Focus 580; The Grand Idea: George Washingtons Potomac and the Race to the West

Good morning this is Focus 580 our morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack Brighton sitting in for David and glad you could listen. Our producers are Harriet Williamson and Travis Stansell and our technical director Henry Frayne. George Washington remains justifiably famous for at least two of his great roles in our history leading the Continental Army during the American War of Independence and serving as the first president of the United States. But there's another chapter in his life story we barely remember and it's much intertwined with the American narrative itself. At the time when travel and communication moved at the speed of water at best the United States was a nation only in theory. George Washington's idea was to unite the states and territories by forging a passage to the continental interior. And I believe the most natural avenue for this passage flowed past his home at Mount Vernon the Potomac River. During this hour focus 580 will talk about this little known part of the story of George Washington and how his dream played out in our history. Our guest is the writer Joel Achenbach staff writer for The Washington Post. He's the author of five previous books including captured by aliens. It looks like a president only smaller. And why things are His

latest book is entitled The grand idea. George Washington's Potomac and the race to the West published just a month ago by Simon and Schuster. We'll talk with Joy about the grand idea during this hour. And as we do we invite you to join in the conversation if you have questions or welcome all you have to do is call us the number around. Painter Bana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. If you're listening outside of Champaign Urbana anywhere in the Midwest here if you're listening on the air or if you're listening online anywhere in the continental US the toll free line is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. And Joel Achenbach joins this morning by telephone. Good morning. Hi Jack how are you doing today. Doing great thanks for being with us. Thank you and I really liked what you said about how this book is The Story of Washington and the Potomac is in twined with the American narrative that's a great phrase and that's how I viewed it too that it's focus on the Potomac it's really about America itself.

Indeed well and the book is full of great phrases and great writing by the way it really is a great read. Oh you're you're kind to say so I I did my best. I tried to make it a well-written book I labored over every sentence and every paragraph. And you know it was it was a lot of fun though I learned so much about American history that I didn't know and that I hope that when people read it they'll say as some people have have already said to me Gosh I just never knew that stuff. Exactly. Yeah. Well I wanted to ask you what set you on the trail of this part of George Washington's life. You know this this this may be kind of a strange answer but I wander a lot down to the river I live near the Potomac River in Washington D.C. in the northwest part of the city. And when I bought my house about a dozen years ago I always thought it was kind of neat that there was this bluff and down below the bluff was the river. And over the years more and more and I've become kind of a a great Rambler along the Potomac.

And there are there are stories there you can sense it when you when you walk down quickly in the wintertime you can see all the old ruins of Mills and houses and things and of course along the Potomac we have this canal the CNO canal the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. And over the years I thought you know there's got to be a book here somewhere. And I did not realize when I got into it the extent to which George Washington would become the focus of the book I mean this is it's not exactly a biography of Washington. It's really Washington and his scheme for the river but he was Mr. Potomac. Well there are a lot of great stories in the book and there's no way we're going to get to all of them but maybe we can at least sketch the outlines and encourage people to read more if they like to know more. So let's dive in I guess. The book begins after the War of Independence. George Washington seemed ready to settle into retirement at Mt. Mt. Vernon. He certainly had enough there to keep him occupied.

Yeah he says I'm done I've done my service to the country. And he certainly had for eight and a half years he'd been fighting the war. So he goes home on Christmas Eve 1783 and he tells everyone I've I've retired to the banks of the Potomac under my own vine and fig tree and. And certainly at that point in in American history which is sort of the beginning of the United States history because that the ink was hardly dry on the Treaty of Paris which gave to the United States this vast territory going all the way the Mississippi River at that point. There was no constitution there was no presidency there was no obvious role for Washington and he was happy to be retired. But you learn a lot about someone in their down time when they're when the when they don't have to to play an official role in what happens with Washington is that after eight months of trying to get as his the state has plantation in order he gets

