A tour into the western country
Soon after his retirement from the army, Washington made a tour into the western country, which he had known so well in his early days and whose wealth and value he justly appreciated. His purpose was to ascertain by what means it could be most effectually bound to the Union. The population of that rich and fertile region, a bold and adventurous class, separated by the remoteness of their position from connection with the eastern states, with little respect for the feeble rule of Congress, in which they had no representation, already showed signs of estrangement and independence. So rich a soil, such luxuriant vegetation, had never belonged hitherto to any branch of the English-speaking race. Plains capable without cultivation of supporting millions of cattle, fields golden with heavy harvests in response to the minimum expenditure of toil, rivers affording great natural highways for the movement of their agricultural productions needed only an adequate market to render the great Northwest the richest portion of the globe, The Atlantic states knew little of this vast region or its untold resources. They looked upon it chiefly as a means for paying the federal debts by the sale of public lands, and did not realize its political significance until their indifference and the inefficiency of the government had almost lost it to the Union. Washington, whose large practical intelligence was so quick to discern great issues, saw the impending danger. Returning from his western journey, he recommended the appointment of a commission to make a survey ascertaining the means of natural water communication between Lake Erie and the tidewaters of Virginia. His project was to open all the possible avenues between the western territory and the Atlantic, thinking thus to identify the interests of the two sections, to offer to the West participation in the advantages of the sea and to enrich the East by making it the emporium of the western productions. But the shrewd frontiersmen who had taken up the western lands saw another avenue to the sea and another way to market. It was the Mississippi and the tributaries flowing into it which seemed Nature’s great highway ready for their use. Only one barrier op-posed them, the obstinate refusal of Spain, who held the mouth of the great river and its western bank, to permit its free navigation. An interposition so autocratic, so unjust, and so injurious roused the resentment of the strong men of the West and they resolved not to submit to this limitation of their rights, The East, fearing that the West would be lost if not held to its eastern connections, opposed the opening of the Mississippi, preferring a commercial treaty with Spain to free navigation, Congress met the problem with the feebleness that, characterized its action after the Revolution. Diplomacy was bartering away the rights of the young West, when suddenly a trader, whose shipment had been seized by the Spanish authorities, returned to tell the story of his wrong just at the moment when news arrived that Congress intended to surrender the present use of the Mississippi,
