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EXTRACT FROM WASHINGTON'S WILL.

After stating the manner in which he became possessed of one hundred shares in the Company established for the purpose of extending the navigation of James River, and of fifty shares in the Potomac Company, he adds:

"I proceed, after this recital, for the more correct understanding of the case, to declare, that, as it has always been a source of serious regret with me to see the youth of these United States sent to foreign countries for the purposes of education, often before their minds were formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of their own; contracting, too frequently, not only habits of dissipation and extravagance, but principles unfriendly to republican government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind, which thereafter are rarely overcome; for these reasons it has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised, on a liberal scale, which would have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attachments and State prejudices, as far as the nature of things would, or indeed ought to admit, from our national councils. Looking anxiously forward to the accomplishment of so desirable an object as this is (in my estimation), my mind has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to effect the measure, than the establishment of a university in a central part of the United States, to which the youths of fortune and talents from all parts thereof might be sent for the completion of their education in all the branches of polite literature, in the arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in the principles of politics and good gov ernment; and, as a matter of infinite importance in my judgment, by associ ating with each other, and forming friendships in juvenile years, be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and habitual jealousies, which have just been mentioned, and which, when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquiet to the public mind, and pregnant with mischievous consequences to this country. Under these impressions, so fully dilated,

"I give and bequeath in perpetuity the fifty shares, which I hold in the Potomac Company (under the aforesaid acts of the legislature of Virginia), towards the endowment of a university to be established within the limits of the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the general government, if that government should incline to extend a fostering hand towards it; and until such seminary is established, and the funds arising on these shares shall be required for its support, my further will and desire is, that the profit accruing therefrom shall, whenever the dividends are made, be laid out in purchasing stock in the bank of Columbia, or some other bank, at the discretion of my executors, or by the treasurer of the United States for the time being, under the direction of Congress, provided that honorable body should patronize the measure; and the dividends proceeding from the purchase of such stock are to be invested in more stock, and so on until a sum adequate to the accomplishment of the object is obtained, of which I have not the smallest doubt before many years pass away, even if no aid or encouragement is given by legislative authority, or from any other source.

"The hundred shares, which I hold in the James River Company, I have given, and now confirm, in perpetuity, to and for the use and benefit of Liberty Hall Academy, in the county of Rockbridge, in the commonwealth of Virginia."

Washington's letter to Governor Harrison is here published as perhaps the best illustration of Washington's interest in the opening of the great West and as the document which may best serve as a basis for the study of

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that important side of Washington's thought and service. Washington's interest in the western country began as early as 1749, when his brothers, Lawrence and Augustine Washington, became members, and Lawrence the chief manager, of the Ohio Company, formed in Virginia that year for the colonization of the Ohio country the first scheme for the settlement of the West by Englishmen. See account of the Ohio Company in Sparks's edition of Washington's Writings, ii, 478. Washington's letter to Governor Dinwiddie, Oct. 17, 1753, with his remark that "a pusillanimous behavior would ill suit the times," and his Journal of a Tour to the Ohio in 1753, published in Williamsburg and London in 1754, after his visit to the French posts on the Alleghany (see Ford's edition of Washington's Writings, i, 9), show his early realization of the importance of the struggle between France and England for the possession of the great West. No other Virginian took so important active part in that struggle. At the close of the French war he received 5,000 acres on the Ohio, his claim as an officer for services in the war; and he possessed himself of other claims to a large extent, so that at one time he controlled over 60,000 acres on the Ohio. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was probably the largest owner of western lands in America. His advertisement in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser of August 20, 1773, is an interesting indication of his efforts for the settlement of these lands. See the Washington-Crawford Letters Concerning Western Lands, edited by C. W. Butterfield. Crawford was the surveyor employed by Washington on the Ohio. These letters, says Professor Herbert B. Adams (see his paper on Washington's Interest in Western Lands, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in History, third series, No. i), "throw a strong light upon the enterprising nature of that man who was, assuredly, 'first in peace,' and who, even if the Revolution had not broken out, would have become the most active and representative spirit in American affairs. Washington's plans for the colonization of his western lands, by importing Germans from the Palatinate, are but an index of the direction his business pursuits might have taken, had not duty called him to command the Army and afterwards to head the State." See Washington's letter to the Countess of Huntingdon, Feb. 27, 1785 (Sparks, ix, 98, -see also note to letter to Richard Henry Lee, p. 92), in relation to her scheme for missionary work among the Indians in the West, for reference to his possession of these Ohio lands at that time; also the schedule attached to his will. The Journal of his own tour to the Ohio in 1770, to inspect these lands, should be read for the impressions of the western country recorded in it.

