_Washington's Prescience of the Increased Value of Land in the
West.--Diary of his Tour in the Basin of the Ohio.--His Plans
for the Commercial Development of the West.--His Character as
manifested in his Letters, Diaries, and Memoranda.--His Military
Advancement by the Influence of Lord Fairfax.--He serves at Fort
Necessity, "The Bloody Ford," and Fort Duquesne.--Marriage and
Settlement at Mount Vernon.--His Device for taking up more Land
than the Law allowed to one Man.--Washington not connected with
any of the great Land Companies.--His Efforts to secure for his
Soldiers the Bounty-land promised them.--His sixth Journey to
view his own Purchases.--The Amount of his Landed Property.--His
Leniency toward Poor Tenants.--The Intensity of his Business
Energy.--The Present Value of his Lands.--His Dissatisfaction
with the Results of his Land Speculations.--His Plan of American
Internal Improvements.--The Treaty that secured to Virginia the
Territory South of the Ohio.--Washington's Personal Inspection
of the Basins of the Ohio and Potomac.--He becomes President of
the Potomac Company.--A Waterway secured from the Ohio to the
Potomac.--The National Road from Cumberland, Md., to Wheeling on
the Ohio._
WASHINGTON: THE PROMOTER OF WESTERN INVESTMENTS
[Illustration]
WHAT story of personal endeavor that had a part in building up a new
nation on this continent can appeal more strongly to us of the Middle
West than that of George Washington's shrewd faith which led him first
to invest heavily in Western lands and signally champion that region as
a field for exploitation? Indeed the record of that man's prescience
in realizing what the West would become, how it would be quickly
populated, and how rapidly its acres would increase in value, is one of
the most remarkable single facts in his history.
It is only because Washington became well known to a continent and a
world as the leader of a people to freedom, that it has been easy to
forget what a great man he still would have been had there been no
Revolution and no Independence Day. How well known, for instance, is
it that Washington was surveying lands on the Great Kanawha and Ohio
rivers only four years before he received that remarkable ovation on
his way to take command of the Continental Army under the Cambridge
Elm? And how much attention has been given to Washington's tour into
the Ohio Basin the very next year after the Revolutionary War to
attempt to mark out a commercial route between the Virginia tide-water
rivers and the Great Lakes by way of the Ohio and its tributaries?
Yet the diary of that trip is not only the longest single literary
production we have in our first President's handwriting, but on
examination it is found to be almost a State paper, pointing out with
wonderful sagacity the line of national expansion and hinting more
plainly than any other document, not excepting the famous Ordinance, of
the greatness of the Republic that was to be.
Washington was possibly the richest man in America, and half his wealth
lay west of the Alleghanies; it has not seemed to be easy to remember
that this statesman had a better knowledge of the West than any man of
equal position and that he spent a large portion of his ripest years in
planning minutely for the commercial development of a territory then
far less known to the common people of the country than Alaska is to us
of to-day.
To few men's private affairs has a nation had more open access than we
have had to George Washington's. His journals, diaries, letters, and
memoranda have been published broadcast, and the curious may learn, if
they choose, the number of kerchiefs the young surveyor sent to his
washerwoman long before his name was known outside his own county, or
what the butter bill was for a given month at the Executive Mansion
during the administration of our first President. Many men noted for
their strength of personality and their patriotism have suffered some
loss of character when their private affairs have been subjected to a
rigid examination. Not so with Washington. It is a current legend in
the neighborhood where he resided that he was exceedingly close-handed.
This is not borne out in a study of his land speculations. Here is
one of the interesting phases of the story of his business life, his
generosity and his thoughtfulness for the poor who crowded upon his
far-away choice lands. Beyond this the study is of importance because
it touches the most romantic phase of Western history, the mad struggle
of those who participated in that great burst of immigration across the
Alleghanies just before and just after the Revolutionary War.
The hand of Providence cannot be more clearly seen in any human life
than in Washington's when he was turned from the sea and sent into
the Alleghanies to survey on the south branch of the Potomac for
Lord Fairfax, in 1748; it seemed unimportant, perhaps, at the moment
whether the youth should follow his brother under Admiral Vernon or
plunge into the forests along the Potomac. But had his mother's wish
not been obeyed our West would have lost a champion among a thousand.
As it was, Washington, in the last two years of the first half of the
eighteenth century, began to study the forests, the mountains, and the
rivers in the rear of the colonies. The mighty silences thrilled the
young heart, the vastness of the stretching wilderness made him sober
and thoughtful. He came in touch with great problems at an early and
impressionable age, and they became at once life-problems with him.
