PREFACE

The student of European history is not surprised to find that individuals stand out prominently in every activity that occupied man's attention; that even though there be under consideration great popular movements, such as the Crusades or the Reformation or French Revolution, attention centres around significant personalities. In the day of monarchies and despotisms, individual initiative very naturally led the way in outlining policies, selecting lieutenants, finding ways and means.

It is singular to what a great extent this is true in the history of democratic America, preëminently the land where the people have ruled and where the usurper of power has had, comparatively, no opportunity whatever. And yet it is not too much to say that the history of our nation may be suggested in a skeleton way by a mere list of names, as, for instance, the history of the fourteenth century in Europe might easily be sketched. While we are proud to proclaim that America has given all men an equal opportunity, that the most humble may rise to the proudest position known among us, it yet remains singular that in this land where the popular voice has ruled as nowhere else almost every national movement or phase of development may be signified by the name of one man.

This comes with appealing force to one who has attempted to make a catalogue of the men who have in a personal sense led the Star of Empire across this continent; men who have, in a way, pooled issues with their country in the mutual hope of personal advantage and national advance. It then becomes plain to the investigator, if he never realized it before, that, at times, the nation has waited, even halted in its progress, for a single man, or a set of men, to plan what may have seemed an entirely selfish adventure and which yet has proved to be a great national advantage. In certain instances there was a clear and fair understanding between such promoters and the reigning administration, looking toward mutual benefit. At times the movement was in direct defiance of law and order, with a resulting effect of immeasurable moment for good. Again, there may have been no thought of national welfare or extension; personal gain and success may have been the only end; and the resultant may have been a powerful national stimulus.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature that appears on an examination of American history along these lines (compared, for instance, with that of European powers) is that comparatively few leaders of military campaigns are to be classed among promoters who advanced national ends in conjunction with personal ambitions. In the Old World numberless provinces came into the possession of military favorites after successful campaigns. In the many expeditions to the westward of the Alleghanies in America what commanders turned their attention later to the regions subdued? Forbes, the conqueror of Fort Duquesne, never saw the Ohio Valley again; Bouquet, the other hero, with Gladwin, of Pontiac's Rebellion, never returned to the Muskingum, nor did Gladwin come back to Detroit; Lewis, the victor at Point Pleasant, led no colony to the Ohio again; "Mad Anthony" Wayne never had other than military interest in the beautiful Maumee Valley, where, in the cyclone's path, he crushed the dream of a powerful Indian confederacy lying on the flanks of the new Republic. To a singular degree the leaders of the military vanguard across the continent had really little to do personally with the actual social movement that made the wilderness blossom as the rose. True, bounty lands were given to commanders and men in many instances, as in the case of Washington and George Rogers Clark; but it was the occupation of such tracts by the rank and file of the armies that actually made for advancement and national growth, and in perhaps only one case was the movement appreciably accelerated by the course of action pursued in a civil way by those who had been the leaders of a former military expansion. How are we to explain the interesting fact that none of the generals who led into the West the armies that won it for America are to be found at the head, for instance, of the land companies that later attempted to open the West to the flood-tide of immigration? Did they know too well the herculean toils that such work demanded? Why should General Rufus Putnam, General Moses Cleaveland, General Benjamin Tupper, General Samuel Holden Parsons, Colonel Abraham Whipple,—famous leader of the night attack on the Gaspee in the pre-Revolutionary days,—Judge John Cleve Symmes, Colonel Richard Henderson, lead companies of men to settle in the region which Andrew Lewis, Arthur St. Clair, Joseph Harmar, Anthony Wayne, and William Henry Harrison had learned so well? Of course more than one reason, or one train of reasons, exist for these facts; but it is not to be denied that those best acquainted with the existing facts, those having the clearest knowledge of the trials, dangers, and risks, both as regards health and finances, were not in any degree prominent in the later social movements. Many, of course, were soldiers by profession, and itched not in the least for opportunity to increase their possessions by investment and speculation in a hazardous undertaking. But, had there been certain assurance of success, these men, or some of them, would, without doubt, have found ways and means of taking a part. Had one attempt proven successful, an impetus would have been given to other like speculations; yet one will look in vain for a really profitable outcome to any undertaking described in these studies. The judgment of those best posted, therefore, was fully justified.

