the Patowmack Project
Washington had long schemed to construct a canal on the Potomac to open up his various western lands. As early as 1768 he had semi-successfully convinced the Burgesses to approve a Potomac canal project, but in that it required the acceptance by the state of Maryland (owner of the opposite bank of the Potomac, and Pennsylvania as well, the project stalled. When he returned to Mount Vernon in 1783, his status in Virginia and the nation, of course, had changed; former commander-in-chief and victor of the American Revolution, he was now a formidable political force, especially in retirement. From his estate at Mount Vernon he effectually commanded a huge Rolodex of contacts, admirers, former associates, and an expanded network of friends. He was also a Mason, and that group would play a large role in his private land development initiatives.
His vision of the Potomac project at that time involved a network of three canals (to bypass rapids), clearing and dredging of shallow spots for a channel, and serious canals at Great and Little Falls. In unsettled western areas roads to access the river need be constructed, and other roads to access the headwaters of rivers connecting to the Ohio River had to be hacked. His immediate goal was to extend the Potomac about 175 miles from the Fall Line into the interior (total mileage was about 275 miles)–but also in his scheme were further roads in today’s Ohio to access the Great Lakes.
In his mind, at least, the project would open up the Ohio River valleys from the Great Lakes in the North and to the Mississippi River in the South. The settlers to this area, and the produce of this immense territory would travel on this logistical nexus and flow through his proposed coastal Potomac port, Alexandria–to the benefit, of course, of his home state Virginia. That was “Virginia’s dog” in the canal race–that and that the core of Washington’s co-investors were Virginian Founding Fathers.
===================
Barely three months back in Mount Vernon Washington entered into a letter-writing conversation with a key Virginia planter, fellow revolutionary, and former Governor of Virginia who at the time (March 29 1784) was a Virginia delegate to the Articles of Confederation Congress. This fellow, like Washington was also interested in canals, opening up the western hinterlands, and to a degree motivated by his own ownership of Potomac land: Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was in one sense a chip of his father’s block: consistently through his lifetime he demonstrated a serious interest in western expansion. Despite this genuine interest in western expansion, Jefferson as governor, felt compelled to cede its trans-Appalachian claims to the Articles in 1781, to pay for the expense of George Rogers Clark’s attack on the Northwest.
Perhaps the best indicator of Jefferson’s western focus was his draft of the Articles of Confederation’s 1784 Northwest Ordinance–he is in fact regarded as the principal author of the final document. In it he advocated the formation of fourteenth states in the new inherited east of the Mississippi wilderness. That was rejected but the Ordinance did certify that new states could be created from that territory, and that these states would be equal in rights to the original thirteen–i.e. among other issues they would be equally sovereign as the thirteen founding states, possess a republican form of government, pay their share of the federal debt, and after 1800 would not permit slavery.
In the ensuing debate the provision regarding slavery was voted down by one vote (James Monroe a Virginia delegate was absent). This, however, would not be the last word on the subject. Most importantly, the reader should now be aware the Articles of Confederation were from this point on the key player in western expansion, as the legal titleholder of trans-Appalachian lands.
In April Jefferson was in a position to play a formidable role, but in May Jefferson was appointed by the Congress as its Minister Plenipotentiary for Negotiating Treaties of Amity and Commerce. That meant he joined Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in France. A year later he replaced Franklin as America’s ambassador/minister to France.