The perils and hardships of frontier life, the perplexing questions of
lines and boundaries, of tomahawk and squatter claims, the woodland
arts that are now more than lost, the ways and means of life and travel
in the borderland, the customs of the Indians and their conceptions
of right and wrong, all these and more were the problems this tall
boy was fortunately made to face as the first step toward a life of
unparalleled activity and sacrifice.
The influence of Lord Fairfax, whom he served faithfully, now soon
brought about Washington's appointment as one of four adjutant-generals
of Virginia. In rapid order he pushed to the front. In 1753 his
governor sent him on the memorable journey to the French forts near
Lake Erie, and in the following year he led the Virginia regiment and
fought and lost the Fort Necessity campaign. The next year he marched
with Braddock to the "Bloody Ford" of the Monongahela. For three years
after this terrible defeat Washington was busy defending the Virginia
frontier, and in 1758 he went to the final conquest of Fort Duquesne
with the dying but victorious Forbes.
Having married Martha Custis, the young colonel now settled down at
Mount Vernon, and his diary of 1760 shows how closely he applied
himself to the management of his splendid estate. But the forests in
and beyond the Alleghanies, which he had visited on five occasions
before he was twenty-six years of age, were closely identified with
his plans, and it is not surprising that as early as 1767 we find the
young man writing a hasty letter concerning Western investments to
William Crawford, a comrade-in-arms in the campaign of 1758, who lived
near the spot where Braddock's old road crossed the Youghiogheny River.
From this letter, written September 21, 1767, it is clear that
Washington had determined to make heavy investments. "My plan is to
secure a good deal of land," he wrote. He desired land in Pennsylvania
as near Pittsburg as possible; if the law did not allow one man to take
up several thousand acres, Crawford was requested to make more than
one entry, the total to aggregate the desired amount. As to quality,
Washington was to the point.
"It will be easy for you to conceive that ordinary or even
middling lands would never answer my purpose or expectation; ... a
tract to please me must be rich ... and, if possible, level."
As to location, he was not concerned:
"For my own part, I should have no objection to a grant of land
upon the Ohio, a good way below Pittsburg, but would first
willingly secure some valuable tracts nearer at hand."
Washington correctly estimated the purpose and effectiveness of the
King's proclamation of 1763. This proclamation, at the close of
Pontiac's rebellion, declared that no land should be settled beyond the
heads of the Atlantic waters. In the same letter he said:
"I can never look upon that proclamation in any other light (but I
say this between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet
the minds of the Indians.... Any person, therefore, who neglects
the present opportunity of hunting out good lands, and in some
measure marking and distinguishing them for his own, in order to
keep others from settling them, will never regain it."
Washington was first and foremost in the field and intended to make the
most of his opportunities. He wrote:
"If the scheme I am now proposing to you were known, it might
give alarm to others, and by putting them upon a plan of the
same nature, before we could lay a proper foundation for success
ourselves, set the different interests clashing, and, probably, in
the end overturn the whole. All this may be avoided by a silent
management, and the operation carried on by you under the guise of
hunting game."
Crawford accordingly took tracts for Washington near his own lands on
the Youghiogheny, costing "from a halfpenny to a penny an acre."
Note that at this early day (1767), almost all the land between
the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers--the country through
which Braddock's Road ran--was already taken up. A large tract on
Chartier's Creek was secured by Crawford for his friend. Within five
years Washington had come into the additional possession of the
historic tract of two hundred and thirty-seven acres known as Great
Meadows,--whereon he had fought his first battle and signed the first
and only capitulation of his life,--and the splendid river-lands
known to-day as "Washington's Bottoms," on the Ohio near Wheeling and
Parkersburg, West Virginia, and below.
It is a very interesting fact that Washington did not belong to any of
the great land companies which, one after another, sought to gain and
hold great tracts of land, except the Mississippi Company which did
not materialize. His brothers were members of the Ohio Company which
in 1749 secured a grant of two hundred thousand acres between the
Monongahela and Kanawha rivers. The company was never able to people
and hold its territory, and the proprietors each lost heavily. It is
a little strange that Washington had nothing to do with Walpole's
Grant, the Transylvania Company, or the later Ohio, Scioto, and Symmes
companies.
What might be considered an exception to this rule was the body of men
(among whom Washington was a generous, fearless leader) which sought
to secure for the Virginia soldiers of the Fort Necessity campaign
the bounty-land promised them by Governor Dinwiddie in 1754. Year
after year, for twenty years, Washington was continually besieged by
the soldiers he led West in 1754 or their relatives, who implored
his aid in securing the grant of land promised, and there is no more
interesting phase of his life during these years than his patient
persistence in compelling Virginia to make good her solemn pledge. To
impatient and impertinent men such as Colonel Mercer he wrote scathing
rebukes; to helpless widows and aged veterans he sent kind messages of
hope and cheer.
