ans agreeable to that enterprising people.

His own policy about the Mississippi, which has already been
described, never wavered. He meant to have the great river, for his
ideas of the empire of the future were quite as extended as those of
the pioneers, and much more definite, but his way of getting it was
to build up the Atlantic States and bind them, with their established
resources, to the settlers over the mountains. This done, time would
do the rest; and the sequel showed that he was right. A little more
than a year after he came to the presidency he wrote to Lafayette:
"Gradually recovering from the distresses in which the war left us,
patiently advancing in our task of civil government, unentangled in
the crooked politics of Europe, _wanting scarcely anything but the
free navigation of the Mississippi, which we must have, and as
certainly shall have, if we remain a nation_,"[1] etc.

[Footnote 1: The italics are mine.]

Time and peace, sufficient for the up-building of the nation, that is
the theme everywhere. Yet he knew that a sacrifice of everything for
peace was the surest road both to war and ruin. Peace must be kept;
yet war was still the last resort, and he was ready to go to war with
the Spaniards, as with the Indians, if all else failed. But he did
not mean to have all else fail, nor did he mean to submit to Spanish
insolence and exactions. The grievances of the pioneers of the West
were to be removed, if possible, by treaty, and if that way was
impossible, then by fighting.

Carmichael, who had been minister at Madrid under the confederation,
had been continued there by the new government. But while the
intrigues of Spain to detach Kentucky, and the interference and
exactions of Spanish officials, went on, our negotiation for the
settlement of our rights to the navigation of the Mississippi halted.
Tired of this inaction, Washington, late in 1791, united William
Short, our minister to Holland, in a commission with Carmichael, to
open a fresh and special negotiation as to the Mississippi, and at
the same time a confidential agent was sent to Florida to seek some
arrangements with the governor as to fugitive slaves, a matter of
burning interest to the planters on the border. The joint commission
bore no fruit, and the troubles in the West increased. Fostered by
Genet, they came near bringing on war and detaching the western
settlements from the Union, so that it was clearly necessary to take
more v