In any event, Washington in his March letter clearly conveyed to Jefferson the vision of western expansion he held at the time. The vision included, as summarized by John Ferling:
He feared that if the West were not linked to the East, separatist elements would burgeon in the transmontane region … [that he proposed to] make the Potomac into the West’s highway to the Chesapeake …[through] work on a Potomac canal … to begin at the falls above Georgetown, an undertaking designed to tame the raging stream and render it navigable. Further west, additional canals and other improvements would elongate the river, and at its western terminus roads would be blazed to other rivers … These, in turn will be adjoined to the Ohio which would be tied by still more roads and canals to the Great Lakes. the inhabitants of the West would be bound to the East by economic connections, the new American union would be solidified, and every western commodity would flow through Virginia … creating a metropolis within the state–almost certainly Alexandria, where goods would have to be shifted from river craft to ocean vessels–that someday would dwarf Philadelphia and New York [1]
Jefferson in 1786–as French Ambassador
Besides communicating his vision to such a key official as Jefferson, Washington invited his opinion on a matter that was inhibiting Washington from picking up and assuming responsibility for implementation of this vision. Washington in the letter confessed that the vision and there projects therein would “enhance” [the] Lands in the Country [which he owned] by the adoption of such as Scheme. [Therefore] he was not disinterested”. Washington was writing to Jefferson on that issue of disinterestedness most likely because Jefferson (Franklin and Adams) had taken the leader in questioning, attacking, the Society of Cincinnati which had been established late in 1783. Jefferson and the others had damaging concerns as to its propriety and potential influence on the government. In March the clamor against the Society (founded by Knox) was at its height–and Washington was caught squarely in the middle. Jefferson’s opinion on the extent to which Washington’s obvious disinterest in the western expansion and canal development was clearly warranted as Jefferson was himself in the key position to affect its implementation in Articles territories.
Jefferson responded to the former General in March 1784 that “nature then has declared in favor of the Potomac and through that channel offers to pour into our lap the whole commerce of the western world. But, unfortunately the Hudson is already open and known in practice; [while] ours is still to be opened“. Washington responded in a second letter “With you I am satisfied that not a moment should be lost in recommencing this business [of opening the Potomac], as I know the [New] Yorkers will lose no time to remove every obstacle in the way of the other communication [Hudson canal opportunity] [2].
In yet another letter, Washington wondered if he should leave his retirement and Mount Vernon to tackle this pressing need and opportunity, Jefferson, who for his own reasons seems to have wanted Washington to step up to the canal project, saw his opening and responded the contemplated project would not be easy and that “a most powerful object always arises to propositions of this kind, that public undertakings are carelessly managed and much money spent to little purpose“. To break that potential threat to the project by a Washington “farmer” retirement, he tentatively asked Washington if Washington’s “superintendence of this work break in too much of the sweets of retirement and repose…. But [if you accepted the burden] what a monument of retirement it would be” [3]. This seems a clear endorsement of Washington’s proposed retirement mission.
In a return letter to Jefferson, Washington thanked Jefferson that advice from such a “financially disinterested man of discernment and liberality [who also] views the public benefits of the project as I do, who have lands … the value of which would be enhanced by the project”. He agreed with Jefferson that ‘from trade our citizens would not be restrained, and therefore it behooves us to place it in the most convenient channels [public-private entity], under proper regulations, freed as much as possible from those vices which luxury {Then-current phraseology for today’s inequality], the consequence of wealth and power, mutually introduces [4]. With Jefferson, Washington had enlisted a powerful, well-placed political ally, an ally who shared his “enhancement of land values conflict” and who endorsed his vision and proposed mission.
That Jefferson was on his way to France in relatively short order meant he also needed to recruit an on the scenes political ally that could “carry his project” through the policy-making process, and who could forge coalitions of support to secure its passage. The logical replacement proved to be a Jefferson friend and political protégé who replaced Jefferson as Virginia delegate to the Articles Congress in 1786: James Madison. Madison, in 1874, had just won a seat in Virginia’s lower House of Delegates. Earlier, Madison had served in the upper House (the Council of State) where he developed a financial and fiscal expertise that was critical in both future project-financing but also lent credibility within the Houses to his views. He became a close ally of Governor Jefferson at that time. Along with that Madison had acquired a competency in parliamentary and legislative processes; as such he became the “workhorse” of the Virginia legislature–a talented insider (5).
Madison, on his own, was also a western expansionist, but while he viewed access to the West as logically a first step to its settlement, his particular hot button was free navigation of the Mississippi. During the Articles period, he firmly opposed John Jay’s (northern state) position that to secure free access of the seas, it was preferable to surrender free access to the Mississippi for a period of twenty-five years–a matter which rose to the top of the Articles agenda in 1786-7. Madison was, therefore, very attuned to distinct and opposing sectional differences in regard to western expansion. Like Washington, Madison (along with James Monroe) was a land speculator; both, interestingly had purchased land in New York’s Mohawk Valley, along with family lands that made him the largest landowner in the Piedmont. His fondness for land speculation, however, did not extend to the cacophony of land grabbing schemes proposed for western lands. Like Washington he successfully pushed Virginia into ceding its western claims to the Articles in 1780–to put a speed bump in those land schemes.
