hey took from foreigners. Beyond the mountains, he
had to bring this home to men to whom American nationality was such a
dead letter that they were willing to defy their own government,
throw off their allegiance, and enlist for an offensive war under the
banners of a crazy French Girondist. It is neither easy nor pleasant
to carry out a new foreign policy in time of general war, with one's
own people united in its support; but when the foreign divisions are
repeated at home, the task is enhanced in difficulty a thousand-fold.
Nevertheless, there was the work to do, and the President faced it. He
dealt with Genet, he prevailed in public opinion on the seaboard, and
in some fashion he maintained order west of the mountains.

Washington also saw, as we can see now very plainly, that, wrong and
unpatriotic as the Kentucky attitude was, there was still an excuse
for it. Those bold pioneers, to whom the country owes so much, had
very substantial grievances. They knew nothing of the laws of nations,
and did not yet realize that they had a country and a nationality; but
they had the instincts of all great conquering races. They looked upon
the Mississippi and felt that it was of right theirs, and that it must
belong to the vast empire which they were winning from the wilderness.
They saw the mighty river held and controlled by Spaniards, and they
were harassed and interfered with by Spanish officials, whom they both
hated and despised. To men of their mould and training there was but
one solution conceivable. They must fight the Spaniard, and drive him
from the land forever. Their purposes were quite right, but their
methods were faulty. Washington, born to a life of adventure and
backwoods conquest, had a good deal of real sympathy with these men,
for he knew them to be in the main right, and his ultimate purposes
were the same as theirs. But he had a nation in his charge to whom
peace was precious. To have the backwoodsmen of Kentucky go down the
river and harry the Spaniards out of the country, as their descendants
afterwards harried the Mexicans out of Texas, would have been a
refreshing sight, but it would have interfered sadly with the nation
which was rising on the Atlantic seaboard, and of which Kentucky was a
part. War was to be avoided, and above all a war into which we should
have been dragged as the vassal of France; so Washington intended to
wait, and he managed to make the Kentuckians wait too, a process by no
me