The trouble was that everybody was claiming the land beyond the
Alleghanies; the Ohio Company was fighting for its rights until the
London agent questionably formed a merger with the Walpole Grant
speculators. This company had claimed all the land between the
Monongahela and the Kanawha. Washington, accordingly, had attempted to
secure the two hundred thousand acres for his Fort Necessity comrades
on the western shore of the Kanawha. In 1770 he made his sixth western
journey in order to view his own purchases and make a beginning in
the business of securing the soldiers' lands. He left Mount Vernon
October 5 and reached William Crawford's, on the Youghiogheny, on the
thirteenth. On the sixteenth Washington visited his sixteen-hundred
acre tract near by and was pleased with it. On the third of November he
blazed four trees on the Ohio, near the mouth of the Great Kanawha. He
wrote:
"At the beginning of the bottom above the junction of the rivers,
and at the mouth of a branch on the east side, I marked two
maples, an elm, and hoop-wood tree, as a corner of the soldiers'
land (if we can get it), intending to take all the bottom from
hence to the rapids in the Great Bend into one survey. I also
marked at the mouth of another run lower down on the west side,
at the lower end of the long bottom, an ash and hoop-wood for the
beginning of another of the soldiers' surveys, to extend up so as
to include all the bottom in a body on the west side."
From this time on Crawford was busy surveying for Washington, either
privately or in behalf of the soldiers' lands, until the outbreak of
Dunmore's War in 1774. For these bounty-land surveys, Washington was
particularly attentive, writing Crawford frequently "in behalf of the
whole officers and soldiers, and beg of you to be attentive to it, as
I think our interest is deeply concerned in the event of your dispatch."
When Walpole's Grant was confirmed by King George, Washington greatly
feared the loss of the lands promised to himself and his comrades of
1754. His own share was five thousand acres, and he had purchased an
equal amount from others who, becoming hopeless, offered their claims
for sale. This grant was bounded on the west by the old war-path which
ran from the mouth of the Scioto River to Cumberland Gap. Accordingly,
in September, 1773, Washington wrote Crawford to go down the Ohio
below the Scioto. Washington did not know then that the purchasers of
Walpole's Grant had agreed to set apart two hundred thousand acres for
the heroes of 1754. It is significant that he was particular to avoid
all occasion for conflicting claims; he originally wanted the soldiers'
surveys to be made beyond the Ohio Company's Grant; later beyond the
Walpole Grant. And while war and other causes put a disastrous end
to the work of the promoters of all the various land companies with
which Washington had nothing to do, the soldiers' lands were saved
to them, and all received their shares. Washington also retained his
private lands surveyed by Crawford, and owned most of them in 1799,
when he died. In 1784, Washington had patents for thirty thousand acres
and surveys for ten thousand more. Briefly, his possessions may be
described as ten thousand acres on the south bank of the Ohio between
Wheeling and Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and twenty thousand acres
in the Great Kanawha Valley, beginning three miles above its mouth, "on
the right and left of the river, and bounded thereby forty-eight miles
and a half."
Washington's ethics and his enterprise with reference to his Western
speculations were both admirable, but we can only hint of them here.
He was strict with himself and with others, but he knew how to be
lenient when leniency would not harm the recipient. To his later agent,
Thomas Freeman (Crawford was captured and put to death by the Indians
in 1782), he wrote in 1785: "Where acts of Providence interfere to
disable a tenant, I would be lenient in the exaction of rent, but
when the cases are otherwise, I will not be put off; because it is
on these my own expenditures depend, and because an accumulation of
undischarged rents is a real injury to the tenant." While his agents
were ordered to use all legal precautions against allowing his lands
to be usurped by others, Washington was particular that needy people,
stopping temporarily, should not be driven off; and he was exceedingly
anxious from first to last that no lands should be taken up for him
that were anywise claimed by others. It is a fact that Washington had
few disputes in a day when disputes over lands and boundaries were as
common as sunrise and sunset. No landholder in the West had so little
trouble in proportion to the amount of land owned.
The intensity of Washington's business energy is not shown more plainly
than by his enterprise in finding and exploiting novelties. One day he
was studying the question of rotation of crops; the next found him
laboring all day with his blacksmith fashioning a newfangled plough.