on a horse and he takes off on a really a remarkable road trip that forms the sort of backbone of my narrative is this road trip he takes starting in September of 1784. And that road trip was I guess a couple of purposes one was he owned a lot of land that he wanted to visit that he hadn't been to for you know I guess in some cases a decade or more. Yeah and this is an interesting thing he has. You know we're so focused today on conflicts of interest. And certainly Washington and in that period had a major conflict of interest which is and I'm not I'm not saying that critically. He has two overlapping concerns. One is he is worried that the whole experiment of the United States is going to fail that it is the country is going to fall apart. The centrifugal forces are so powerful. It's like 13 separate countries a loosely confederated the Articles of Confederation don't really give. Congress

much power every state is essentially a rival to every other state and that's one of the sort of subplots of the book is this race to the west it's kind of a contest between Virginia Pennsylvania and New York State to see which of these powerful states are going to become the we're going to see the trade of the West sees the commerce of the West. Washington is concerned that the West and by that you know where you where you are as would have been considered the far west right the West would be anything beyond the Appalachian Mountains which that includes western Pennsylvania parts of what are now West Virginia and certainly Ohio Kentucky everything along the Ohio River Valley that sort of drain by the Ohio River. Everyone knows that this is this area is being rapidly settled that tens of thousands of people month by month are pouring through the gaps in the mountains and hacking out homesteads in the woods.

Many of them not really buying land they're just squatting on land. Now Washington has title to tens of thousands of acres of western land. So he's making this trip partly as a business trip to look at his own property and collect rent and get in the face of some squatters who he knows are on his property. But he also has this larger national interests which is he wants to figure out a way to make sure that the West day is in the orbit of the Atlantic states that he doesn't want the West to become a breakaway republic we take it so for granted today that America is a single nation but that was not an obvious outcome in 1784. There is very real possibility that you could have a new country develop in the Mississippi Valley you know could even have been a civil war Sunday between that country and in the United States to the east. Well as you say many Americans didn't yet consider themselves Americans right now why should there be a lot of them don't even speak English they have they were Charmian's or are Dutch or offends or

Swedes or you know certainly there were a million Americans who were kidnapped Africans or the descendants. Those Africans you had a much you did not have any of the marginalizing forces that we see in the country today. And you had a not inconsiderable population of indigenous people who had their own interests and their own ideas about what was what should happen to the land and who or in many cases very fiercely resisting the invasion of the West. So the Indians or were a part of this whole mix and the West was up for grabs. People were conscious of the vastness of the of the of the territory where where you are and where in every going up them to Michigan Wisconsin all of that is all part on paper part of the United States of America. And the question is what was going to happen to it who would control it would be the political future of that vast

territory. George Washington's idea was that by crafting a core door of transportation in travel for goods in market. You know relationships and so forth and just being able to traverse this territory in the reasonable way that would unify or at least give people a greater sense that there was a nation built building here. Yet Washington was the ultimate realist. He knew that having nice documents like the Declaration of Independence for example was not going to keep people bound together that people were not sentimental that they acted based on their their personal self-interest and among other things that would mean how could they sell their products how could they sell their grain their furs their their their lumber. You know the whole you know anything that they managed to extract from the earth. Are they going to sell it now. In that period you had the Spanish is still a

formidable presence even that even though the Empire had declined a lot they had New Orleans and they had closed the Mississippi River to try to commercial traffic by the Americans. So the Spanish were still out there they controlled all of the Louisiana territory and they controlled Florida and New Orleans. The British were still up in Canada. Washington was afraid that the Westerners would essentially fall into the orbit of the British or the Spanish or somehow not have a feel a connection to the east. So he looked at the Potomac flowing by as a mansion and he said this is an arm of the sea. It goes way up into the interior and he had paddled it in new that the Potomac had these water gaps through the mountains at places like the Blue Ridge filing Hill savage mountain these are places where the river. Just slices right through the mountains if you've ever driven around the Appalachians you know there are these water gaps there's a Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey for

example that's the famous one where the river kind of slices perpendicular to the mountains. As though as though there's acid in the water and it just has carved a niche. And so Washington saw what he wanted to do on this trip is find the shortest portage route from the headwaters of the Potomac to the headwaters of the Ohio River and that was that was the goal and that thereby that helped create a Commercial Avenue a kind of a corridor or across the mountains linking the west in the east. And then we would need the Mississippi at all actually at that point he really kind of like the fact that we couldn't use the Mississippi he did not want the Spanish to open the Mississippi to cargo because he thought that would that would defeat the long term goal of national unity. Washington was I mean the project of his life. And I think actually the new the new book on Alexander Hamilton puts it really well. Well that Hamilton to the project of these.

