of the whole community. No one can—no one dare—oppose it; whosoever falls under its displeasure, be he as innocent and as pure as man can be, his doom is sealed. But this power is only delegated by the will of the majority, for let any author in America oppose that will, and he is denounced. You must drink, you must write, not according to your own opinions, or your own thoughts, but as the majority will.17
Mr Tocqueville observes, “I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind, and freedom of discussion, as in America.”
Volume One—Chapter Eight
I have headed this chapter with the name of the river which flows between the principal States in which the society I am about to depict is to be found; but, at the same time, there are other southern States, such as Alabama and Georgia, which must be included. I shall attempt to draw the line as clearly as I can, for although the territory comprehended is enormous, the population is not one-third of that of the United States, and it would be a great injustice if the description of the society I am about to enter into should be supposed to refer to that of the States in general. It is indeed most peculiar, and arising frow circumstances which will induce me to refer back, that the causes may be explained to the reader. Never, perhaps, in the records of nations was there an instance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected from the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi. The stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which have been committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander on its bank, or trust yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those who are received into its waters ever rise again, or can support themselves long on its surface without assistance from some friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatable of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and, as you descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man. Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks, covered with trees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots, often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest (upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the racoon, the opossum or the squirrel, climb) as traps to the adventurous navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not time to steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom. There are no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewer of the western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a river of desolation; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.
The early history of the Mississippi is one of piracy and buccaneering; its mouths were frequented by these marauders, as in the bayous and creeks they found protection and concealment for themselves and their ill-gotten wealth. Even until after the war of 1814 these sea-robbers still to a certain extent flourished, and the name of Lafitte, the last of their leaders, is deservedly renowned for courage and for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the mouth of the river.
But as the hunting-grounds of Western Virginia, Kentucky, and the northern banks of the Ohio, were gradually wrested from the Shawnee Indians, the population became more dense, and the Mississippi itself became the means of communication and of barter with the more northern tribes. Then another race of men made their appearance, and flourished for half a century, varying indeed in employment, but in other respects little better than the buccaneers and pirates, in whose ranks they were probably first enlisted. These were the boatmen of the Mississippi, who with incredible fatigue forced their “keels” with poles against the current, working against the stream with the cargoes entrusted to their care by the merchants of New Orleans, labouring for many months before they arrive at their destination, and returning with the rapid current in as many days as it required weeks for them to ascend. This was a service of great danger and difficulty, requiring men of iron frame and undaunted resolution: they had to contend not only with the stream, but, when they ascended the Ohio, with the Indians, who, taking up the most favourable positions, either poured down the contents of their rifles into the boat as she passed; or, taking advantage of the dense fog, boarded them in their canoes, indiscriminate slaughter being the invariable result of the boatmen having allowed themselves to be surprised. In these men was to be found, as there often is in the most unprincipled, one redeeming quality (independent of courage and perseverance), which was, that they were, generally speaking, unscrupulously honest to their employers, although they made little ceremony of appropriating to their own use the property, or, if necessary, of taking the life any other parties. Wild, indeed, are the stories which are still remembered of the deeds of courage, and also of the fearful crimes committed by these men, on a river which never gives up its dead. I say still remembered, for in a new country they readily forget the past, and only look forward to the future, whereas in an old country the case is nearly the reverse—we love to recur to tradition, and luxuriate in the dim records of history.
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