Spain at the south, and rapidly filling with a bold, adventurous, and somewhat lawless population, whose ties of connection with the Eastern States were almost sundered by the remoteness of their position and the difficulties of communication, stood upon a pivot, where accident might have thrown them out of the Union. This population found themselves scated in a luxuriant and fertile country, capable of a threefold greater production than the States eastward of the Alleghany and Appalachian Mountains, and intersected by natural water communications of the most ample character, all tending to the great highway of the Mississippi. A soil richer than any over which the Anglo-Saxon race had hitherto spread itself upon this continent, in any of its temperate climes ; large plains and meadows, capable, without labor, of supporting millions of cattle; and fields destined to vie with the most favored lands on the globe in the production of wheat, were already accumulating upon the banks of their great rivers a weight of produce far beyond the necessities of subsistence, and loudly demanding the means of reaching the markets of the world. The people of the Atlantic States knew little of the resources or situation of this country. They valued it chiefly as a means of paying the public debts by the sale of its lands; but until they were in imminent danger of losing it, from the inefficiency of the national government, they had little idea of the supreme necessity of securing for it an outlet to the sea, if they would preserve it to the Union.

Washington, in the autumn of 1784, after his re

tirement to Mount Vernon, made a tour into the Western country, for the express purpose of ascer taining by what means it could be most effectually bound to the Union. The policy of opening communications eastward, by means of the rivers flowing through Virginia to the Atlantic Ocean struck him at once. On his return, he addressed a letter to the Governor of the State, in which he recommended the appointment of a commission, to make a survey of the whole means of natural water communication between Lake Erie and the tide-waters of Virginia. He does not seem at this time to have considered the navigation of the Mississippi as of great importance; but he thought rather that the opening of that river would have a tendency to separate the Western from the Eastern States. A year later, he held a clear opinion, that its navigation ought not at present to be made an object by the United States, but that their true policy was to open all the possible avenues be

1 His recommendation contemplated a survey of James River and the Potomac, from tide-water to their respective sources; then to ascertain the best portage between those rivers and the streams capable of improvement which run into the Ohio; then to traverse and survey those streams to their junction with the Ohio; then, passing down the Ohio to the mouth of the Muskingum, to ascend that river to the carrying-place to the Cuyahoga ; then down the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie, and thence to Detroit. He also advised a survey of Big Beaver

Creek, and of the Scioto, and of all the waters east and west of the Ohio, which invited attention by their proximity and the ease of land transportation between them and the James and Potomac Rivers. "These things being done," he said, "I shall be mistaken if prejudice does not yield to facts, jealousy to candor, and finally, if reason and nature, thus aided, do not dictate what is right and proper to be done." (Writings of Washington, IX. 65.) This suggestion was adopted, and a commission appointed.

tween the Atlantic States and the Western territory, and that, until this had been done, the obstructions to the use of the Mississippi had better not be removed.1 Those obstructions, however, involved the hazard of a loss of the territory to which the navigation of that river had already become extremely important. Their nature is, therefore, now to be explained.

The Treaty of Peace with Great Britain recognized, as the southern boundary of the United States, a line drawn from a point where the thirty-first degree of north latitude intersected the river Mississippi, along that parallel due east to the middle of the river Appalachicola; thence along the middle of that river to its junction with the Flint River; thence in a straight line to the head of St. Mary's River; and thence down the middle of that river to the Atlantic Ocean. At the time of the negotiation of this treaty West Florida was in the possession of Spain; and a secret article was executed by the British and American plenipotentiaries, which stipulated that in case Great Britain, at the conclusion of a peace with Spain, should recover or be put in possession of West Florida, the north boundary between that province and the United States should be a line drawn from the mouth of the river Yassous, where it unites with the river Mississippi, due east to the river Appalachicola. The treaty also stipulated, that the navigation of the Mississippi, from its source to the

1 Writings, IX. 63, 117–119. August 22, 1785.

2 Article II. Journals, IX. 26.

3 Executed November 30, 1782. Secret Journals, III. 338.

ocean, should for ever remain free and open to the subjec s of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.1

When the treaty came to be ratified and published, in 1784, the Spanish government was already acquainted with this secret article. Justly assuming that no treaty between Great Britain and the United States could settle the boundaries between the territories of the latter power and those of Spain, or give of itself a right to navigate a river passing wholly through their dominions, they immediately caused it to be signified to Congress, that, until the limits of Louisiana and the two Floridas should be settled and determined, by an admission on the part of Spain that they had been rightfully described in the Treaty with England, they must assert their territorial claims to the exclusive control of the river; and also, that the navigation would under no circumstances be conceded, while Spain held the right to its control.2 To accommodate these difficulties, Congress resolved to send Mr. Jay, their Secretary of Foreign Affairs, to Spain; but his departure was prevented by the arrival in the United States of Don Diego Guardoqui, as Minister from Spain, charged with the negotiation of a treaty.3

Preparatory to this negotiation, the first instruction which Mr. Jay received from Congress was, to

1 Article VIII. Journals, IX. 29. 2 June 25, 1784. Communicated to Congress November 19, 1784. Secret Journals, III. 517, 518.

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3 Guardoqui arrived and was recognized July 2, 1785. Secret Journals, III. 563.

insist upon the right of the United States to the territorial boundaries and the free navigation of the Mississippi, as settled by their treaty with Great Britain. Upon this point, however, the Spanish Minister was immovable. A long negotiation ensued, in which he evinced entire readiness to make a liberal commercial treaty with the United States, conceding to their trade very important advantages; but at the same time refusing the right to use the Mississippi. Such a treaty was regarded as extremely important to the United States. There was scarcely a single production of this country that could not be advantageously exchanged in the Spanish European ports for gold and silver. The influence of Spain in the Mediterranean, with Portugal, with France, with the States of Barbary, and the trade with her Canaries and the adjacent islands, rendered a commercial alliance with her of the utmost importance. That importance was especially felt by the Eastern and Middle States, whose influence in Congress thus became opposed to the agitation of the subject of opening the Mississippi. Indeed, the prevailing opinion in Congress, at this time, was for not insisting on the right of navigation as a necessary requisite in the treaty with Spain; and there were some important and influential persons in that body ready to agree to the abandonment of the right, rather than defer longer a free and liberal system of trade

1 August 25, 1785. Secret Journals, III. 585, 586.

2 See the communication made

by Mr. Jay to Congress, August 3, 1786. Secret Journals, IV. 43.