The American continent, west of the mountains and south of the Great Lakes, is traversed in all directions by the Mississippi and its tributaries, but we may confine our attention to two systems of watercourses, the one to the west, forming by the Wisconsin and the main arm of the Mississippi, a thoroughfare from Lake Michigan to the Gulf; and the other by French Creek and the Allegheny, broken only by one easy portage, affording a perfect means of access to the Ohio, a river which has always operated as the line of cleavage between our northern and southern States. The French starting from Quebec floated from Lake Erie down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, the English ascended the Potomac to Cumberland, and thence, following the most practicable watercourses, advanced on the French position at the junction of the Allegheny and the Monongahela. There Washington met and fought them in 1754, and ever after Washington maintained that the only method by which a stable union among the colonies could be secured was by a main trunk system of transportation along the line of the Ohio and the Potomac. This was to be his canal which should bind north and south, east and west, together by a common interest, and which should carry the produce of the west, north, and south, to the Atlantic coast, where it should be discharged at the head of deep-water navigation, and which should thus stimulate industry adjacent to the spot he chose for the Federal City, or, in our language, for the City of Washington. Thus the capital of the United States was to become the capital of a true nation, not as a political compromise, but because it lay at the central point of a community made cohesive by a social circulation which should build it up, in his own words, into a capital, or national heart, if not “as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.” [Footnote: Washington to Mrs. Fairfax, 16 May, 1798; Sparks, xi, 233.] Maryland and Virginia abounded, as Washington well knew, in coal and iron. His canal passing through this region would stimulate industry, and these States would thus become the focus of exchanges. Manufacturing is incompatible with slavery, hence slavery would gradually and peacefully disappear, and the extremities of the Union would be drawn together at what he described as “the great emporium of the United States.” To crown all, a national university was to make this emporium powerful in collective thought. Doubtless Grenville and Townshend had not considered the American problem as maturely as had Washington, but nevertheless, most well-informed persons now agree that Englishmen in 1763 were quite alive to the advantages which would accrue to Great Britain, by holding in absolute control a rich but incoherent body of colonies whose administrative centre lay in England, and were as anxious that London should serve as the heart of America as Washington was that America should have its heart on the Potomac.