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In a letter to Thomas Johnson, the first state-governor of Maryland, dated July 20, 1770, Washington suggested that the opening up of the Potomac be recommended to public notice upon a more enlarged plan, as a means of becoming the channel of conveyance of the extensive and valuable trade of a rising empire;" and he became the principal mover of a bill for the incorporation of a company to attempt the extension of the navigation of the Potomac (see his reference to this in his letter to Jefferson, above). Fifteen years before this he had recommended the construction of a military road to the Ohio. His first thought at the close of the Revolution was of the importance of establishing good communication with the West. Even before peace was definitely declared, he left the camp at Newburg and, at great personal risk, explored on horseback the Mohaw route (see his account of this trip in his letter to the Chevalier de Chastellux, above, Oct. 12, 1783). "Prompted by these actual observations," he says, "I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand

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Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them! I shall not rest contented until I have explored the western country, and traversed those rivers (or a great part of them) which have given bounds to a new empire. Three months after his return to Mount Vernon, he wrote the letter to Jefferson, given above. On the 1st of September, he started on an exploring tour to the head waters of the Ohio, traveling nearly 700 miles on horseback, writing a careful journal, making careful maps, and selecting routes which have since become substantially the lines of the branches of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. The first result of this tour was the letter to Governor Harrison, here printed, Oct. 10, 1784. The next result was the Potomac Company, organized in 1785, with Washington as its first president. See Pickell's A New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington, for a full history of the Potomac Company; also Andrew Stewart's Report on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, in 1826 — containing many striking observations of Washington to members of Congress on the importance of opening up the West and binding the sections of the country firmly together; and various letters to Richard Henry Lee and others in 1784 and 1785 (Sparks, ix). For Washington's interest in the Ordinance of 1787 and his services in behalf of General Rufus Putnam and the Ohio Company, in the settlement of Marietta and the organization of the Northwest territory, see Cone's Life of Rufus Putnam, the Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, and the St. Clair Papers. Read his warning against jealousies and differences between the East and the West, in the Farewell Address. The whole history of Washington's interest in the West, his earnest efforts for its opening and its settlement by men of character, and his visions of its future, show him to have been in this great matter the most far-sighted and sagacious man of his time.

Benjamin Harrison, Governor of Virginia in 1784, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was the father of William Henry Harrison, and great-grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States in 1889. Washington's letter of January 22, 1785, to Harrison, also included in the present leaflet, was in acknowledgment of a letter from the Governor, informing him of the vote of the Virginia Assembly complimenting him with fifty shares in the Potomac Company and one hundred in the James River Company, in recognition of the great advantage to the State which his influence and services in behalf of these schemes had been (see notes in Sparks, ix, 83, 85). Washington, in deference to the kind public feeling, finally consented to receive the shares, with the understanding that they should be applied to such public interests as he might direct. The James River stock he donated to Liberty Hall Academy, at Lexington, Va., which in consideration of this endowment was then named Washington College, and is now, since the presidency of Gen. Robert E. Lee after the civil war and his death there, known as Washington and Lee University (see art. on Washington and Lee University, in appendix to Professor Herbert B. Adams's monograph on Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, published by the U. S. Bureau of Education). The Potomac stock, which unhappily never became productive, he left in his will (see extract, above) toward the endowment of a National University, which he hoped would be established at Washington under the auspices of the general government. He believed that a plan for such a university at the national capital should be "devised on a liberal scale," and that it "would have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attachments and State prejudices, as far as the nature of things would or indeed ought to admit, from our national councils." He especially mentions "the principles of politics and good government" as among those things with which such an institution should

concern itself. This project of a National University was one of Washington's favorite projects in his last years (see letters to John Adams, Jefferson and others, in Sparks, xi, 1-23; see also chapter on the subject in Professor Herbert B. Adams's pamphlet in the Johns Hopkins Studies, iii, I, quoted above, and his address of Feb. 22, 1889, on The Encouragement of Higher Education). He desired to incorporate a clause concerning it in his Farewell Address (see letters in Binney's Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address, pp. 63, 64), but was persuaded by Hamilton to urge the matter instead in his last speech to Congress (see the same in Sparks, xii, 71). The whole subject of Washington's interest in education should receive more careful attention than it has received. It is of the highest interest that he should have appropriated to these two important educational causes the shares which came to him for his services in opening up the great West.

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CAPTAIN JOHN DE VERRAZZANO TO HIS MOST SERENE MAJESTY, THE KING OF FRANCE, WRITES:

Since the tempests which we encountered on the northern coasts, I have not written to your most Serene and Christian Majesty concerning the four ships sent out by your orders on the ocean to discover new lands, because I thought you must have been before apprized of all that had happened to us- - that we had been compelled by the impetuous violence of the winds to put into Britany in distress with only the two ships Normandy and Dolphin; and that after having repaired these ships, we made a cruise in them, well armed, along the coast of Spain, as your Majesty must have heard, and also of our new plan of continuing our begun voyage with the Dolphin alone; from this voyage being now returned, I proceed to give your Majesty an account of our discoveries.

On the 17th of last January we set sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, belonging to his most Serene Majesty, the King of Portugal, with fifty men, having provisions sufficient for eight months, arms and other warlike munition and naval stores. Sailing westward with a light and pleasant easterly breeze, in twenty-five days we ran eight hundred leagues. On the 24th of February we encountered as violent a hurricane as any ship ever weathered, from which we escaped unhurt by the divine assistance and goodness, to the praise of the glorious and fortunate name of our good ship, that had been able to support the violent tossing of the waves. Pursuing our voyage towards the West, a little northwardly, in twenty-four days more, having run four hundred leagues, we reached a new country, which had never before been seen by any one, either in ancient or modern times. At first it appeared to be very low,

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