This looks like more than a
money-making scheme; in fact, it justifies all that has been said,
especially if read in connection with certain other letters of this
period. Great political results, as well as lumber and peltry, were
what Washington intended to float along his rivers and canals.
In this same letter to Humphreys he touched also on another point
in connection with the development of the West, which was of vast
importance to the future of the country, and was even then agitating
men's minds. He said: "I may be singular in my ideas, but they are
these: that, to open a door to, and make easy the way for those
settlers to the westward (who ought to advance regularly and
compactly), before we make any stir about the navigation of the
Mississippi, and before our settlements are far advanced towards that
river, would be our true line of policy." Again he wrote: "However
singular the opinion may be, I cannot divest myself of it, that the
navigation of the Mississippi, _at this time_ [1785], ought to be no
object with us. On the contrary, until we have a little time allowed
to open and make easy the ways between the Atlantic States and the
western territory, the obstructions had better remain." He was right
in describing himself as "singular" in his views on this matter, which
just then was exciting much attention.
At that time indeed much feeling existed, and there were many sharp
divisions about the Mississippi question. One party, for the sake of a
commercial treaty with Spain, and to get a troublesome business out of
the way, was ready to give up our claims to a free navigation of
the great river; and this was probably the prevalent sentiment in
Congress, for to most of the members the Mississippi seemed a very
remote affair indeed.
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