The next day he spent, perhaps, in studying a plan of a new machine
invented in Europe to haul trees bodily out of the ground, an invention
which meant something to a man who owned thirty thousand acres of
primeval forest. He ordered his London agent to send on one of these
machines regardless of cost, if they were really able to do the feats
claimed. Again he was writing Tilghman at Philadelphia concerning the
possibility and advisability of importing palatines from Europe, with
which to settle his Western farms. Now he was examining veins of coal
along the Youghiogheny and experimenting with it, or studying the
location of salt-springs and the manufacture of salt, which in the
West was twice dearer than flour. A whole essay could be devoted to
Washington's interest in mineral springs at Saratoga, Rome, New York,
and in the West, and to his plan outlined to the president of the
Continental Congress to have the United States retain possession of all
lands lying immediately about them. We do not know who built the first
grist-mill west of the Alleghanies, but it is doubtful if there was
another save Washington's at Perryopolis, Fayette County, Pennsylvania,
before the Revolutionary War. "I assure you," wrote Crawford, "it is
the best mill I ever saw anywhere, although I think one of a less
value would have done as well." It is the boast of Ohioans that the
millstones for the first mill in the old Northwest were "packed" over
the mountains from Connecticut. Washington might have boasted, a
score of years earlier, that he had found his millstones right in the
Alleghanies, and they were "equal to English burr," according to his
millwright. The mill which is still in operation on Washington's Run
is on the original site of the one built by him in 1775. Portions of
the original structure remain in the present mill, and it is known far
and wide by the old name. The water-power, which is no longer relied
upon except during wet seasons, still follows the same mill-race used
in Revolutionary days, and the reconstructed dam is on the old site.
The improvements on Washington's plantation here, overseer's house,
slave quarters, etc., were situated near Plant No. 2 of the Washington
Coal and Coke Company. It is known that Washington became interested
in the coal outcropping here, but it is safe to say that he little
dreamed that the land he purchased with that lying contiguous to it
would within a century be valued at twenty million dollars. In view of
the enormous value of this territory, it is exceedingly interesting to
know that Washington was its first owner, and that he found coal there
nearly a century and a half ago.
In 1784 Washington issued a circular offering his Western lands to rent:
"These lands may be had on three tenures: First, until January,
1790, and no longer. Second, until January, 1795, renewable every
ten years for ever. Third, for nine hundred and ninety-nine years."
The conditions included clearing five new acres every year for each
hundred leased and the erection of buildings within the time of
lease. The staple commodity was to be medium of exchange. The seventh
condition is interesting:
"These conditions &c. being common to the leases of three
different tenures, the rent of the first, will be Four Pounds
per annum, for every hundred acres contained in the lease, and
proportionably for a greater or lesser quantity; of the second,
One Shilling for every acre contained in the lease until the year
1795, One Shilling and Sixpence for the like quantity afterwards
till the year 1815, and the like increase per acre for every ten
years, until the rent amounts to and shall have remained at Five
Shillings for the ten years next ensuing, after which it is to
increase Threepence per acre every ten years for ever; of the
Third, Two Shillings for every acre therein contained, at which it
will stand for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, the term for
which it is granted."
Five years before his death Washington resolved to dispose of his
Western lands. The investments had not been so profitable as he had
hoped. As early as June 16, 1794, he wrote Presley Neville:
"From the experience of many years, I have found distant
property in land more pregnant of perplexities than profit. I
have therefore resolved to sell all I hold on the Western
waters, if I can obtain the prices which I conceive their quality,
their situation, and other advantages would authorize me to
expect."
A circular advertising his Western lands was issued in Philadelphia,
dated February 1, 1796. It described 32,317 acres in Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and Kentucky for sale; the terms were one-fourth payment
down, and the remainder to be paid in five years with interest
"annually and punctually paid."
With this story of Washington's acquaintance with the West and his
speculations there in mind, it is now possible to take up, knowingly,
the great result to which they led--the first grand plan of American
internal improvements, of which Washington was the father.
As early as 1754, Washington, then just come of age, made a detailed
study of the Potomac River, and described in a memorandum all the
difficulties and obstructions to be overcome in rendering that river
navigable from tide-water to Fort Cumberland (Cumberland, Maryland).
At the time of Washington's entrance into the House of Burgesses in
1760, the matter of a way of communication between the colonies and
the territory then conquered from France beyond the Alleghanies was
perhaps uppermost in his mind, but various circumstances compelled
a postponement of all such plans, particularly the outrageous
proclamation of 1763, which was intended to repress the Western
movement.
By 1770 conditions were changed. In 1768 the Treaty of Fort Stanwix
had nominally secured to Virginia all the territory south of the Ohio
River, the very land from which the proclamation of 1763 excluded her.