These people's lives was creating a strong government a strong national union creating a country that would last. And so for Washington the reading of the landscape said if the Mississippi remains closed then the people in the West are going to have more of an incentive to do their business with the people in the east. If you look at a map and I don't know how well the listeners out there know that the geography of all the rivers of the east and the Great Lakes and everything but there are several ways to get from the west to the Atlantic Ocean. One is through down through the St. Lawrence River. But that's going through British Canada and it's very far to the north and to it to Washington's eyes. That was way too far north it would freeze too early in the fall and thought too late the spring. So that was not a good water route. He didn't think then you had the Hudson River which up near Albany It is joined

by the Mohawk coming in from the west. That route is the route that eventually became the route of the Erie Canal. Washington knew that was a good route to the west potentially but also thought it was too far north and it was just too roundabout to get to the Tidewater. And so he thought the best route was the Potomac. You see. Washington subscribe to the idea of Providence. What was this idea. Here's what he was religious. He believed in God but I think that and I think he believed he wasn't a big church goer. He was not. You know it was begun on dogma and doctrine all that but I think he believed that that first of all he had a role to play that destiny had chosen him to play a special role in the country and why and why should we believe that so many times he'd been exposed to incredible peril and had survived. It was as though he were

indestructible as though he had been chosen to place some historic role and maybe also I think he was one of the first to say the United States could be a really grand a country. You know my book is titled The grand idea. In a in a direct reference to his Potomac plan. But the grand idea is also the grand idea of America and America as this potentially powerful country. Say that because of geography had been had been put in a in a position to be independent of the Great Powers of Europe and he said hey you know what we are in a position because of geography too. I don't have the exact language in front of me but to basically become you know a really special place for human beings in French for inal and light meant to the flower and he was right about that I mean you know his atomic plan I'm sure will talk about this is the comic plan didn't work out exactly like you want it right but the country

became something. I think it's fair to say that you know we know we're we have our problems and we've we've had our our troubles and tragedies in a lot of bad things have happened in American history but I think it's a great country and I think this story shows one of the early chapters and how it got to be that way. Let me just reintroduce our guests were talking during this hour focus 580 with Joel Achenbach. He's the author of the book we're discussing the grand idea George Washington's Potomac and the race to the west he's also a staff writer. The Washington Post. If you'd like to join our conversation you can call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. I want to talk a little bit about the idea of wilderness. In these times it was a very different idea to Washington most other American something to be tamed wilderness was actually abhorred.

Absolutely. You know we today were more focused on trying to preserve roadless areas and there's actually a big debate and in Washington you know in recent years about whether we could build a road a bridge over the Potomac You know we're concerned about the effects over development. But in the 1780s the concern was under development or lack of development or more specifically if you're George Washington and you've traveled around the country for 8 1/2 years fighting the war and if indeed he was an incredibly well traveled widely traveled person. He knew it was just impossible to get anywhere not impossible but it was hard. I mean that there were no bridges over any major rivers in America. Not one there the roads were bog the linear Meyers of goo essentially if you tried to use a road that if it rained any time recently it would just be a long mud puddle because the the wagon wheels would would slowly turn everything to mush

and the roads were choked with stumps and often if they were maintained it all would be by a local farmer who might be in charge of it but you know there's no federal government certainly to build an interstate highway. And if the states weren't big on road building and so it was hard to get anywhere and you know this is something that he he is focused on is is an end of the wilderness which you ask about. If you stood on a block and looked out over the woods the eastern forest I actually wrote a piece about this in National Geographic a couple years ago. The eastern forest extended roughly the size of France. I mean this is if that is the famous line is that a squirrel could go from Maine to Georgia without ever touching the ground. That that's probably apocryphal but you know the extent of the woods was one of the great biological wonders of the world. And so if you stood on a bluff and he looked out of the ocean of trees you could

