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.
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