But at the same time the American nation was greatly in the debt of the men who made these poor investments; and, in one way or another, it came about that no great hardship resulted. This was no secret when these propositions were under consideration, and the men interested were influenced not a little by the fact that their adventure would result in benefit to the cause of national advance. There was a kind of patriotism then shown that is to be remembered by all who care to think of the steps taken by a weak, hopeful Republic; in some ways the same body politic is still weak, and vastly in need of a patriotism not less warm than that shown in those early days of wonderment and anxiety.

The reader of the succeeding pages may conceive that the author has not taken up each study in the same method, and judged the performances of each so-called "Pilot" by the same rule and standard. In the present instance the writer has considered that such treatment would be highly incongruous, there being almost nothing in common between the various exploits here reviewed, save only those that were incidental and adventitious. Each chapter may seem an independent study, related to that one following only through the general title that covers them all; this, in the author's opinion, is better far than to attempt to emphasize a likeness, or over-color apparent resemblances, until each event may seem a natural sequence from a former. A babe's steps are seldom alike; one is long and inaccurate, another short and sure, with many a misstep and tumble, and the whole a characterless procedure bespeaking only weakness and lack both of confidence and knowledge. Such, in a measure, was the progress of young America in the early days of her national existence.

A. B. H.

Marietta College,
Marietta, Ohio, May 31, 1906.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IPAGE
Introductory: The Brother of the Sword[19]
CHAPTER II
Washington: The Promoter of Western Investments[37]
CHAPTER III
Richard Henderson: The Founder of Transylvania[81]
CHAPTER IV
Rufus Putnam: The Father of Ohio[103]
CHAPTER V
David Zeisberger: Hero of "The Meadow of Light"[129]
CHAPTER VI
George Rogers Clark: Founder of Louisville[149]
CHAPTER VII
Henry Clay: Promoter of the First American Highway[179]
CHAPTER VIII
Morris and Clinton: Fathers of the Erie Canal[207]
CHAPTER IX
Thomas and Mercer: Rival Promoters of Canal and Railway[233]
CHAPTER X
Lewis and Clark: Explorers of Louisiana[257]
CHAPTER XI
Astor: The Promoter of Astoria[279]
CHAPTER XII
Marcus Whitman: The Hero of Oregon[299]
CHAPTER XIII
The Captains of "The American System"[339]
Index[363]

LIST OF PORTRAITS

PAGE
Zeisberger Preaching to the Indians at Coshocton, Ohio, in 1773[Frontispiece]
Daniel Boone[30]
George Washington[68]
Rufus Putnam, Leader of the Founders of Marietta, Ohio[106]
Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Ohio Pioneer[113]
John Heckewelder, Missionary to the Indians[142]
Rev. David Jones, Companion of George Rogers Clark[165]
Henry Clay, Statesman and Abolitionist[184]
Albert Gallatin, Promoter of the Cumberland Road[190]
General Arthur St. Clair, Appointed Governor of Ohio by Congress[205]
Gouverneur Morris, Promoter of the Erie Canal[212]
De Witt Clinton, Friend of the Erie Canal Project[230]
Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition[262]
William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition[274]
John Jacob Astor, Founder of Astoria[288]
President James K. Polk[344]

CHAPTER I

The Part played in American History by the Pioneer's Axe.—Several Classes of Leaders in the Conquest of the Wilderness.—Patriotism even in those that were Self-seeking.—The Achievements of Cleaveland, Henderson, Putnam, Morris, and Astor, respectively.—Feebleness of the Republic in its Infancy.—Its need of Money.—The Pioneers were of all Races.—Other Leaders besides these Captains of Expansion accused of Self-seeking.—Washington as the Father of the West.—His great Acquisitions of Land.—His Influence on other Land-seekers.—Results of Richard Henderson's Advance into Kentucky.—Zeisberger's Attempt to form a Settlement of Christian Indians thwarted by the Revolution.—Rufus Putnam as a Soldier and a Pioneer.—As Leader of the Ohio Company of Associates, he makes a Settlement Northwest of the Ohio.—Three Avenues of Westward Migration: Henry Clay's Cumberland Road; the Erie Canal; the Baltimore and Ohio Railway.—These Avenues not laid between Cities, but into the Western Wilderness.