Besides the issue of Washington’s disinterestedness, Washington’s early 1783 “heads up” to Jefferson and others that he wrote, also revealed the innate competitive aspect of a canal with other seaports and regions. Part of Washington’s agenda in his New York expedition was precisely to see what New York had to contend with in its canal effort. Because of the War, Washington was well aware of the central location of New York City; that and its easier crossing of the Appalachians made the “Yorkers” the rival he feared the most. The reality was each seaport served different trade routes, and weather was a negative factor for northern seaports–it is why Philadelphia was advantaged.
Certainly American coastal geography created an inherent zero-sum contest between North and South, and the further southern ports were better tied to the West Indies. That Virginia did not have a first-rung port was keenly on the mind of Virginia’s western expansion enthusiasts. Finally, true or not, “being first” was perceived as creating a sustained advantage, and jump-start sector clusters/agglomerations that, in essence could make their initial location the headquarters of the company.
Even in 1783, this was perceived as a “race”, and to some extent a zero-sum regional competition. Obviously, a national government seeking a comprehensive balanced solution would have likely put its eggs in one basket, but the Article created thirteen sovereign states, and that meant place-based economic development was put on steroids.
Washington’s 1784 Appalachian Tour
There was a lot to do before he got start digging, Washington had to get his “ducks in order”–plan the route, figure out what infrastructure was needed, and how to build it–and who was going to pay for it. Keep in mind, unlike the other rivers, the Potomac did not enjoy the luxury of having a major coastal port. The first step, in any case, was to survey the area and visually determine what went where. In modern parlance, Washington was now developing his plan, marshaling his technology, and developing his business model and budget for the entity entrusted with the task.
In early September 1784 Washington, Craik former Chief Physician of the Revolutionary Army–on Dec 12, 1799 it was Craik that administered to Washington on his deathbed, and a modest entourage of family and servants [6], which in a scaled-down manner bore some resemblance to an earlier trip to open up the Shenandoah by Virginia’s Governor Spotswood and his Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, was intended to both review his land holdings and to plot a course for his Patowmack Canal river route. The review of his land holdings included collection of past debt from residents on the lands, and presenting himself for the first time to occupants of his lands, a euphemism for evicting squatters that did not pay him his demanded rent.
The trip, on horseback, traveled over six-seven hundred miles–some estimate up to seven hundred and fifty–over five weeks through western Virginia, today’s West Virginia and Kentucky, and probably some Ohio and Pennsylvania for good measure. Washington was then 52 years old–and he in some ways considered this a vacation. His reactions, recorded in his diaries, suggest a mixed bag of impressions–more crowded, beautiful and a river and land full of opportunities, but also with a more realistic assessment of the difficulties in owning land in isolated remote western territories and in particular a questioning as to whether they could in fact yield a profit.
The story will suggest he more than met his match when he encountered the squatters and property operators. On the one hand he was firmly convinced the land was “vulnerable to going its own way”, inhabited by many who bore no special national loyalty, and who were more determined to find their own American Dream. Unless nailed down by economic relationships they could easily be attracted to Spanish or British trade opportunities, and just as easily be encouraged to set up their own independent “states”, with some measure of protection from these powers.
This was a somewhat unexpected challenge to his previous mode of real estate development and land acquisition–and a complication of major consequence to his personal quest for financial stability and profits from his land holdings. Literally, in the middle of his trip, Washington had to deal (1) with a grist mill he owned that was a losing proposition, and more critically (2) to a collection of squatters who would not give-an-inch to the commander-in-chief, and left him so upset, and dumb-founded, he canceled the remainder of the trip and turned back to go home.
That crisis demands a mini-case study within our larger tale. This min-case study offers the reader an insight into topics, issues, and “questions” that will dominate over fifty future modules, as such it is a good deal of this volume’s history in microcosm. In this case study the reader will see the impact of political culture/migrations, and see on-the-ground the divergent versions of the American Dream that produced the elite-populist dimension that will consume our next chapters, it will shed insight into the clash between the future Federalist and Democrat-Republican Tribes, and from it the reader can see the seed of rural community development clashing with Mainstream Economic Development.
