represented.
These arguments may be very good in their way, but they
are all based on a false foundation. Secession, or no secession, Louisiana,
either separately or in concert with other States, would not consent that
any quarter of the country should be deprived of privileges; for the use of
which, in a thousand ways, the patronage of good customers would amply compensate
her. The more trade, commerce and business everywhere, the more money, prosperity
and comfort. The “French province of the Republic” knows this
well, and will do nothing that would result in injury to herself.
“If Louisiana were silly enough to take advantage
of her position, to stop the free transit of the products of the Northwest,
under whatever Government she or they may be, it would be exactly what New
York and Philadelphia, and Boston want. It would be doing their work for them
at our own cost; and nobody knows this better than the political parties of
that region, who are pretending to be alarmed for such a result, and threaten
to come down and prevent it by force. They could not do such a thing if they
would; they would not do so if they could. If that day of convulsion should
come, they would intrigue and pay that Louisiana should help them turn the
commerce of the West toward the East.” Thus writes a “Louisianian”
on the subject. His words are a fitting rebuke to the would be philosophers
of Gotham.