not imagine that this was that the resource would ever be exhausted. And what Washington wanted a lot of people wanted was to find some way to transform this into a you know a usable resource a place that could be inhabited I mean places where there was sunshine reaching the ground in x. That was one of the things that was so dark that you know it was kind of a scary place to people or you know it sort of had a different emotional meaning to people than yeah it had I mean it was. I mean people got their fill of you know camping. You know I mean they they it's not like you know hey let's get away from it all right go out to the woods you know they they were out there thinking you know how are we ever going to get some flour to make some decent you know bread how are we going to you know. There was plenty of meat in the woods I mean because there's so much game I mean there was a member of one point I came across a story about one of the early

exploratory parties going through what became Kentucky. And they talked about all the game they killed and they killed like 83 bears. You know something yeah unbelievable number of bears. You know it's hard to imagine in a course that has felt like a real slaughter. But you know it was you know in the old days there were bison in the in the eastern forests and there was elk and certainly there were wolves and panthers and all kinds of creatures. I guess maybe I guess that cougars. To me a panther in a cooler store the same thing but I think I think it's actually a cougar not to me either around anymore you know. Yeah they're not they're all God you know. But a lot of my God. But you know it and so it was it was a completely different sort of experience. And Washington wanted to impose order on this very chaotic situation I mean if you're one of the things that I try to bring out is his personality.

He's brave. He's industrious He's energetic man he sure does like water he does not like. He's not a big fan of the rabble the rough eons that you know the lower the lower classes of people who he views as as not always going along with the program he wants. He can be very imperious and he definitely doesn't like the ones who he thinks are trying to rip him off by squatting on his property and not paying rent. Yeah that's a very interesting part of the story. And you know you detail his dealings with a group of people that you call the Seceders in people who are squatting on his land this is part of you know sort of going down the story of the grand tour that he took you know out in this wilderness the rule of law was you know very much a question in one of the big questions was who owned the land Well he certainly wanted to assert that the land that he had title to he was going to claim.

And. That he felt that that was an important sort of method of asserting the rule of law and maybe asserting the identity of the nation. Oh absolutely when I think the reason I did this book you asked me is beginning why why didn't I so I went down the river but when I picked up Washington's diary I started investigating Washington in the Potomac and I read his account of this trip. What jumps jumped out at me was that he has this very difficult face to face encounter with the squatters and they stand up to him. They defy him. And although I'm not an academic I'm you know I'm a newspaper reporter and the explanatory journalist and I have I've read a lot of explanatory type things but fundamentally I'm you know I'm not I'm not a. A scholar you know I'm not an academic but the academics these days are quite interested with the questions of who had power. And here is

something that's a really wonderful piece of low hanging historical fruit so to speak where you have the most powerful person in the country having a direct encounter with some of the least powerful and most marginalized figures on the frontier. And it's almost too good to be true I mean do you read this in it. And I think that I would be really interested to see you know what a university professor might say of the foal's this whole situation and I tell the story is kind of hard to pick sides I'm really sympathetic to the Seceders because they've gone into the woods and then hacked out a wife for themselves and built their barns and raised their kids and they're doing their best and out of the blue comes as the absentee landlord the most famous American. A lot riding on you know just unexpectedly Actually I think they knew he was coming because if there was some warning but they but you know he shows up one day and says you know you got it you got to pay me I own the

land they say no you don't own the land thought I'm sympathetic to them on the other hand here's the shoes guy George Washington who has who left home for eight and a half years he liked being at Mount Vernon he did not want to be out tramping around fighting the war for 8 1/2 years. He did this wonderful service to this country he made this country and these people in his absence when he doesn't have time to look after his own state they squat on his land so he was outraged by it and I think that he had some reason to feel like he was being ripped off. So what happened. So what happens is they they have several meetings and they lay out each other's positions they can agree the squatter say we don't think you really have legal title this he says I do have legal title. They said pay what they say we'll buy it from you. And he said OK well this is how much money I want. They go we can't pay that but we'll pay a lower amount. And he says No way. And they say well OK then