In this vignette we see an early direct, one-on one encounter with individuals and groups belonging to an economic “class” (in an era where classes as we know them did not yet exist). These individuals were central to his rationale for the Patowmack western settlement strategy, they were also core to his real estate and wealth creation strategy–and in a few short years would be the centerpiece of his involvement in creating our Early Republic and its 1789 Constitution. The men and women he met, negotiated with, and felt humiliated by were immigrants or their offspring that would form the mass of his western settlers, and the core of Americans first agricultural economic base. They also, in the democracy he helped establish , would be a huge block of actual or potential voting citizens. These people to him were “the Mob”.
A word–lots of them–to the reader regarding this “Mob”, notice the capitalization. It did not mean then what it means now–although it is very clear “they” are regarded as very different from people (elites) like Washington. Capitalism had not evolved sufficiently to firm up a class structure that corresponded to Marx’s 1860 classification, and for that matter capitalism itself had not sufficiently matured to classify its own varieties of capitalists, and had importantly had just barely commenced what we call industrial capitalism–and that had yet to be transferred to America. What were formerly serfs, subsistence freeholders, and the horde of these folk that were fleeing in large numbers to form British cities were what I charitably call “the masses”
They were at best only on the margins of English democracy at this time (citizens with some “rights” but in no serious way “empowered”. Many, particularly those who were American immigrants, were essentially dispossessed from the English agricultural economic base, and were for all practical purposes trying to create some borderland niche where they could develop a new start in the New World, the first step in which was a new agricultural homestead. Those of these ilk who settled in the city–Philadelphia being the closest to George Washington, were working class, indentured or former indentured–and the underclass of that city’s urban community. In personality, advocation, lifestyle, and political culture they were light years distant from the royalist Tidewater political culture of our First President. When he deals with them in the below case study it is likely he had a hard time understanding their dialect and vocabulary–and he violently disagreed with their concept of property and even the role of law. It is not hard to input into his use of “the Mob” some disparaging attitudes, fears, and stereotypes. In some ways George Washington feared the Mob–but one cannot ignore the future: he not only helped build, but he led a democracy that included them.
So what does this “Mob” mean in the 1780’s. I have read at least one source (which I cannot locate) which asserted the word in an abbreviation of the Mobiles, people in movement. Whether this be correct, I do not know but I do find this interpretation useful, heuristic and at least suggestive. In later chapters we shall find that colonial policy systems had devised laws and practices which defined their version of each province’s colonial democracy. Those citizens–residents of their jurisdiction who owned a certain measure of property, and who had made a commitment to a jurisdiction by residing in it for a period of time, or paid taxes in that jurisdiction were those that were afforded the voting franchise (recognizing of course, women and slaves (also indentured servants) as well as “aliens (mostly Germans) could not vote period).
Property ownership and residency (plus age, freed status, naturalization and sex notwithstanding) gained one entrance into the policy system; they were empowered in our Early Republic democracy. They, it will be repeated endlessly in the literature of the day HAD A STAKE IN THAT POLITICAL SYSTEM. Without a stake no empowerment.
In this sense, the members of “the Mob” became voting citizens when they ceased to be mobile, settled down to such an extent they established household and residence in a political jurisdiction. In this module George Washington was meeting with and dealing with Mob that had settled down, and in so doing took what thought to be his owned land. To Washington their homestead was on stolen land. With some irony, I leave the reader with this observation “Oh what a revolting development” this must have been. This train of thought will be a serious and crucial topic in our economic development history, and for that matter in the evolution of American democracy. We see below how Washington dealt with his Scots Irish Mob.
George Washington meets the Scots-Irish Squatters—In the early Virginia days of the trip, Washington was received as the hero he was in many of the small settlements into which he wandered. He particularly enjoyed himself at Bath, Virginia, a story we shall tell in the next module. He noticed throughout that the western wilderness was not as vacant as he remembered from the good old pre-Revolutionary War days; lands formerly vacant were now “settled” with new immigrants who had built what passed for their homestead, cleared fields and set up a hardscrabble farms. Most of these new “residents” were simply squatters, and to Washington they owed him rent–a reason for his trip after all was to improve his lands as an income source. Thus far on the way, he dealt, firmly, if not harshly, with squatters on his lands–compelling them to come to terms on what they owed. About mid-way on the trip, things changed dramatically.
