GEORGE WASHINGTON wrote to Lee in June, 1786 of his vision of the extension of the "Atlantic States":

"Whenever the new States become so populous, and so extended to the westward, as really to need it, there will be no power which can deprive them of the use of the Mississippi."

The next year, while presiding at the convention of the Constitutional revolution sitting in Philadelphia, Washington said:

"My sentiments with respect to the navigation of the Mississippi have been long fixed.... I have ever been of opinion that the true policy of the Atlantic States,...would be to open and improve the natural communications with the western country."

Washington thought about gaining the western country. Yet there was one idea that over-arched it as well as all others regarding our growth as a nation. He had learned by bitter experience, what no other man had learned: the vital need and value of union as the best solution of the dangers and difficulties for which inland navigation and trade connections were at best palliatives. He had felt it as soon as he took command of the continental army; it rode like a black foreboding behind him from Cambridge to Yorktown.

Washington had hoped the Confederation could unite the colonies. However, he soon saw that it was as worthless as the utter lack of system which it replaced. The Confederation had amounted merely to substituting one kind of confusing impotence for another. Others might be deceived by phrases such as "nationality" and "general government," but be had dwelt among hard facts, and he knew that these things did not exist. Confederation was a cruel hoax.

Washington knew that what passed for "nationality" in the Confederation stood in the place of unity and only wore the semblance of general government. Such temporary creations born of common danger were doomed, when the pressure of war was gone, to fall into inert imbecility. Washington had long attributed the failures of the military campaigns, the long-drawn miseries, and in a word the needless prolongation of the original Revolution to the lack of a proper union, which meant to his mind, national and energetic government. He knew that what had been so nearly ruinous in war would be absolutely destructive chaos in peace. Before Jay's treaty recognizing independence from Britain was actually signed, Washington had already begun to call attention to the great question on which the future settlement of the country depended.

To Hamilton Washington wrote on March 4, 1783:

"It is clearly my opinion, unless Congress have powers competent to all general purposes, that the distresses we have encountered, the expense we have incurred, and the blood we have spilt, will avail us nothing."

A few weeks later, he wrote to Hamilton,

"My wish to see the union of these States established upon liberal and permanent principles, and inclination to contribute my mite in pointing out the defects of the present constitution [of the Confederation], are equally great. All my private letters have teemed with these sentiments, and whenever this topic has been the subject of conversation, I have endeavored to diffuse and enforce them."

Washington sent a circular letter to the governors of the States at the close of the war, which was as eloquent as it was forcible. It urged the necessity to create a better central government.

"With this conviction of the importance of the present crisis, silence in me would be a crime. I will therefore speak to your Excellency the language of freedom and of sincerity without disguise. ... There are four things which I humbly conceive are essential to the well-being, I may even venture to say, to the existence, of the United States, as an independent power:--

" First. An indissoluble union of the States under one federal head. "Second. A regard to public justice.

"Third. The adoption of a proper peace establishment; and,

"Fourth. The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the people of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies; to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity; and in some instances to sacrifice individual advantages to the interest of the community."

In Washington's last address to his army, he pressed the same appeal, saying:

"Although the general has so-frequently given it as his opinion, in the most public and explicit manner, unless the principles of the federal govern were properly supported, and the powers of Union increased, the honor, dignity, and justice of the nation would be lost forever; yet he cannot help repeating on this occasion so interesting a sentiment, and leaving it as his last injunction to every soldier, who may view the subject in the same serious point of light, to add his best endeavors to those of his worthy fellow-citizens towards effecting those great and valuable purposes [on] which our very existence as a nation so materially depends."

These two papers were the first strong public appeals for union as opposed to confederation. The letter to the governors argued the question elaborately, and was intended for the general public. The address to the army was simply a watchword and last general order, for the army needed no arguments to prove crying need of better government. But in seeing the need for the overthrow of the Confederation, Washington stood alone.