INTRODUCTORY: THE BROTHER OF THE SWORD

There is some ground for the objection that is raised against allowing the history of America to remain a mere record of battles and campaigns. The sword had its part to play, a glorious part and picturesque, but the pioneer's axe chanted a truer tune than ever musket crooned or sabre sang. And with reference to the history of our Central West, for instance, it were a gross impartiality to remember the multicolored fascinating story of its preliminary conquest to the exclusion of the marvellous sequel—a great free people leaping into a wilderness and compelling it, in one short century, to blossom as the rose.

To any one who seriously considers the magic awakening of that portion of the American Nation dwelling between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, there must sooner or later come the overpowering realization that the humble woodsman's broadaxe—that famous "Brother of the Sword"—has a story that is, after all, as fascinating and romantic as any story ever told.

Lo, 'tis myself I sing,

Feller of oak and ash!

Brother am I to the Sword,

Red-edged slayer of men!

Side by side we have hewn

Paths for the pioneer

From sea to sun-smitten sea.

It must be remembered that the sword made many conquests in this West, while the broadaxe made but one. France, and then England, possessed the West, but could not hold it, for the vital reason that this brother of the sword did not march in unison with those armies. In fact, both France and England attempted to keep the axe-bearing, home-building people back in order that the furs and the treasure yielded by the forests might not be withheld. But when the sword of a free people came across the Alleghanies the axe of the pioneer came with it, and a miracle was wrought in a century's time beside which the Seven Wonders of the Old World must forever seem commonplace.

Of the men who led this army of real conquerors of the West to the scenes of their labors there were many. Some were leaders because of the inspiration they gave to others, some were leaders because they in person showed the way, enduring the toil, the privation, the pestilence, and the fate of pioneers. In whatever class these men may be placed, they were in reality patriots and heroes, even though at the time they were accused of seeking private gain and private fortune. But through the perspective of the years it seems clear that whatever may have been their private ends,—good, bad, or indifferent,—they were extremely important factors in the progress of their age. Whether seeking lands as a private speculation, or founding land companies or transportation companies in conjunction with others, they turned a waiting people's genius in a new direction and gave force and point to a social movement that was of more than epoch-making importance. Whether it was a Cleaveland founding a Western Reserve on the Great Lakes, a Henderson establishing a Transylvania in Kentucky, a Putnam building a new New England on the Ohio River, a Morris advocating an Erie Canal, or an Astor founding an Astoria on the Pacific Sea, the personal ambition and hope of gain, so prominent at the time, does not now stand preëminent; in this day we see what the efforts of these men meant to a country whose destiny they almost seemed unwittingly to hold in their hands.

It will ever be difficult to realize what a critical moment it was when, for a brief space of time, only Providence could tell whether the young American Republic was equal to the tremendous task of proving that it could live by growing. The wisest men who watched its cradle wondered if that babe, seemingly of premature birth, would live. But that was not the vital question; the vital question was, Could it grow? The infant Republic possessed a mere strip of land on the seaboard; the unanswerable argument of its enemies was that a weakling of such insignificant proportions, surrounded by the territories of England and Spain, could not live unless it could do more than merely exist; after winning (by default) a war for liberty, it must now fight and win or lose a war of extermination. And where were the millions of money, the men, and the arms to come from that should prevent final annihilation? The long war had prostrated the people; the land had been overrun with armies, farms despoiled, trade ruined, cities turned into barracks, money values utterly dissipated.

Just here it was that the mighty miracle was wrought; a strange army began to rendezvous, and it was armed with that weapon which was to make a conquest the sword could never have made. It was the army of pioneers with axes on their shoulders. So spontaneously did it form and move away, so commonplace was every humble detail of its organization and progress, so quietly was its conquest made, so few were its prophets and historians, that it has taken a century for us to realize its wonder and its marvel.

America here and now gave the one proof of life—growth. Not from one point in particular, but from every point, the ranks of this humble army were filled; not one sect or race gave those rough and shaggy regiments their men, but every sect and every racial stock.