When he reached western Pennsylvania lands (Washington’s Bottom and Miller’s Run near Pittsburgh) that William Crawford had acquired on his behalf in 1770, where Washington’s largest grist mill was located, Washington realized he was facing an existential crisis. First, the grist mill was rented by a Scots-Irishman Washington thought to be not only “stupid” but a crook who had defrauded him for eight years. Realizing he could not get blood from the turnip, he fired the stupid and crooked operator.
Next he recognized the investment had very poor prospects so he determined to sell it on the spot to the best bidder at auction. On auction day lots of folk showed up and Washington saw genuine interest–except when bidding started there were no, zero, bids. Crest-fallen Washington went back to his cabin; waiting there was a bidder: the previous, now fired, grist mill operator, with a low bid indeed. Washington accepted it.
So that didn’t go well. Just down the road a few miles were more parcels that had been squatted on by a medium-sized group of Scots-Irish “Seceders” a Presbyterian sect (also known as “Coventanters, Scottish, 1640, resisters against Charles I who taxed them without their consent). No sooner having made his deal with the grist mill operator, a bunch of these Scots-Irish knocked on his door. They heard he claimed their land and they wanted to “talk”. In his diary Washington described the “discussion”: “they came here to set forth their pretensions to [my land] & enquire into my right [to own the land]. After much conversation & attempts [by] them to discover all the flaws they could in my Deed … and to establish a fair and upright intention in themselves [why they were the land owners]; and after much Councelling {discussion] among themselves … they resolved (as all who lived on the land were not there) to give me their definitive determination when I should come to the Land [in question myself] [7]. Washington agreed to a meeting and they set a date.
At this point the existential crisis hits our commander-in-chief, and we shall see how he reacts. The discussion had made it apparent to Washington that (1) his claims to the Land were legally thin–although he had paid thousands of pounds for it, Crawford had probably not surveyed it, nor had he filed clear claims and obtained undisputed legal title. Crawford was dead; slow-roasted alive after having been captured by Indians in a raid. The documentation in Washington’s possession was at best incomplete.
Moreover, the peasants, sorry Scots-Irish, were well aware that British law, the Proclamation Line, made any legal filings impossible–even if filed the claim was illegal in the first place. Against Washington’s claim the settlers cited Pennsylvania law that conveyed squatters the right to own the land they squatted upon, if they “improved it”, which they indisputably had. They had invited Washington to see for himself and when he got there they invited him in for a dinner.
Miller’s Run was dotted with hardscrabble homesteads. Washington’s legal claims for land ownership, valid from his perspective but thin on the documentation and underlying law contrasted sharply what what we today call “sweat equity” as a right to home ownership. Washington was an absentee landlord with a paper title and they through sweat equity owned it [8]. Most of the squatters had been resident on the property for over a decade; the “ringleader” had been resident for thirteen years. At the second meeting in Miller’s Run, after some further discussion, offers and counter-offers, both sides came to an impasse. Washington was furious at this challenge; he countered that he had his own “sweat equity”, he had scouted out the land himself, hired Crawford and paid him, conscientiously filled claim and had real documentation–and then he had risked it all in leading for eight years the American Revolution in battle. The land was legally his, and he had earned it. He took out a red silk handkerchief and held it aloft saying “ Gentlemen I will have this land just as surely as I now have this handkerchief” [9]. The Scots-Irish called his bluff.
Washington asked individually each of the families there to accept his offer; one by one they refused. Washington left in a huff, and when got back to his camp declared the expedition a failure, and ordered everyone to turn around and head home. he would stop only to seek out legal counsel, skilled in Pennsylvania frontier law and hire him to start legal proceedings. Indeed, they turned around and soon found such a counsel, who compounded matters by accepting the commission, but told Washington he had an uphill battle–unless he could find more definitive legal basis for his ownership of the land.
