e 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. I have ever been of opinion
that the true policy of the Atlantic States, instead of contending
prematurely for the free navigation of that river (which eventually,
and perhaps as soon as it will be our true interest to obtain it, must
happen), would be to open and improve the natural communications
with the western country." The event justified his sagacity in all
respects, for the bickerings went on until the United States were able
to compel Spain to give what was wanted to the western communities,
which by that time had been firmly bound to those of the Atlantic
coast.

Much as Washington thought about holding fast the western country,
there was yet one idea that overruled it as well as all others. There
was one plan which he knew would be a quick solution of the dangers
and difficulties for which inland navigation and trade connections
were at best but palliatives. He had learned by bitter experience, as
no other man had learned, the vital need and value of union. He felt
it as soon as he took command of the army, and it rode like black care
behind him from Cambridge to Yorktown. He had hoped something from the
confederation, but he soon saw that it was as worthless as the utter
lack of system which it replaced, and amounted merely to substituting
one kind of impotence and confusion for another. Others might be
deceived by phrases as to nationality and a general government, but
he had dwelt among hard facts, and he knew that these things did not
exist. He knew that what passed for them, stood in their place and
wore their semblance, were merely temporary creations born of the
common danger, and doomed, when the pressure of war was gone, to fall
to pieces in imbecility and inertness. To the lack of a proper
union, which meant to his mind national and energetic government, he
attributed the failures of the campaigns, the long-drawn miseries, and
in a word the needless prolongation of the Revolution. He saw, too,
that what had been so nearly ruinous in war would be absolutely so in
peace, and before the treaty was actually signed he had begun to call
attention to the great question on the right settlement of which the
future of the country depended.

To Hamilton he wrote on March 4, 1783: "It is clearly my opinion,