Note 1 — Group II. BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA.

New Madrid. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Baron Steuben and other officers of rank obtained from the Spanish authorities of Louisiana a grant of land on which they proposed founding a military colony. Under this authority New Madrid was laid out on a great scale in 1790, by Colonel George Morgan of New Jersey. The Spanish governor Miro, however, disconcerted these plans by building a fort there. The place was nearly destroyed by the earthquakes of 1811-12. Cape Girardeau and St. Genevieve were ports of shipment for the lead-mines of the interior. The latter is called the oldest settlement in Missouri (1755). St. Charles, twenty miles up the Missouri, had been settled by Blanchette, 1769.