er hand, Pelatiah Webster, patriotic economist that he
was, decried in 1781 all schemes to "pawn" this vast westward region; he
likened such plans to "killing the goose that laid an egg every day, in
order to tear out at once all that was in her belly." He advocated the
township system of compact and regular settlement; and he argued that
any State making a cession of land would reap great benefit "from the
produce and trade" of the newly created settlements.

* Deane's plan was to grant a tract two hundred miles square at
the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi to a company on the
condition that a thousand families should be settled on it within
seven years. He added that, as this company would be in a great degree
commercial, the establishing of commerce at the junction of those large
rivers would immediately give a value to all the lands situated on or
near them.

** Paine thought that while the new State could send its exports
southward down the Mississippi, its imports must necessarily come from
the East through Chesapeake Bay because the current of the Mississippi
was too strong to be overcome by any means of navigation then known.

There were mooted many other schemes. General Rufus Putnam, for example,
advocated the Pickering or "Army" plan of occupying the West; he wanted
a fortified line to the Great Lakes, in case of war with England, and
fortifications on the Ohio and the Mississippi, in case Spain should
interrupt the national commerce on these waterways. And Thomas
Jefferson theorized in his study over the toy states of Metropotamia and
Polypotamia--brought his

...trees and houses out And planted cities all about.

But it remained for George Washington, the Virginia planter, to catch,
in something of its actual grandeur, the vision of a Republic stretching
towards the setting sun, bound and unified by paths of inland commerce.
It was Washington who traversed the long ranges of the Alleghanies,
slept in the snows of Deer Park with no covering but his greatcoat,
inquired eagerly of trapper and trader and herder concerning the courses
of the Cheat, the Monongahela, and the Little Kanawha, and who drew from
these personal explorations a clear and accurate picture of the future
trade routes by which the country could be economically, socially, and
nationally united.

Washington's experience had peculiarly fitted him to catch this vision.
Fortune had turned him westward as he left his