In a matter of a few days, Washington’s land development empire was in serious question, both legally, and because the grist mill episode made a serious dent on whether one could make profits out of land renting or ownership in the West. The case went to the courts and was heard two years later, October 24th 1786–and two days later the jury rendered its verdict. If the reader wants to know the outcome, he and she is advised to read the following footnote [10]
Washington Finds a Route to Make his Canal Operable to the Ohio–Still hot under the collar, but exceedingly troubled as to the fate of his land holdings–and his personal wealth, Washington headed back home to Mount Vernon with his entourage. When he reached Beesons Town (today’s Uniontown Pennsylvania), about fifty miles and several days travel, Washington met a renown Indian fighter and close friend of our slow-roasted William Crawford, Captain Hardin. Hardin who would soon be tomahawked himself spent a night conversing with Washington. Whatever else was discussed, Washington recorded in his Diary: “At Beason Town I met with Captn Hardin who informed me … that the West fork of the Monongahela communicates very nearly with the waters of the Little Kanahawa–that the Portage does not exceed nine miles and that a very good Waggon Road may be had between” [11].
In an instant, Washington realized he had found his connection from the Potomac to the Ohio River–and from the Ohio, the Mississippi and maybe the Great Lakes. With his land development empire in flux, Washington pivoted immediately away from land development to his canal and river navigation strategy.
It appears the conversation with Hardin got Washington’s juices flowing again, for he decided suddenly that he wouldn’t go home after all. Nor would he head west [as was originally scheduled]. He would simply explore. He would go off-road, into the backcountry of the backcountry, to places, even an old woodsmen like himself had never been. He’d go where there were no people [12].
Essentially what Hardin had suggested was there were “shortcuts” that connected the eastern coastal rivers to the western Ohio and Mississippi River systems. Short portages and roads could be constructed to cross the mountain heights that would allow access to the western river systems. Washington’s vision of opening up the east of the Mississippi from the Virginia/Chesapeake coast, up the Potomac and James to the tops of the Appalachians and over roads to the major trans-Appalachian river systems would be possible.
Washington sent Craik and his baggage back home, and Washington with a couple of servants and his nephew headed into unknown territory to confirm if this suggestion was real, and practical. He reached his starting point on September 23rd around present-day Morgantown West Virginia. At that point, he had to uncover the trail or opening that would lead to the Potomac headwaters. Around Morgantown, in late September, Washington held a meeting, a planning session, at a minuscule tavern in a minuscule community called George’s Creek deep in the Appalachians.
In the evening, a small crowd gathered at the tavern, which was also the area’s land agent’s office (and home). Local hunters and surveyors were invited (they knew the area best), and there Washington interviewed each and discussed the route and the features of the terrain that were salient to his purposes. The meeting room was very cramped, and only Washington behind a table was seated. All sorts of ideas were thrown out as to where the path to the Potomac lay. Washington at the table tried to develop his own rude map.
No consensus seemed to emerge, and discussion was going in circles when a young impatient surveyor loudly spoke out in a French-German accent that he knew the only feasible route. he had been surveying the area for almost a year, and impetuously injected himself into the debate. Claiming with some petulance there was, despite all the babblings beforehand, there was really only one route possible; he outlined it verbally. When Washington expressed skepticism, the young surveyor pushed back: “Oh, [the route} is plain enough”, detailing his proposed route to a clearly put-upon Washington.
It is related that Washington put down his pen, stared back angrily, generating further discussion among the attendees thinking the General had rejected it. After a short while, a pensive Washington put down his pen, turned to the young surveyor and simply said “You are right, sir“.
After sleeping in the tavern for the night, the next morning, Washington offered the surveyor a job to manage his western Virginia landholdings, which the surveyor turned down. Martin Doyle and Joel Achenbach add further detail to the episode [13]. The surveyor, a recent Swiss five foot four, skinny, twenty-three year old immigrant, had made his way into the interior to survey for his own land purchases which would be critical for roads and river-borne access. His intent, like Washington’s, was to buy it beforehand, and have it ready and waiting for future sale. The surveyor was Albert Gallatin.