On July 20 of this year, Washington wrote to Thomas Johnson, the first
State Governor of Maryland, suggesting that the project of opening the
Potomac River be "recommended to the public notice upon a more enlarged
plan [_i. e._, including a portage to the Ohio Basin] and as a means
of becoming the channel of conveyance of the extensive and valuable
trade of a rising empire." Johnson had written Washington concerning
the navigation of the Potomac; in this reply Washington prophesied
the failure of any plan to improve the Potomac that did not include a
plan to make it an avenue of communication between the East and the
West. He also prophesied that, if this were not done, Pennsylvania
or New York would improve the opportunity of getting into commercial
touch with that "rising empire" beyond the Alleghanies, "a tract of
country which," he wrote, "is unfolding to our view, the advantages
of which are too great, and too obvious, I should think, to become
the subject of serious debate, but which, through ill-timed parsimony
and supineness, may be wrested from us and conducted through other
channels, such as the Susquehanna."
These words of Washington's had a significance contained in no others
uttered in that day, hinting of a greater America of which few besides
this man were dreaming. They sounded through the years foretelling the
wonder of our time, the making of the empire of the Mississippi Basin.
Far back in his youth, this man had sounded the same note of alarm and
enthusiasm: "A pusillanimous behavior now will ill suit the times," he
cried to Governor Dinwiddie just after Braddock's defeat, when a red
tide of pillage and murder was setting over the mountains upon Virginia
and Pennsylvania. During the fifteen years now past Washington had
visited the West, and understood its promise and its needs, and now the
binding of the East and the West became at once his dearest dream.
Believing the time had come Washington, in 1774, brought before the
Virginia House of Burgesses a grand plan of communication which called
for the improvement of the Potomac and the building of a connection
from that river to one of the southwest tributaries of the Ohio. Only
the outbreak of the Revolution could have thwarted the measure; in
those opening hours of war it was forgotten, and it was not thought of
again until peace was declared seven years later.
We know something of Washington's life in those years--his ceaseless
application to details, his total abandonment of the life he had
learned to know and love on the Mount Vernon farms, the thousand
perplexities, cares, and trials which he met so patiently and nobly.
But in those days of stress and hardship the cherished plan of youth
and manhood could not be forgotten. Even before peace was declared,
Washington left his camp at Newburg, and at great personal risk made
a tour though the Mohawk Valley, examining the portages between the
Mohawk and Wood Creek, at Rome, New York, and between Lake Otsego
and the Mohawk at Canajoharie. These routes by the Susquehanna and
Mohawk to the Lakes were the rival routes of the James and Potomac
westward, and Washington was greatly interested in them. He was no
narrow partisan. Returning from this trip, he wrote the Chevalier de
Chastellux from Princeton, October 12, 1783:
"Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help taking a
more extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United
States and could not but be struck with the immense extent and
importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence
which has dealt its favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to
God we may have wisdom enough to improve them! I shall not rest
contented till I have explored the western country, and traversed
those lines, or great part of them, which have given bounds to a
new empire."
There is something splendid suggested by these words. Though he knew,
perhaps better than any man, the pitiful condition of the country,
there is here no note of despair, but rather a cry of enthusiasm. The
leader of the armies was now to become a leader of a people, and at
the outset his eye is uplifted and his faith great. With prophetic
genius his face, at the close of his exhausting struggle, is turned
toward the West. It is certain that Washington could not have known
what a tremendous influence the new West was to have in the perplexing
after hours of that critical period of our history. Perhaps he judged
better what it would be partly for the reason that its very existence
had furnished a moral support to him in times of darkness and despair;
he always remembered those valleys and open meadows where the battles
of his boyhood had been fought, and the tradition that he would have
led the Continental army thither in case of final defeat may not be
unfounded. Whether he knew aught of the wholesome part the West was
to play in our national development or not, two things are very clear
to-day: the West, and the opportunity to occupy it, were the "main
chance" of the spent colonies at the end of that war; and if Washington
had known all that we know at this day, he certainly could not have
done much more than he did to bring about the welding and cementing
of the East and the West, which now meant to each other more than
ever before. He again utters practically the old cry of his youth: "A
pusillanimous behavior now will ill suit the times." And the emphasis
is on the "now."
It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Washington, soon after
reaching Mount Vernon, at the close of the war, determined on another
western journey. The ostensible reason for the trip was to look after
his lands, but from the journal of the traveller it is easy to see
that the important result of the trip was a personal inspection of the
means of communication between the various branches of the Ohio and
the Potomac, which so nearly interlock in southwestern Pennsylvania
and northeastern West Virginia. It must be remembered that in that
day river navigation was considered the most practical form of
transportation. All the rivers of Virginia, great and small, were the
highways of the tobacco industry; the rivers of any colony were placed
high in an inventory of the colony's wealth, not only because they
implied fertility, but because they were the great avenues of trade.
