Mexico Missouri message. (Mexico, Audrain County, Mo.) 1899-1918, 1917-01-11


| William Henry Harrison! Vincennes |
was 118 years old; the man thirty |
eight. There had never been anything |
commonplace in the existence of place |
or man. Each had already had a his |
tory whose telling must move the heart |
more than with q trumpet.
The face of the man was the face
Of the soldier-strong, resolute, proud,
indomitable. But 1t was likewise the
face of the man Of the people, the
man in whom they trusted for his
calm patience and his warm friendli-
ness. With what unfaltering devotion
had they come to rely on himI And
how the men and women of the wilder,
ness, seeing that tall and martial fig
ure pass, paused to mark that long,
grave face, the eyes deep-set under
bushy brows on either side the lengthy,
humorous nose, and smiled in love and
deep regard in answer to the slow
smile of the wide and kindly mouth.
What had he not done for them!
He was q warm admlrer of the
democratic Jefferson and he was an
aristocrat of the new territory. STEPPED
in the classic scholarship of the Old
Dominion, the son Of a signer of the
Declaration of Independence, at
eighteen he had chosen to leave be-
hind him the culture Of the older
states and to plunge into the rude but
generous wilderness. At twenty-eight
he was governor of the Indiana terri
tory. At thirty, master of an empire
of 150,000,000 acres, ruler over a prov
ince twice as large as England and
Ireland, larger, indeed, than all of
France.
Within the ten years following his
appointment as governor, the negotia-
tor, with absolute power, Of treaties
which added to the new nation fifty
millions of acres, domain large as
England and Scotland combined. At
thirty-one, holding in his hand fofsfive
months the destinies of q tract of
100000 square miles, an imperial
province greater than any other one
man ever controlled in the history of
the United States, before or since . {.
Opposed to him the great protago-
mist of the tragic drama of the savage,
Tecumseh. Ruler of five Indian tribes,
master mind Of the great Indian con-
federacy Of another score of tribes.
Chief Of 5000 warriors, ranging over
100000 miles of territory.
Harrison had policed the same terri
tory with exactly twenty backwoods-
men. Twenty men to guard an empire.
They threaded their ways through
the wilderness from st. Louis to De-
troit. They reported to him at Vim
cennes.
On this enormous stage the curtain
is about to be lifted on the titanic duel
of the West.
The group of men, lolling in the
shadows by the Jefferson house, began
to speak of the latest dispatches from
the East. News had just come that
the younger Wellesley had driven Mas
sena's French columns off the field of
Fuentes-d Onoro, adding to the lau-
rels gained at Talavera and Busaco.
Napoleon was beginning to wonder
at this Englishman. The Little Corpo-
raj himself was snarling at the Rus
sian bear; the White Gar was dis
obeying his commands to starve the
trade of England by closing the ports
of the Continent. England, driven to
desperation, was selling American sea-
men on the pretext that they were
Englishmen, and forcing them to serve
against the French; and still the gov.
eminent at Washington kept up its
endless attempts to stop these insults
by words, words, words.
The little group of Westerners I'M
der the stars of the wilderness fell
themselves hopelessly remote from the
world of leadership; their affairs
seemed petty and narrow. David Lar
renee alone, gazing silently over the
broad prairies, misty under the newly
risen moon, and remembering the
crowded cities of his native England
suddenly saw how great prize the
ample lands would be to her and saw
as in a vision Of what mighty stature
were these backwoodsmen who hell
the land for America.
The feeling of apprehension which
!. had been growing all summer seemed
to have reached an uncomfortable pitch
1t was inevitable that something shoul'
/ happen.
.e In the skies of early September
comet cleaned, miIasaIous portent
h But nothing happened.
" The men and women continued thel
at speculations as to Tecumseh's where
X, abouts and intentions. They invente
le new theories each hour and ever
Id other hour they turned old theorie
m over and over till they were thread
q. bare and people got tired Of hearin