nt behind
them, for in that direction lay the sure road to national greatness.
The first step was to bind by interest, trade, and habit of
communication the Atlantic States with the settlements beyond the
mountains, and for this he had planned canals and highways in the days
of the confederation. The next step was to remove every obstacle which
fettered the march of American settlement; and for this he rolled
back the Indian tribes, patiently negotiated with Spain until the
Mississippi was opened, and at great personal sacrifice and trial
signed the Jay treaty, and obtained the surrender of the British
posts. When Washington went out of office, the way was open to the
western movement; the dangers of disintegration by reason of foreign
intrigues on the frontier were removed; peace had been maintained; and
the national sentiment had had opportunity for rapid growth. France
had discovered that, although she had been our ally, we were not her
dependants; other nations had been brought to perceive that the United
States meant to have a foreign policy all its own; and the American
people were taught that their first duty was to be Americans and
nothing else. There is no need to comment on or to praise the
greatness of a policy with such objects and results as these. The mere
summary is enough, and it speaks for itself and for its author in a
way which makes words needless.

CHAPTER V

WASHINGTON AS A PARTY MAN

Washington was not chosen to office by a political party; he
considered parties to be perilous things, and he entered the
presidency determined to have nothing to do with them. Yet, as has
already been pointed out, he took the members of his cabinet entirely
from one of the two parties which then existed, and which had been
produced by the divisions over the Constitution and its adoption. To
this charge he would no doubt have replied that the parties caused
by the constitutional differences had ceased to exist when that
instrument went into operation, and that it was to be supposed that
all men were then united in support of the government. Accepting this
view of it, it only remains to see how he fared when new and purely
political parties, as was inevitable, sprang into active life.

Whatever his own opinions may have been as to parties and
party-strife, Washington was under no delusions in regard either to
human nature or to himself, and he had no expectation that everything
he said or did would meet w