The first important sign of commercial awakening in the interior of the
colonies was the improvement of the navigable rivers and the highways.
In less than thirty-three days Washington travelled nearly seven
hundred miles on horseback in what is now Pennsylvania and West
Virginia.[1] That he did not confine his explorations to the travelled
ways is evident from his itinerary through narrow, briery paths, and
his remaining for at least one night upon a Virginian hillside, where
he slept, as in earlier years, beside a camp-fire and covered only
by his cloak. His original intention was to go to the Great Kanawha,
where much of his most valuable land lay, and after transacting his
business, to return by way of the New River into Virginia. But it will
be remembered that after the Revolutionary War closed in the East, the
bloodiest of battles were yet to be fought in the West; and even in
1784, such was the condition of affairs on the frontier, it did not
seem safe for Washington to go down the Ohio. He turned, therefore,
to the rough lands at the head of the Monongahela, in the region of
Morgantown, West Virginia, and examined carefully all evidence that
could be secured touching the practicability of opening a great trunk
line of communication between East and West by way of the Potomac
and Monongahela rivers. The navigation of the headwaters of the two
streams was the subject of special inquiry, and then, in turn, the
most practicable route for a portage or a canal between them.
From any point of view this hard, dangerous tour of exploration must be
considered most significant. Washington had led his ragged armies to
victory, England had been fought completely to a standstill, and the
victor had returned safely to the peace and quiet of his Mount Vernon
farms amid the applause of two continents. And then, in a few weeks,
we find the same man with a single attendant beating his way through
the tangled trails in hilly West Virginia, inspecting for himself and
making diligent inquiry from all he met concerning the practicability
of the navigation of the upper Monongahela and the upper Potomac.
Russia can point to Peter's laboring in the Holland shipyards with no
more pride than that with which we can point to Washington pushing his
tired horse through the wilderness about Dunkard's Bottom on the Cheat
River in 1784. If through the knowledge and determination of Peter the
Russian Empire became strong, then as truly from the clear-visioned
inspiration of Washington came the first attempts to bind our East and
West into one--a union on which depended the very life of the American
Republic. Here and now we find this man firmly believing truths and
theories which became the adopted beliefs of a whole nation but a few
years later.
[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON]
Returning to Mount Vernon, Washington immediately penned one of the
most interesting and important letters written in America during his
day and generation,--"that classic, Washington's Letter to Benjamin
Harrison, 1784," as it is styled in the "Old South Leaflets." In this
letter he voices passionately his plea for binding a fragmentary
nation together by the ties of interstate communion and commerce. His
plan included the improvement of the Potomac and one of the heads of
the Monongahela, and building a solid portage highway between these
waterways. His chief argument was that Virginia ought to be the first
in the field to secure the trade of the West; with keener foresight
than any other man of his day, Washington saw that the trans-Alleghany
empire would be filled with people "faster than any other ever was,
or any one would imagine." Not one of all the prophecies uttered
during the infancy of our Republic was more marvellously fulfilled.
The various means by which this was accomplished changed more rapidly
than any one could have supposed, but every change brought to pass
more quickly that very marvel which he had foretold to a wondering
people only half awake to its greater duty. His final argument was
prophetically powerful: he had done what he could to lead his people to
freedom from proprietaries and lords of trade. How free now would they
be?
He wrote:
"No well informed Mind need be told, that the flanks and rear
of the United territory are possessed by other powers, and
formidable ones too--nor how necessary it is to apply the cement
of interest to bind all parts of it together, by one indissoluble
bond--particularly the middle states with the Country immediately
back of them--for what ties let me ask, should we have upon those
people; and how entirely unconnected sho{d} we be with them if the
Spaniards on their right or great Britain on their left, instead
of throwing stumbling blocks in their way as they now do, should
invite their trade and seek alliances with them?--What, when they
get strength, which will be sooner than is generally imagined
(from the emigration of Foreigners who can have no predeliction
for us, as well as from the removal of our own Citizens) may
be the consequence of their having formed such connections and
alliances, requires no uncommon foresight to predict.
"The Western Settlers--from my own observation--stand as it were on a
pivet--the touch of a feather would almost incline them any way--they
looked down the Mississippi until the Spaniards (very impolitically I
think for themselves) threw difficulties in the way, and for no other
reason that I can conceive than because they glided gently down the
stream, without considering perhaps the tedeousness of the voyage back,
& the time necessary to perform it in;--and because they have no other
means of coming to us but by a long land transportation & unimproved
Roads.
