he West. "We must aid them. The free navigation of the Mississippi is the gift of nature to the United States."
The very next day Madison announced in the Virginia Assembly, "I shall move the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention." The stability of the Union seemed pivoted upon an open river to the Gulf.
Veterans of the Revolution and of the Continental Congress met to frame a constitution in 1787. After weeks of deliberation with closed doors, the immortal Congress adjourned. The Constitution was second only to the Declaration of Independence. Without kings or princes a free people had erected a Continental Republic.
The Constitution was adopted, and all the way into Kentucky wilds were heard the roaring of cannon and ringing of bells that proclaimed the Father of his Country the first President of the United States.
"We must cement the East and the West," said Washington. But that West was drifting away—with its Mississippi.
About this time young Daniel Boone said, "Father, I am going west."
Just eighteen, one year older than William Clark, in the summer of 1787, he concluded to strike out for the Mississippi.
"Well, Dannie boy, thee take the compass," said his father.
It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of the Ohio thirteen years before.
Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back, Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed for an hour before any one heard him.
"Dat some person on de oder shore," presently said old René Kiercereaux, the chorister at the village church.
A canoe was sent over and brought back Boone. As if a man had dropped from the moon, French, Spanish, and Indian traders gathered. He spoke not a
