within 3 or 4 miles of Richmond, when he unable to get a reply to his question, was attacked and driven back, with a loss "Where are the 75,000 men yet missing?" of nine guns and 400 of his men made pris- It was found that 34,000 men, or more oners. The Confederates were in turn as- than three-fifths of the army reported on sailed by the 10th National Army Corps, the 3d, were absent on furloughs. The and, after a severe battle, were driven general soon afterwards reported 88.665 back, with a loss of 700 men and three " present and fit for duty;" absent by brigade commanders. to be 158,314, of whom 101,691 were present and fit for duty. This great army remained there idle some weeks, suffering greatly from sickness, when it was called to the vicinity of Washington. authority, 34,472; absent without auHarrison's Landing, an important thority, 3,778; sick, 16,619; making a point about 5 miles below the mouth of total of 143,534. A week later the adthe Appomattox River, on the right bank jutant-general's office reported the total of the James. The landing was one of of the Army of the Potomac, exclusive of the best on the James, and was made the General Wool's command at Fort Monroe, chief depot of supplies of the Army of the Potomac while it lay there in the summer of 1862, and where it suffered great mortality from malarial fevers. There the commander-in-chief called for reinforcements, reporting, on July 3, that Harrisse, HENRY, historian: born in he had "not over 50,000 men with their Paris in 1830; naturalized citizen of the colors." The President, astounded, went United States; practised law in New to Harrison's Landing, and found the York for some years. He has publisharmy greatly disheartened. IIe found the ed Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima; army 40,000 stronger than the com- Christophe Colomb; Jean et Sebastien mander had erroneously reported, but was Cabot, etc. Hart, ALBERT BUSHNELL, historian; through the delta at the extreme southern born in Clarksville, Pa., July 1, 1854; point. If we perambulate the border of graduated at Harvard College in 1880; appointed Professor of History there. His publications include Formation of the Union; Epoch Maps; Introduction to the Study of Federal Government; Life of Salmon P. Chase; Practical Essays on American Government; American History, told by Contemporaries, etc. Professor Hart has written the following essay on the history and the outlook of this section: this shell, the edges will be seen to fit into and sometimes to dominate the East, North, West, and Southwest of the United States. Starting at the salt inlets north of New Orleans, the rim of the basin runs through a low region till it strikes the southernmost extension of the Appalachian range, in northern Alabama; thence for The Future of the Mississippi Valley, many hundred miles, as far as western --The great size of the Mississippi New York, it follows the chain of the Valley, its wonderful fertility, its nat- mountains-“ Backbone Ridge," as it used ural resources, its phenomenal growth to be called-and on its way it passes in manufactures and commerce, its some of the hardest-fought battle-fields rapidly increasing population, and its of the Civil War-Pittsburg Landing and promise for the future, suggest the Chattanooga to the west of it, Stanton part which the States included in the and Winchester a little to the east. In Mississippi Valley may play in this coun- places the edge of the shell is raised 6,500 try's history. feet above the sea; but when the boundary has once headed and confined the Alleghany River-at Lake Chautauqua-it sweeps westward and northward around the Great Lakes, which it all but drains, and which the new Chicago Canal actually does drain. West of Lake Superior, which it closely skirts, the line bends to the southward to give room for the Red River of the North, and beyond it rises steadily northwestward up the long slopes to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. These it follows-sometimes 14,000 feet above the sea-till the line runs into the upper Red River country; thence it descends to the coast, and reaches the Gulf again within 120 miles of the mouth of the Mississippi. The figure thus circumscribed bears a whimsical resemblance to an enormous spread eagle—its claws dug into the delta of the great river, its eastern wing somewhat withdrawn from the Atlantic coast, its western wing swung over far into British territory, and flapping lustily towards the Pacific Ocean. "There can be no doubt that the French settlers in the Mississippi Valley will (without timely precaution) greatly effect both the trade and safety of these his Majesty's plantations." This warning, uttered by Governor Spotswood, of Virginia, in 1718, is perhaps the earliest statement of the intimate relation between coast and interior, and of the importance of the Mississippi Valley to Anglo-Saxon civilization; and after 180 years the "trade and safety" of the United States are still powerfully "effected." As a land, as a long-contested region, and as the scene of a great immigration, the Mississippi Valley yields to no region in the world in interest, in romance, and in promise for the future. Here, if anywhere, is the real Americathe field, the theatre, and the basis of the future civilization of the Western World. The history of the Mississippi Valley is the history of the United States; its future is the future of one of the most powerful of modern nations. The word "valley" somehow suggests a narrow defile like the Hudson gorge or the cañon of the Colorado, but the conception of the Mississippi Valley is very different; as may be seen on the map, it is a vast shallow shell tilted up to the westward, and pouring out its waters From the rim of this vast hollow start streams which speedily join into the immense river system which finally converges into the Mississippi River. From the farthest source of the farthest tributary of the upper Missouri in the Canadian Rockies, following down the channel to the Gulf, the river is 4.200 miles long; and upon about 5,000 miles of waterway within the valley steamboats may navigate. The Amazon and its giant tributaries surpass it in length of navigable tributaries, and in the area of their watershed, but ages nent, we may share the stimulus and the must pass before the tropical Amazon is made the seat of thronging millions; the Congo is broken by rapids, and drains a poisonous land; the Yang-tse-Kiang, mostly comparable to the Mississippi, is an eastern flowing river, while the Mississippi is the great south-flowing stream of the world, and its valley is politically and commercially the most important; its area of 1,240,000 square miles is two-fifths of the whole continental area of the United States, and more than two-thirds of its arable surface. The Mississippi is not only a great river; it waters a temperate area of