you're going to have to sue us. And he asked them if there's some legends that supposedly he cursed in the. He was fined you know five shillings on the spot for for for cursing and I it's hard to substantiate that that story and there was another story that Washington held up the handkerchief and said I will have this property as surely as I hold this handkerchief in my hand. And that's also probably apocryphal but what's what's But certain is he made every one of these squatters stand up directly and say yes I will stand for a lawsuit. And they did one by one they defied George Washington which is a very sort of you know brave thing that they did. I guess that's the right word and so for two and a half years low or two years this lawsuit drags on until finally and Washington is vigorously drafting memos to his lawyers saying Do this do that. And he goes off looking for paperwork to support his claim but eventually he wins and all these

these families 13 families are driven off his land you know by court order. We have a caller talked with want to include him in a conversation. Let me just mention again we're talking with Joel Achenbach about his book The Grand Idea George Washington's Potomac in the race to the west. We have one caller waiting and if you'd like to join us you can to the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Carla number four in Charleston. Good morning. Hardly know where to begin. The upshot of what your task and the wide view of history indicates to me that the paradigm of capitalism and all the ramifications of that. That's what it is. From kind of an independent and then competition with England and the rest of the

Western European powers much much of the degradation of ordinary people especially native Americans and a continuing rape of the land and the capitalist paradigm you know like this. Driving us to extinction I'm afraid because what has happened from 1776 and all the wars in between the westward expansion which was nothing more than a land grab. And Washington's hand in all of this and then the revolution your friend. You know which and agreement on the same tactics and the same common philosophy now has taken us into the 21st century and look where we're heading right now this very minute. But the whole of the Middle East in flames over oil. What we can't get here. Damn the

Colonial to New York alone you stand head off across the ocean with huge armaments and military power to get what they want by any means necessary. And and have that be. Let me let me answer that just for a second to do the best that I can. I think the caller is has really hit something. You know the nail on the head here in a sense in that if you want to know how the world got to be the way it is today my book looks at you know it's a chapter in that. And he says well the west the western expansion was a land grab. Absolutely true. It was the it was a land grab. If he says that the Western expansion led to the extermination of Indians that that's true and I deal with that in the book. And in fact it's something that I wrestled with a great deal because the race to the west has direct consequences time and time again for ordinary people whether it's the Indians

or the suede or the Irish workers who ended up building the canal. You know there's no doubt that that the caller puts up a capitalist system has this repay Sia's quality. On the other hand I'm not it's not clear to me. What what other system the the caller would like to impose I mean I think that you know Washington although you never use words like capitalistic in a sense he was a classic capitalist and. Andy you know the one on my assertion earlier is something I believe I do believe this is a great country for all of its flaws and I think most people think that if it I think even most people who are uncomfortable with some of the excesses of our system and who are uncomfortable with. Because what's happened in our in the Middle East would also say it's it's still a great country and I hope that I hope that if you were to look at the book you would see that I've tried to to fairly

look at both the positive in the negative. Can I answer that for a second. Sure. OK you have with your craft. What other system what we have currently continuity of political and economic. You don't have a pure guess because Marxism is not hidden or is it possible that we can trade communism instead. But it's never been an actual social paradigm. Well let me interrupt the collar I don't mean to I don't I meant I want to get into a big debate about capitalism versus communism but that's out of my league. Yeah I want to end it my book doesn't really address Marxism in a and I but I I do think that and I appreciate your call. I do think that you've raised the whole issue which I think everyone should think about which is the consequences of this headlong. You know race to the west and how it actually effected various types of people.

I you know I appreciate to the caller's point as well but it's not really something that we can spend a lot of time talking about during this hour. Certainly it isn't an issue that. I hope we take up in a number of ways on the show. So Will let's let's move on and I appreciate your answer to that as well. I wanted to sort of back on the narrative thread here after the grand tour. Washington returned to Van Mount Vernon and set about articulating his vision for this western passage v. the Potomac and then getting it funded. Right he comes here. Ed tree has his encounter with the squatters. He goes to the back country for several hundred miles and gets home and he's in he immediately writes Al this treatise on how very plausible it is to turn the Potomac into a corridor to the west. And he then sends letters to all of his political allies and friends and associates and says look this is we can really make this thing