That army had its leaders, though they wore only the uncouth regimentals of the rank and file. It is of certain of these Pilots of the Republic that these pages treat,—men who were moved by what were very generally called selfish motives in their days. Yet against what human motive may not the accusation of self-interest be cast? It has been hurled against almost every earnest man since Christ was crucified in ignominy nineteen centuries ago. Scan the list of men herein treated, and you will not find a single promoter of the Central West who was not accused of harboring an ulterior motive, if not of downright perfidy. Some of the best of these leaders of the expansion movement were most bitterly maligned; the heroic missionaries who forgot every consideration of health, comfort, worldly prosperity, home, and friends were sometimes decried as plotting ambassadors of scheming knaves.

The pure and upright Washington, looking westward with clearer eye and surer faith than any of his generation, was besmirched by the accusations of hypocritical self-aggrandizement. Yet he must stand first and foremost in the category of men who influenced and gave efficiency to that vital westward movement. This man, as will be shown, was more truly the "Father of the West" than he ever was "Father of his Country." A decade before the Revolution was precipitated in sturdy Massachusetts, he had become fascinated with the commercial possibilities of the trans-Alleghany empire. He explored the Ohio and Great Kanawha rivers, and conceived what the future would bring forth; he took up large tracts of lands. Before he died he owned many patents to land in what is now New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and Florida, as well as his home farms along the Potomac. He had a keen business sense, and demanded his full rights; he forcibly ousted from his lands men who knowingly usurped them; and all through the years he was accused of using his preponderating influence to further selfish plans; he was called a land-shark and a robber. It is interesting to know that his own private conclusion was that his investments had not paid; his words were that they had resulted more "in vexation than profit." And when he spoke those words he was master of between twenty and thirty thousand of the most fertile acres in the Ohio River basin.

Yet Washington had marvellously influenced the nation's destiny by these "unprofitable" investments. The very position he occupied and which he was accused of misusing had powerfully stimulated the army that was carrying the broadaxe westward. In countless ways this man had given circulation to ideas that were inspiring and hopeful, and just so far as he believed he had failed as a private speculator, he had in reality triumphed mightily as the leading exponent of a growing Republic which was called upon to prove that it could grow.

Richard Henderson stands out prominently as an honest leader of this army of conquerors. We can never read without a thrill the sentence in that letter of Daniel Boone's to Henderson in which the bold woodsman pleads the necessity of Henderson's hastening into Kentucky in 1775. All that Kentucky was and all that it did during the Revolution seems to have hung suspended on the advance of Richard Henderson's party through Cumberland Gap in that eventful April; and those words of the guide and trail-blazer, Boone, imploring that there be no delay, and emphasizing the stimulating effect that Henderson's advance would have on the various parties of explorers, have a ring of destiny in them. True, Virginia and North Carolina both repudiated Henderson's Indian purchase, and the promoter of historic Transylvania was decried and defamed; but his advance into the valley of the Kentucky gave an inspiration to the scattered parties of vagrant prospectors that resulted in making a permanent settlement in that key-stone State of the West, which was of untold advantage to the nation at large. And later Virginia and North Carolina made good the loss the founder of Transylvania had suffered because of their earlier repudiation.

In Washington and Henderson we have two important factors in the advance of the pioneer army into the old Southwest—the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi south of the Ohio River.

Daniel Boone

Turning to the rich empire lying north of that river, a chapter belongs to that resolute herald of religious and social betterment, David Zeisberger, who led his faithful Moravians from Pennsylvania to found an ideal settlement in central Ohio. The marvellous story of the indomitable Catholic missionaries in America has been receiving something of its share of attention by the reading world, a story so noble and inspiring that it is one of the precious heritages of the past; that of the equally noble Protestant missionaries in the Middle and Far West has not yet received its due. The Moravian Brethren received the first acre of land ever legally owned by white men in Ohio. Here, in "the Meadow of Light" on the Tuscarawas River, Zeisberger and his noble comrade, John Heckewelder, attempted to found a civilized colony of Christian Indians. But for the Revolution, he would doubtless have succeeded. The story of his temporary success is of great romantic interest and of moment especially by way of comparison. A legal right to land was secured by this migrating colony of Indians under the leadership of white missionaries; it was to be, to all intents and purposes, a white man's settlement, and agriculture was to be the colony's means of support. Laws and rules of conduct were formulated, and for five interesting years a great degree of success attended the effort. Then came war, despoliation, and a thrilling period of wandering. But never was the fact of legal ownership ignored; when the United States first enacted laws for the disposal of land in the Northwest Territory it excepted the district "formerly" allotted to the Moravian Brethren.

