Returning to Mount Vernon, Washington immediately penned one of the most interesting and important letters written in America during his day and generation,--"that classic, Washington's Letter to Benjamin Harrison, 1784," as it is styled in the "Old South Leaflets." In this letter he voices passionately his plea for binding a fragmentary nation together by the ties of interstate communion and commerce. His plan included the improvement of the Potomac and one of the heads of the Monongahela, and building a solid portage highway between these waterways. His chief argument was that Virginia ought to be the first in the field to secure the trade of the West; with keener foresight than any other man of his day, Washington saw that the trans-Alleghany empire would be filled with people "faster than any other ever was, or any one would imagine." Not one of all the prophecies uttered during the infancy of our Republic was more marvellously fulfilled. The various means by which this was accomplished changed more rapidly than any one could have supposed, but every change brought to pass more quickly that very marvel which he had foretold to a wondering people only half awake to its greater duty. His final argument was prophetically powerful: he had done what he could to lead his people to freedom from proprietaries and lords of trade. How free now would they be? He wrote: "No well informed Mind need be told, that the flanks and rear of the United territory are possessed by other powers, and formidable ones too--nor how necessary it is to apply the cement of interest to bind all parts of it together, by one indissoluble bond--particularly the middle states with the Country immediately back of them--for what ties let me ask, should we have upon those people; and how entirely unconnected sho{d} we be with them if the Spaniards on their right or great Britain on their left, instead of throwing stumbling blocks in their way as they now do, should invite their trade and seek alliances with them?--What, when they get strength, which will be sooner than is generally imagined (from the emigration of Foreigners who can have no predeliction for us, as well as from the removal of our own Citizens) may be the consequence of their having formed such connections and alliances, requires no uncommon foresight to predict. "The Western Settlers--from my own observation--stand as it were on a pivet--the touch of a feather would almost incline them any way--they looked down the Mississippi until the Spaniards (very impolitically I think for themselves) threw difficulties in the way, and for no other reason that I can conceive than because they glided gently down the stream, without considering perhaps the tedeousness of the voyage back, & the time necessary to perform it in;--and because they have no other means of coming to us but by a long land transportation & unimproved Roads.