Albert Gallatin sixteen years later became the Democratic-Republican Secretary of the Treasury (Jefferson, Madison, de facto COO, for fourteen-years 1801-1814), served on the 1812-ending Treaty of Ghent, and founder of Monroe’s the Second Bank of the United States. Gallatin’s future role in American S&L ED is substantial–his will be the nation’s first federal/national level economic development plan–a plan that specified the various trans-Appalachian passages into the Midwest from New York to South Carolina and committed the federal government to be a partner in each. We will return to Gallatin in future modules.
Following Gallatin’s path to the rivers, Washington again broke up his party, and likely alone or with only one other servant, he then proceeded into some of the roughest unsettled tops of mountain ranges that had to be crossed if eastern rivers were to be connected to western rivers. The weather turned bad as early October in the Appalachians carried the first real winter-like conditions. The trip was brutal, at least by my standards, and there were dead ends, including a forty foot falls that “affords no navigation at all”. With food in short supply and no tents, he was able to convince himself that a road could be hacked.
On the mountain he found a German family, the Friends, who told him there were no water routes across the top that would accommodate boats carrying cargo–but he did concede a road was feasible-about twenty-two miles long he figured. That road would reach the headwaters of the Ohio River. So Washington pressed on to check it out. He ran into a hunter and the two figured out how to cut two miles off the road.
Satisfied the western rivers were accessible he turned east down the Appalachian mountainside heading for the Potomac, finding a major creek (Patterson’s Creek) deep enough for a pole boat with cargo. That creek came out on the south bank of the great Potomac. The two river systems could be connected. With his vision of western navigation and access to bind the nation together secured in a plan to cross the Appalachian Mountains, Washington headed home. The journey had taken thirty-five days, and by his reckoning was 680 miles.
Segue Way
From this point on, Washington is a man with a mission. He is fully committed to building a canal that carries people, settlers, and cargo, hopefully to the shores of Lake Erie and the banks of the Mississippi River–a canal that will tie together settlers who are not yet fully American, and will tie them together in a west to east economic base whose global trade flows out of East Coast port cities–principally the one he will create in Alexandria. River access, ports, canals, portage roads are in his front seat, and city/town-building, manufacturing, and yes land sales, are in the back seats of his mind. he will drive this strategy framework down the path to the Constitution, the formation of a Federalist Tribe to carry it out, and into his two Early Republic presidential administrations. The best living testimony of that is Washington D.C. His greatest future failure, the canal itself, which shall be built and continue in operation well into the late 1820’s, but will ultimately fail in large measure because its development was beyond the capacity and will of Virginia’s policy system and its ruling plantation elites. It will also fail because America could not forge and implement a innovation policy that would permit Washington’s marine innovation to develop in time. What marine innovation, you ask? That is our next module, read on.
At one of his first stops in the Shenandoah on his western expedition, he spent some time in a heavily advertised resort and spa getaway for Virginia’s more prosperous element: the town of Bath (no pun intended by me, not sure about them). Washington had a full agenda of business and vision-testing at Bath, and in the evening he went down to the bar in the tavern in which he stayed. Over a drink or two he heard a tale of woe and dreams from the bartender/tavern owner (I thought it went the other way around), and as Woody Guthrie later said about a hit song he got while drinking at remote rural bar (“City of New Orleans”) it was among the best beers he ever drank.
That story involves a saga so critical and interesting that it will be pulled apart from this module and given its own module that follows. It is a story of innovation, venture capital, and a technology that crosses the ocean to the UK, France, and even Philadelphia. That innovation, if successful, would make all the dreams he ever dreamed about the Patowmack project possible. BTW, there is in Bath a today a rock bath in which Washington is claimed to have bathed. Also, BTW, Washington hired the barkeep, and made him Executive Director of the Patowmack Canal project.
Footnotes
[1] John E. Ferling, The First of Men, pp. 332-3; http://threerivershms.com/washington.htm, also cited in John Seelye, Beautiful Machine: Rivers and the Republican Plan, 1755-1825 (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 59-60
[2] Quoted from Washington and Jefferson correspondence by Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: the Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation (W. W. Norton, 2005), p. 64.
[3] Quoted from Washington and Jefferson correspondence by Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, p.70.
[4] Joseph Dorfman, the Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606-1865, Volume I (Viking Press, 1946), pp. 249-50. March 29, 1784 letter to Jefferson, included in Washington’s Writings, XXVII, October 10, 1784, pp. 373-7.