happen we can make the Potomac you know a much more navigable river. And so he starts something called the Potomac company gets it funded by the states of Virginia and Maryland and and the first thing they have to do is they have to start digging canals and make they start drilling a really thorough a canal around Great Falls which is the 76 foot drop over the course of about half a mile in the Potomac and maybe a dozen miles northwest of Washington D.C. today at that time there was no Washington D.C. like I should say northwest of Georgetown so that they start digging a canal there and then and more canal work near Harpers Ferry and they start pulling rocks out of the river to try to smooth the flow of the river which seems to be kind of a vain enterprise and everything goes very slowly and it in. They're using blasting powder to blast through solid rock in the in the blowers are getting killed or

maimed and it's all kind of. It floods the area Washington goes and inspects the river work and nothing is getting done in it. It's quite frustrating in fact it takes 17 years to finish the can now. Around Great Falls by which time Washington has already died. Sonia a lot of a lot of work goes into this plan. Well it did eventually get built in and in you know for a least a number of years seem to serve the purpose that he intended although by that time there was competition from the railroads. Yeah. You know people always talk about canals as though they were failures. And it's not true even the Potomac Canal which is the one on the Virginia side of Great Falls was not a failure it worked for 30 years for 30 years that walked through many many boats carrying heavy loads of coal and grain and flour and linemen and

paid iron and you know things that that. Sure I'm not Pig-Iron is but I mean I think you have to do it. I don't think it's a pig I think it's a kind of honor. Yeah your collars. I mean your you know your listeners know but you know a kid that carrying all kinds of stuff through the lock there is actually five walks I think at at Great Falls. And it worked it was an engineering marvel people traveled from all over the Americas to see this. I mean tourists from Europe would say we got to go see the canal because if there was nothing else like it in the 1780s and 1790s in America of that scale. And so and then when it opens up and it lasts until into the 20s but by that time the decision is made by powerful elites in the Potomac area to build a continuous can now all the way along the river from Tidewater around Georgetown up to Cumberland Maryland which is 185

miles up the river and then the idea is to keep going up the Potomac. Cross the mountains and then down to the Ohio River which will come down that would have been hundreds and hundreds of miles long and would have had to raise flat water up to nearly 3000 feet above sea level. They were going to have a little tunnel through there at some point but that the plans were for hundreds of locks lifting the the canal boats up and they were going to flood the meadows high in the Alleghenies and use those flooded meadows as the source of the water in the canal at the high elevations they had it was just a really tremendously ambitious project. They call it the great national project and they finished about a third of it and that was pretty marvelous feat of engineering. But about the time they did this then you know there was also the first real roads coming into port into use. Yeah when that we had the same day they broke ground on the sea you know kind of now there was a cornerstone laid for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad which was a

very experimental technology in 1828 and it was. Anyone any rational person of the time would offend the canals are the way to go. It's just so much easier to carry heavy loads on water and railroads were just seen KAKA KAKA mamy notion where you'd pull something on rails behind a horse because the locomotive had yet to be perfected in 1828 and. But eventually the railroads proved to be the better technology they're more reliable. The year round two they were it was much more of a year round technology and it was better at moving people more quickly and eventually they figured out how to carry heavy cargo heavy freight on railroads but the canal still worked. And if you had to pick the peak of the CNO canal in terms of when it was carrying the most cargo it was the 1870 if it was you know after the civil wars we're talking you know pretty late in the 19th

century it was still going strong. But the fly. It's kept just wiping out that canal horribly in the flood of 1889 which is the same flood that caused the Johnstown flood and then you know that flood pretty much put the canal and you know a serious hurt for all and for a long time in an in 1924 that canal close forever. We just have about maybe 15 minutes left in this hour and. Let me just mention again our guest is Joel Achenbach He's the author of the book the grand idea. George Washington's Potomac in the race to the west and it's a really great read and we're talking about some of the stories that it contains If you'd like to join us. The number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Stepping back a little bit in time to the period when George Washington was still alive. So he sort of moved past that.

