On the other side was a smaller and more violent
party, which was for obtaining the free navigation immediately and
at all hazards, and was furious at the proposition to make such a
sacrifice as its opponents proposed. Finally, there was Spain herself
intriguing to get possession of the West, holding out free navigation
as a bait to the settlers of Kentucky, and keeping paid agents in that
region to foster her schemes. Washington saw too far and too
clearly to think for one moment of giving up the navigation of the
Mississippi, but he also perceived what no one else seems to have
thought of, that free navigation at that moment would give the western
settlements "the habit of trade" with New Orleans before they had
formed it with the Atlantic seaboard, and would thus detach them from
the United States. He wished, therefore, to have the Mississippi
question left open, and all our claims reserved, so that trade by
the river should be obstructed until we had time to open our inland
navigation and bind 'the western people to us by ties too strong to
be broken. The fear that the river would be lost by waiting did not
disturb him in the least, provided our claims were kept alive. He
wrote to Lee in June, 1786: "Whenever the new States become so
populous, and so extended to the westward, as really to need it,
there will be no power which can deprive them of the use of the
Mississippi." Again, a year later, while the convention was sitting in
Philadelphia, he said: "My sentiments with respect to the navigation
of the Mississippi have been long fixed, and are not dissimilar to
those which are expressed in your letter.
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