against the
Kentuckians. But suppose that either or both of these powers, who were
then extremely jealous of the growth and expansion of the new republic,
should hold forth commercial advantages and inducements to the western
people? What then would be the result? What then the prospect of binding
any new states to be formed out of this western territory in the
interest of the federal union?

With all these great questions revolving in his mind, we see the father
of his country again on horseback in the year 1784, traversing six
hundred and eighty miles of mountain wilderness in Pennsylvania and
Virginia and examining the headwaters of the inland streams. He made
every inquiry possible, touching the western country, examined every
traveler and explorer who claimed to have any knowledge of its
watercourses and routes of travel, and after spending thirty-three days
of fatiguing travel in the saddle, he returned to his home and made a
report of his observations to Governor Harrison of Virginia. His remarks
on the western country are so highly interesting and important, and
manifest such a deep and profound interest in the future welfare of the
western world, as to call for the following quotations:

"I need not remark to you that the flanks and rear of the United States
are possessed by great powers, and formidable ones, too; nor how
necessary it is to apply the cement of interest to bind all parts of
the Union together by indissoluble bonds, especially that part of it,
which lies immediately west of us, with the middle states. For what
ties, let me ask, should we have upon these people? How entirely
unconnected with them shall we be, and what troubles may we not
apprehend, if the Spaniards on their right, and Great Britain on their
left, instead of throwing stumbling-blocks in their way, as they now do,
should hold out lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get
strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from the
emigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predilection
towards us, as well as from the removal of our own citizens), will be
the consequence of their having formed close connections with both or
either of those powers, in a commercial way? It needs not, in my
opinion, the gift of prophecy to foretell."

"The western states (I speak now from my own observation) stand as it
were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather will turn them any way. They
have looked down the Mississip