I am led here to remark that in the War of Independency many officers who were otherwise competent failed because of drunkenness, and, indeed, at Germantown this was one cause of our losing the battle. When it became needful after St. Clair’s defeat in 1791 to appoint general officers, I furnished my cabinet with a statement of the names and characters of such officers as, having served under me, I knew should be considered. As concerned most of them, I found it well to state whether or not they were addicted to spirits, so common was this practice. It seems very remarkable that so few gentlemen should have foreseen what was plain to the trappers and dealers in furs. All of the Ohio country was claimed by both French and English. The Indians, although cheated and made drunk, were still in possession of the woods they considered to be their own. Virginia claimed what Pennsylvania, and even Connecticut, said was theirs; Pennsylvania was reaping the only harvest of the wilderness, of the value of some fifty thousand pounds a year, the trade in furs; last of all, in 1749, some enterprising gentlemen in England and Virginia planned the Ohio Company, meaning to colonize even north of the Ohio. When Mr. Thomas Lee, president of the council, died, my brother Lawrence became the head of the Ohio Company, and all of this, as I now see, had much to do with the next change in my life. I find it pleasant again to dwell here on the good sense and liberal spirit of my brother, who, had his life been spared, would surely have been chosen to do that which has fallen to me. His character is well seen in his desire that the Dutch from Pennsylvania, whom he invited as settlers, being dissenters and having come into the jurisdiction of Virginia, should not be forced to pay parish rates and support clergymen of the Church of England, as all dissenters were obliged to do. He urged that restraints of conscience were cruel, and injurious to the country imposing them, and he wrote: I may quote as example England, Holland, and Prussia, and, much more, Pennsylvania, which has flourished under that delightful liberty, so as to become the admiration of every man who considers the short time it has been settled, whereas Virginia has increased by slow degrees, although much older. There, on our borders, as Lord Fairfax said, was much powder, and only one spark needed to set it off. Meanwhile Mr. Gist set out to survey the grant of the Ohio Company, on the south side of the Ohio River, all of which was greatly to concern my life.