Water
transportation cost much less. Such produce as corn-meal, flour, pork, and
lumber had to go on rafts or flatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers to New Orleans. Here the cargo and the boat were sold, or the cargo
sold and loaded on ocean vessels, which in time reached the eastern market
by a cheaper though longer route than that by land. Thus the Mississippi
River, being the only outlet for this heavy produce, was very necessary to
the prosperity of the west.
But Spain at this time owned New Orleans and all the land about the mouth
of the Mississippi River; and as the river became more and more used for
traffic Spanish officers at New Orleans began to make trouble. They even
went so far as to threaten to prevent the sending of produce to that port.
This threat greatly troubled and angered the western farmers. They
proposed wild plans to force an outlet for their trade. But before
anything was done, news came that Napoleon, who was then at the head of
affairs in France, had compelled Spain to give up Louisiana to France.
Then the westerners grew still more alarmed about their trade. It was bad
enough to have a weak country like Spain in control of Louisiana.
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