Again, the history of the Middle West contains no sturdier or sweeter character than Rufus Putnam, the head of the Ohio Company of Associates who made the first settlement in the Northwest Territory at Marietta. As evidence of what he was in time of danger, his long record in the old French War, the Revolution, and the Indian War in the West is open to all men; what he was in days of peace—how he was the mainstay of his fellow officers in their attempt to obtain their dues from Congress, how he cheered westward that little company which he led in person, how for two decades he was the unselfish friend of hundreds of this struggling army of pioneers—is a story great and noble. As we shall see, General Washington, in a secret document never intended for other eyes than his own, describes Putnam as little known outside of a definite circle of friends. If this militated against his being appointed commander-in-chief of the American armies (for which honor General "Mad" Anthony Wayne was named), it made the man the more beloved and helpful. Not seeking in convivial ways the friendship of the notables of his time, Rufus Putnam went about the commonplace affairs of his conscientious life, doing good; yet in the most critical hour in the history of the Northwest it was to Putnam that Washington turned in confidence and hope. In the formation of the Ohio Company, in the emigration from New England, in the hard experiences of hewing out homes and clearings on the Ohio, and in the humble, wearing vicissitudes of life on the tumultuous frontier, the resolution, tact, and patient charity of this plain hero made him one of the great men in the annals of our western land.

This Ohio Company of Associates made the first settlement in the territory northwest of the River Ohio, from which were created the five great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In the actual peopling of that region no one man, perhaps, exerted the influence of Rufus Putnam; and though, as a company, the Associates never were able to keep their contract with the Government, the great value of the movement led by Putnam was recognized, as Virginia and North Carolina recognized Henderson's influence to the southward, and Congress agreed to an easy settlement.

The empire of the Ohio Basin being thrown open to the world by the armies of pioneers inspired by Washington and led by such men as Henderson and Putnam, a great factor in its occupation were the men who succeeded Washington in carrying out his plan for opening avenues of immigration. Three great routes to the West, and their projectors, call for notice in this phase of our study. The rise of Henry Clay's famous National Road running from Cumberland, Maryland, almost to St. Louis was a potent factor in the awakening of the West. It was the one great American highway; it took millions of men and wealth into the West, and, more than any material object, "served to cement and save the Union." Three canals were factors in this great social movement, especially the Erie Canal, which was conceived by the inspiration of Morris and achieved by the patient genius of Clinton. As a promoter of the West, Thomas, father of our first railway, must be accounted of utmost importance. Is it not of interest that the famed Cumberland Road was not built to connect two large Eastern cities, or a seaport or river with a city? It was built from the East into the Western wilderness—from a town but little known to an indefinite destination where the towns were hardly yet named. Its promoters were men of faith in the West, hopeful of its prosperity and anxious as to its loyalty. Now the same was singularly true of our first three great canals, the Erie, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Pennsylvania. These were not built as avenues of commerce between great Eastern cities, but rather from the East to the awakening West, to the infant hamlets of Buffalo and Pittsburg. And, still more remarkable, our first railways were not laid out between large Eastern cities, but from the East into that same country of the setting sun where the forests were still spreading and little villages were here and there springing up. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was distinctly promoted in the hope that Baltimore might retain the trade of the West which the canals then building seemed to be likely to take from her. It was their faith in the West that inspired all these men to the tasks they severally conceived and enthusiastically completed. It would hardly be possible to emphasize sufficiently the part played in the history of early America by this supremely momentous intuition of the westward advance of the Republic, the divine logic of that advance, and its immeasurable consequences.

CHAPTER II

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

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.

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 &ca (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.