rich land, spread so freely that from end to end there is no serious obstacle to traffic; and the valley is the home of a vigorous and advancing civilization. Even in our day, when explorers disappear in African forests and years after emerge upon the other side of the conti .excitement of the first discoverers of the great river. De Soto found it in 1542, "near half a league broad and 16 fathoms deep, and very furious, and ran with a great current." Marquette in 1673 rejoiced to behold the celebrated river, "whose singularities," he says, "I have attentively studied." La Salle in 1682 came to a reach where "the water is brackish; after advancing on we discovered an open sea, so that on April 9, with all due solemnity, we performed the ceremony of planting the cross and raising the arms of France." La Salle did not think he was preparing an empire for his country's greatest rival, to be occupied by the children of the Englishman. Throughout colonial history romance and adventure still hung about the great river and its tributaries. In 1699 came the first French settlers on the coast, and a few years later they founded a city known farthest wall of the Rocky Mountains, throughout the world, and named after passed Lewis and Clark, first of white men their own beloved town of Orleans. to find the road from the waters of the Mississippi to the waters of the Columbia. On Aug. 12, 1805, they reached the point where one of the party bestrode the Missouri River, up which they had labored so many months, and just beyond was the long-sought western rim of the valley. Fifty years later a wave of English settlement came rolling up above the crest of the Alleghanies, and began to flow into the country of the "Belle Rivière," the Ohio River, still beautiful where factories, mines, and coal-dust permit. Pioneer, surveyor, commander, and popu- From the year 1715, when France and lar leader, came the young George Wash- England went mad over a Mississippi ington across the water-shed into the Mis- bubble, down to the present time, the sissippi Valley, the first English officer to Mississippi has been a household word be captured by the enemy in 1754, the last throughout the civilized world. Ships to leave the field after Braddock's defeat in of Marseilles, ships of Bordeaux, ships of 1755; and the brave and canny Virginian Bremen, ships of Liverpool, set their course so much admired what he saw of the coun- for the mouth of the Mississippi, that try that he acquired 40,000 acres upon the they may bring eager immigrants into Little Kanawha and the Ohio. "What the promised land; and the stolid peasant inducement have men to explore unin- in Bohemia or Hungary lays down his habited wilds," said he, "but the prospect guldens for a slip of pasteboard upon of getting good land?" Into the valley which are printed the talismanic words penetrated also Daniel Boone in 1769. "New York-St. Louis-Kansas City of the sun into which they fall. Moun- in 1890 were born even of American par tains have been no barrier, and a civil war could not tear apart the northern and the southern halves of the great valley. When in 1790 Congress was discussing the question of a permanent seat of government, Mr. Vining, of Delaware, favored the lower Potomac: From thence, it appears to me, the rays of government will most naturally diverge to the extremities of the Union. I declare that I look on the Western territory in an awful and striking point of view. To that region the unpolished sons of earth are flowing from all quartersmen to whom the protection of the laws and the controlling force of the government are equally necessary. From this great consideration I conclude that the banks of the Potomac are the proper station." Mr. Vining was justified in looking upon the colonization of the West with uneasiness; for few parts of the earth have so heterogeneous a population; when he spoke, there were already within those territories the then numerous, fierce, and warlike Indians, numerous settlements of French people in the Illinois country and in the Mississippi, and Spanish garrisons and colonists on the lower Mississippi; men of English race had already brought Kentucky and Tennessee almost to the point of statehood; and negro slaves were to be found in most of the settlements, by their presence slowly preparing for the great catastrophe of the Civil War. ents. The foreign passer-by in the streets of Cincinnati, or St. Louis, or Kansas City, may well say with the Jews of old time: "And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues." These inflowing streams of immigration have combined with the rapid rate of natural increase to raise the population more rapidly than in any similar area in the world. In 1810 the dwellers in the Mississippi Valley numbered about 1,000,000, in 1850 they were 8,000,000, in 1890 about 28,000,000; to-day they are probably 35,000,000. Cincinnati was in 1830 already a flourishing town with some pretence to refined civilization; and fifty years ago the railway from the East had almost reached Chicago. Now half the population of the Union lives in the Mississippi basin, and of this half about one-fourth lives in cities. The population has not only been distributed, it has been redistributed. From the earliest settlement to the present day there is to be found a race of men the birthplaces of whose children mark their temporary resting-places as they moved from State to State. Thus flowing back and forth, northward and southward, westward and eastward, pass the units of population, exchanging experiences, knocking off prejudices, and coming to a common understanding and a sympathy of man with man, which may ignore State boundaries, but kneads the people into a homogeneous nation. In 1787 began the never-ceasing current of immigrants into the Mississippi Valley from the Eastern States; through the Mohawk Valley to the Western Reserve; through southern Pennsylvania to the Ohio; through Virginia to Kentucky and Tennessee-a steady procession of stalwart men and stout-hearted women; The word "wealth" seems to carry with and still the same procession is in motion. it a rattling of silver dollars and the About 1830 began the great western move- crisp crackle of fresh coupon bonds; or, ment of foreign immigrants, which has at least, it suggests the dark façades of grown till in 1890 there were 280,000 Ger- towering buildings, and train-loads and mans in Wisconsin, 150,000 Irish in Illi- steamer-cargoes of valuable goods. All nois, 220,000 Scandinavians in Minnesota, these the Mississippi Valley has in plenty, 140,000 English-born in Michigan, and and it had them all potentially before ever more than 400,000 Slavs in the Northwest- a bank opened its doors in the West or ern States together. In the State of a locomotive whistle shrieked; for the acMinnesota only one-fourth of the people cumulations have all come from the face |