"A combination of circumstances make the present conjuncture more
favorable than any other to fix the trade of the Western Country to our
Markets.--The jealous & untoward disposition of the Spaniards on one
side, and the private views of some individuals coinciding with the
policy of the Court of G. Britain on the other, to retain the posts of
Oswego, Niagara, Detroit &c{a} (which tho' done under the letter of
the treaty is certainly an infraction of the Spirit of it, & injurious
to the Union) may be improved to the greatest advantage by this State
if she would open her arms, & embrace the means which are necessary to
establish it--The way is plain, & the expense, comparitively speaking
deserves not a thought, so great would be the prize--The Western
Inhabitants would do their part towards accomplishing it,--weak, as
they now are, they would, I am persuaded meet us half way rather
than be _driven_ into the arms of, or be in any wise dependent upon,
foreigners; the consequences of which would be, a separation, or a
War.--
"The way to avoid both, happily for us, is easy, and dictated by our
clearest interest.--It is to open a wide door, and make a smooth way
for the Produce of that Country to pass to our Markets before the trade
may get into another channel--this, in my judgment, would dry up the
other Sources; or if any part should flow down the Mississippi, from
the Falls of the Ohio, in Vessels which may be built--fitted for Sea--&
sold with their Cargoes, the proceeds I have no manner of doubt, will
return this way; & that it is better to prevent an evil than to rectify
a mistake none can deny--commercial, connections, of all others, are
most difficult to dissolve--if we wanted proof of this, look to the
avidity with which we are renewing, after a _total_ suspension of eight
years, our correspondence with Great Britain;--So, if we are supine,
and suffer without a struggle the Settlers of the Western Country to
form commercial connections with the Spaniards, Britons, or with any of
the States in the Union we shall find it a difficult matter to dissolve
them altho' a better communication should, thereafter, be presented to
them--time only could effect it; such is the force of habit!--
"Rumseys discovery of working Boats against stream, by mechanical
powers principally, may not only be considered as a fortunate invention
for these States in general but as one of those circumstances which
have combined to render the present epoche favorable above all others
for securing (if we are disposed to avail ourselves of them) a large
portion of the produce of the Western Settlements, and of the Fur and
Peltry of the Lakes, also.--the importation of which alone, if there
were no political considerations in the way, is immense.--
"It may be said, perhaps, that as the most direct Routs from the
Lakes to the Navigation of Potomack are through the State of
Pennsylvania;--and the inter{t} of that State opposed to the extension
of the Waters of Monongahela, that a communication cannot be had either
by the Yohiogany or Cheat River;--but herein I differ.--an application
to this purpose would, in my opinion, place the Legislature of
that Commonwealth in a very delicate situation.--That it would not
be pleasing I can readily conceive, but that they would refuse their
assent, I am by no means clear in.--There is, in that State, at least
one hundred thousand Souls West of the Laurel hill, who are groaning
under the inconveniences of a long land transportation.--They are
wishing, indeed looking, for the extension of inland Navigation; and if
this can not be made easy for them to Philadelphia--at any rate it must
be lengthy--they will seek a Mart elsewhere; and none is so convenient
as that which offers itself through Yohiogany or Cheat River.--the
certain consequences therefore of an attempt to restrain the extension
of the Navigation of these Rivers, (so consonant with the interest
of these people) or to impose any extra: duties upon the exports,
or imports, to, or from another State, would be a separation of the
Western Settlers from the old & more interior government; towards which
there is not wanting a disposition at this moment in the former."
Thus the old dream of the youth is brought forward again by the
thoughtful, sober man; these words echo the spirit of Washington's
whole attitude toward the West--its wealth of buried riches, its
commercial possibilities, its swarming colonies of indomitable
pioneers. Here was the first step toward solving that second most
serious problem that faced the young nation: How can the great West be
held and made to strengthen the Union? France and England had owned
and lost it. Could the new master, this infant Republic, "one nation
to-day, thirteen to-morrow," do better? Ay, but England and France had
no seer or adviser so wise as this man. This letter from Washington to
Harrison was our nation's pioneer call to the vastly better days (poor
as they now seem) of improved river navigation, the first splendid
economic advance that heralded the day of the canal and the national
highway. For fifty years, until President Jackson vetoed the Maysville
Road Bill, the impetus of this appeal, made in 1784, was of vital force
in forming our national economic policies. This letter has frequently
been pointed to as the inspiring influence which finally gave birth to
the Erie Canal and the Cumberland National Road.