A lot of a lot of the great will bring him back to life ok. You write that Washington's crusade to him. Order on this ragged and cooperative world led him over the years to question the foundational plantar society. And then he grew to despise slavery. This is something I was very interested to read more about I mean he owned many slaves Yancey at the age of 10 he was a slave owner. When he inherited slaves from his father when father died and he grew up in a slave society and it was you know it was Virginia was the population it was something like 40 percent African-American. At that time and we had Mt. Vernon at its peak had more than 300 slaves I mean in a sense it was a black community. You could almost say I mean he had some white servants in there and and so on but essentially you know what happened is he gradually came to see. I think during the Revolutionary War that the institution was was

evil. And after the war he started telling everyone I don't want to be involved with this anymore I think that this is it. Number one I think he thought it was inhumane. I think he also thought it was it was begging for trouble I think he like a lot of people he feared slave ensure actions. But I think he he just sensed that it was something that he didn't really say this is contradictory to the principles that the country was founded on but certainly other people made that point. And he had he was so close to people like Lafayette who you know was they believe in abolition and Alexander Hamilton who in the church now book makes clear with his entire life fiercely opposed to slavery and so these are some of the closest associates of George Washington. So in the 1780s he's growing away from the institution and there apparently where he got the idea that if he could sell all of his Western lands he would have enough money to free

not only his own slaves but the so-called test to slaves which were owned by his wife and the other heirs of Daniel Parke Custis. It's kind of a complicated matter but the population of Mount Vernon has had two different populations of slaves the ones the Washington owned and the ones his wife owned and he legally could not free the ones his wife owned. And even she would have problems doing so because they were still partly owned by the other heirs of Daniel Parke Custis her first husband. In any case. Famously in his will he provided that his slaves be freed upon the death of his wife. And you know why did he stipulate that way well because they didn't want to be the slave families of the two populations to be broken up. So while his wife was still alive because he knew it would be very painful situation which it turned out to be and he was one of these people that refused to separate the families that he that he you know he at least to the extent that he controlled Yes he he

gradually I mean you know you it's you don't want to apologize too much for his behavior because you know there's a lot of different ways to look at him he could have done more I think than he did to use his influence to try to put America on the road to abolishing slavery. I think he but at the same time he was not known as a cruel master and he did have principles. There were a lot of bull such as he would he would not he stop selling slaves after the Revolutionary War when so many more did not want to break up families he thought that was inhumane and obviously was inhumane you know. Right to rip a child or a husband or a wife away from the rest of the family and so he did take a principled stand on that unlike a number of other of his contemporaries. I don't know how much credit you give someone in that question and I think that if you look at there's been a lot of good scholarship on this issue. The Roger Wilkins book is excellent looking called Jefferson's Pillow. It

directly examines that whole question of how people today should view that you know the slave owners of early American history and then the that the Federative book recently is by Henry wine Chad called an imperfect God which I think is a very fair to look at at the whole issue of Washington of slavery. We have another call to talk with let's include them in our conversation. A listener in Champaign on line number one. Good morning you're on focus 580 I think. Part of his show and I hope I'm not too far off but. I guess I'd like you to just like to consider talking about the founding principle of the democracy and also maybe think about that in relation to principle in the sense of capitalism. And I kind of like to go back to just asking you this push west How was that different. You know philosophically then the British connotation of North America or of India or the use of slave labor in the triangular trade brought

brought slaves to the south as opposed to the you know I don't know whether to use the word decimation that's not quite right genocide whatever of the American Indians. And then they move toward imperialism for example in the Philippines. I think that there is you know in an imperialist you know colonialist element to the push to the west to say it's cause you know it's colonization of the West is not exactly right in that. Jefferson for example in designing the Northwest Ordinance said that the states that would form in the in the West in the year in the Ohio territory the Northwest Territory would be on equal footing with the states in the east and that's why Ohio Illinois Indiana and you know were never colonies of the states to the east but you know for the for all you know I mean essentially you're correct I mean this was a.