[5] https://millercenter.org/president/madison/life-before-the-presidency
[6] John E. Ferling, The First of Men, p. 336.
[7] Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac, and the Race to the West (Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 95
[8] Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea, pp. 95-100
[9] Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea, p. 99
[10] [10] Washington had hired the best Pennsylvania frontier lawyer he could find, Thomas Smith. The Seceders hired Hugh Henry Brackenridge, the editor of the only newspaper printed in the western territories, Princeton educated and a close friend of James Madison and Phillip Freneau (they were roommates at Princeton), and in 1786 elected to the state legislature. Washington personally developed his evidence and claim, and wrote a detailed set of counter-arguments that could be made against his claim. He then demanded his lawyer upon victory to immediately evict the squatters, and then commence personal suits on each of them for twelve years of rent and costs. He also demanded that he be present at the trial, and the date should be set to allow him to be there. Thomas Smith wrote back and over the following months was able to get Washington to back down on the personal lawsuits, as it might prejudice the following squatter trials. As time passed, the frontier tempest we know as Shays Rebellion captured the headlines, and as we shall discover in our Pennsylvania chapter, the Pennsylvania state legislature was taken over by populist legislators–events were not moving in the direction favorable to Washington’s position. Achenbach wonders whether Washington, a determined and vocal opponent of Shays Rebellion who consider the attack by “the Mob” as a threat to American liberty and democracy. The case was heard without Washington present–he was ill, or so he claimed. The Judge was Thomas McKean, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania–delegate to the Stamp Act Congress and both Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, veteran of the Continental Army, a key author of the Constitution of the Articles of Confederation, President of the Articles of Confederation, and a founder of the state of Delaware. Somewhere along the line, McKean most likely had met and dealt with Washington–you think? One might wonder how and why Pennsylvania’s Chief Justice presided over the case. Each individual homesteader was individually sued, and Smith arranged for the ringleader (who had the strongest case against Washington) should be first tried. During the trial the Presiding Judge made a determination that improvements made by the defendants on the land were not admissible–voiding the application of Pennsylvania law. The trial lasted two days, and Smith feared genuinely he had lost, but unexpectedly the jury rendered a verdict in favor of the General, against their neighbors. The remaining cases were consolidated and in a second trial Washington was again victorious. The homesteaders were promptly removed from the property if they refused to become renters. Several squatters secured land adjacent to Washington’s parcels and established a new homestead; all the others moved on into history. It appears the crops had been planted and were, in October, ready for harvest. Brackenridge asked they be permitted to harvest–but that was not granted. Washington sold the land and seemingly made a profit from it, but the new owner defaulted–and the land returned to Washington and showed up on the inventory of his estate when he died. [See Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac, and the Race to the West (Simon & Schuster, 2004), pp. 144-150
This “judge” was not just a judge on circuit. McKean became a Federalist, He attended the Whiskey Rebellion (Judicial) Conference and urged moderation from Washington. In 1796, with Washington out of office, he transferred his political allegiance to Jefferson’s Democrat-Republican Party. Elected as D-R, he served three terms as Governor. He retired very wealthy, with most of his wealth derived from land speculation. As to any relation to Washington, one can offer the rather cynical comment that as President of the Articles of Confederation, if Washington had accepted a paycheck, it would have been authorized by McKean–if there were any single authority in the Articles that could be considered Washington’s “boss” as commander-in-chief, it would have been the President of the Articles. Brackenridge made a career in law defending squatters against absentee landlords, and editing his newspaper. By 1788 he no longer considered himself as attached to the Federalist Tribe. He served as a moderate force during the 1796 Whiskey Rebellion, trying to find common ground. At the end of that Rebellion, he formally joined the D-R Tribe. Upon his election, Governor McKean appointed Brackenridge as a justice to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court–which he held until he died. He was a founder of the University of Pittsburgh, well-respected author of very successful books, and his son became one of America’s Early Republic landscape and oil painter.
[11}Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea, p. 112
[12] Joel Achenbach, the Grand Idea, p. 112
[13] Martin Doyle, the Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Rivers (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), pp 20-1.