and convinced that they were entitled to prompt assistance.  The inhabitants of our territory bounding on the east side of the Mississippi, in a memorial addressed to the President, Senate, and House of Representatives, after reciting their discouraging conditions and expressing their faith in the Government’s disposition to extend the necessary aid, closed their memorial with these significant words:  “And so far as may depend on ourselves, we tender to our country our lives and fortunes in support of such measures as Congress may deem necessary to vindicate the honor and protect the interests of the United States.”

The settlers in the States “west of the Allegheny Mountains” also, in a memorial to the Government, clearly indicated their impatience and readiness for extreme action, declared that prompt and decisive measures were necessary, and referred to the maxim that protection and allegiance are reciprocal as being particularly applicable to their situation.  They concluded their statement with these solemn words:  “Without interfering in the measures that have been adopted to bring about the amicable arrangement of a difference which has grown out of the gratuitous violation of a solemn treaty, they desire that the United States may explicitly understand that their condition is critical; that the delay of a single season would be ruinous to their country, and that an imperious necessity may consequently oblige them, if they receive no aid, to adopt themselves the measures that may appear to them calculated to protect their commerce, even though those measures should produce consequences unfavorable to the harmony of the Confederacy.”

These representations emphasized the apprehension of those charged with governmental affairs that the course of deliberate caution and waiting, which up to that time had appeared to be the only one permissible, might be insufficient to meet the situation, and that whatever the result might be, a more pronounced position and more urgent action should be entered upon.  President Jefferson wrote to a friend on the 1st of February, 1803:  “Our circumstances are so imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course, and the use of the Mississippi so indispensible that we can not hesitate one moment to hazard our existence for its maintenance.”  He appointed an additional envoy to cooperate with our representative already at the French capital in an attempt to obtain a concession that would cure the difficulty, and, in a communication to him, after referring to the excitement caused by the withdrawal of the right of deposit, he thus characterizes the condition which he believed confronted the nation:  “On the event of this mission depend the future destinies of this Republic.  If we can not by a purchase of the country insure to ourselves a course of perpetual peace and friendship of all nations, then, as war can not be far distant, it behooves us immediately to be preparing for that course, though