Aggressive. And at times repay Sia's process that led to the extermination of a lot of people to college genocide as I think of it. I mean it's a it's a difficult thing because it wasn't as though the goal was the extermination of the Indians but in practical reality what Washington believed was that the Indians would either have to become and adopt the ways of European Americans or they would have to be exiled beyond the Mississippi. They were not part of his plan I mean that nowhere in his plan was there a notion that you would have over the long period of time territory that would be reserved for the Indians he there were it were various attempts to say OK everything north of the Ohio River is going to be reserved for the Indians but if you read between the lines it's clear that Washington is saying inevitably. You know the

European Americans the whites the Americans are going to be invading their territory and we will eventually get that lady I mean but it's it's it's clear that they were not part of his plan. Even though I think that just sort of an individual level he recognized and respected Indians more than a lot of people who were contemporaries of his because he spent a lot of time with Native Americans as a young man particularly had had during the French and Indian War and during some of his early explorations and early surveying work. He was acquainted with a with them and spent a lot of time with them. I don't know that answer your whole question though about how it was that with the with the British I mean yeah it's the same thing. It is it's you know it's a land grab it's a rush to say that's going to be ours and that is you know you can condemn it if you want to. It's the story of the last 500 years. That is what that is what American history is based on. Even before the United States existed. You go back to the Spanish the French. You

know it's it's you know it is a you know there's always been this sense that this was a continent up for grabs. And George Washington had both feet in that whole process. I didn't want to make that connection. Thanks. Thank you. We just have about four five minutes left I want to make sure to touch on a couple other things you write about in the book Washington view the Potomac River. Nationally the great unite are the nation but with the Civil War became the main line of division in fact. The irony of the story has I mean the Patel make is is that the tether at the fracture line and during the Civil War the Confederates were quite conscious of that when they crossed the Potomac. They were invading the North. There were even some some rebels who wouldn't go across the Potomac they thought it was it was the wrong thing to do. But yeah there were several invasions of the north in 1862 63 and 64 and famously of course the Gettysburg campaign of 1863 and the Potomac I mean one thing I

focus on is the one battle that happens on the Potomac itself the battle of balls bluff early in the war which was powerful I think because you had soldiers the union was was really badly defeated there and there are a number of soldiers who were trapped in the river and floated down the river and washed up on the banks of the the the the capital and it was kind of a signal a really bad omen that the war was going to last a long time it was and it would not be easily dispensed with as they'd hoped in 1861. In the timer which is about religion only two or three minutes left. But let's talk about the Potomac. River today you see it failed to become what George Washington wanted to be and instead became something much better. The Potomac today is a it's a pretty natural river. You know it has some pollution problems it has. And there was you know some places where you have you know millionaires have built mansions on the bluff above the river and you have some factories here

and there but by and large compared to most American rivers it is a you could almost say a wild river in fact it is right near the sea there's this gorge below Great Falls that's quite spectacular in anyone who's had a chance to hike along the trails or paddle the the river will appreciate I mean even the U.S. Olympic kayaking team does a lot of kayaking right there in you know where Northwest D.C. meets Maryland. And but for the river today as it's really been well preserved in part by Parkland National Park. The National Park Service owns a lot of land along the river and you know I think it's well it's one of the real natural treasures and somewhat overlooked even in our area because so many people are oriented towards the urban elements of our existence you know and the Potomac is viewed as kind of a traffic obstacle. If you take the American Legion Bridge which is part of the Capital Beltway you go over the river and you can barely even

see the river because of the the the jersey walls along the highway. So a lot of people just really don't know anything about it or which direction it flows or where it comes from and part of my goal is to give people a better sense of place. And that applies not just to the Potomac is anywhere in America a better sense of where you are and to think about how and how the landscape around you got to be that way. And the canal that was for so many years was sort of dormant and neglected has been rehabilitated as a sort of a parkway that canal is. It's there are some parts of the canal that have water in them again. And it is a national park going all the way to Cumberland is one hundred eighty four miles. It's as you know and then strip of parkland and it's really been a vocative trail I hiked 100 miles along the towpath and really had a great time kind of imagining I was you know back in 18th century size for it's a pretty place.

Well we're going have to stop there there's Watts more in the book. The title is the grand idea. George Washington's Potomac and the race to the west. The author is Joel Achenbach A C H E N B A C H. He's staff writer for The Washington Post and author of Book of the book. And Joel Achenbach thanks so much for talking with us when there is great I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.