The immediate result of this agitation was the formation of the
celebrated Potomac Company under joint resolutions passed by Virginia
and Maryland. Washington was at once elected to the presidency of this
company, an office he filled until his election to the presidency of
the United States five years later (1789). The plan of the Potomac
Company was to improve the navigation of the Potomac to the most
advantageous point on its headwaters and build a twenty-mile portage
road to Dunkard's Bottom on the Cheat River. With the improvement
of the Cheat and Monongahela rivers, a waterway, with a twenty-mile
portage, was secured from the Ohio to tide-water on the Potomac.
Washington's plan, however, did not stop here. This proposed line of
communication was not to stop at the Ohio, but the northern tributaries
of that river were to be explored and rendered navigable, and portage
roads were to be built between them and the interlocking streams
which flowed into the Great Lakes. With the improvement of these
waterways, in their turn, a complete trunk line of communication was
thus established from the Lakes to the sea. Washington spent no little
time in endeavoring to secure the best possible information concerning
the nature of the northern tributaries of the Ohio, the Beaver, the
Muskingum, the Scioto, and the Miami, and of the lake streams, the
Grand, the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, and the Maumee. It was because of
such conceptions as these that all the portage paths of the territory
northwest of the Ohio River were declared by the famous Ordinance of
1787, "common highways forever free."
The Potomac Company fared no better than the other early companies
which attempted to improve the lesser waterways of America before the
method of slackwater navigation was discovered. It made, however, the
pioneer effort in a cause which meant more to its age than we can
readily imagine to-day, and in time it built the great and successful
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, as the early attempts to render the Mohawk
River navigable were the first chapters in the history of the famed
Erie Canal. These efforts of Washington's constitute likewise the
first chapter of the building of our one great national road. This
highway, begun in 1811, and completed to the Ohio River in 1818,
was practically the portage path which was so important a link in
Washington's comprehensive plan. Its starting point was Cumberland,
Maryland, on the Potomac, and it led to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on
the Monongahela, and Wheeling on the Ohio. All of these points were
famous ports in the days when that first burst of immigration swept
over the Alleghanies. Washington's plan for a bond of union between
East and West was also the first chapter of the story of throwing
the first railway across the Alleghanies. "I consider this among the
most important acts of my life," said Charles Carroll, of Carrollton,
when with the stroke of a pen he laid the first foundation for the
Baltimore and Ohio Railway, "second only to my signing the Declaration
of Independence, if even it be second to that."
Washington's dream of an empire of united States bound together by a
"chain of federal union" was enlarged and modified by the changing
needs of a nation, but in its vital essence it was never altered. "It
would seem," wrote the late Herbert B. Adams, "as though, in one way
or another, all lines of our public policy lead back to Washington,
as all roads lead to Rome." And yet, after all, I believe there are
other words which sound a note that should never die in the ears of his
people, and those are his own youthful words, "A pusillanimous behavior
now will ill suit the times."
It is not easy to pass this subject without referring to Washington's
remarkably wise foresight with reference to the West and national
growth which his experience with that part of the country gave him.
True, he made some miscalculations, as when he expressed the opinion
that New York would not improve her great route to the West (Mohawk
River route) until the British had given up their hold on the Great
Lakes; he however pointed to that route as one of the most important
in America and hardly expected more from it than has been realized. In
all phases of the awakening of the West--the Mississippi question,
the organization of the Northwest Territory, the formulating of
the Ordinance of 1787 ("the legal outcome of Maryland's successful
policy in advocating National Sovereignty over the Western Lands"),
the ceding of lands to the National Government, the handling of the
Indian problem--Washington's influence and knowledge were of paramount
usefulness. Take these instances of his prescience as yet unmentioned:
he suggested, in connection with the Potomac improvement, the policy
of exploration and surveys which our government has steadily adhered
to since that day; the Lewis and Clark expedition was a result of
this policy advocated first by Washington. Again, note Washington's
singularly wise opinion on the separation of Kentucky from Virginia.
Writing to Jefferson in 1785, he affirms that the general opinion
in his part of Virginia is unfavorable to the separation. "I have
uniformly given it as mine," he wrote, "to meet them upon their own
ground, draw the best line, and make the best terms we can, and part
good friends." And again, it is to the point to notice Washington's
far-seeing view of the progress and enterprise of the West in relation
to commerce. Who before him ever had the temerity to suggest that ships
would descend the Ohio River and sail for foreign ports?[2] Yet he said
this in 1784 and had the audacity to add that, if so, the return route
of the proceeds of all sales thus resulting would be over the Alleghany
routes, which prophecy was fulfilled to the very letter.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Washington's diary of this journey is printed in full in Hulbert,
"Washington and the West," 27-105.
[2] Hulbert, "Washington and the West," 195-6.