The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1899-03-04
THE FIRST AMERICAN EXPAN-
SIONLST.

J. Bryan as an orator on the occasion
of Washington birthday anniversary
celebration in the national capital,
but it was entirely characteristic. In
1897 Bryan made speech in favor
of throwing the mlnts of the country
wide open to silver on the birthday
anniversary of Jefferson, the man
who, on his own authority, closed all
the mints of the country to silver.
In 1898 Bryan made a speech in
favor of the bogus dollar at an an
nIversary of the battle of New Or
leans, held to commemorate the
memory of robust champion of the
honest dollar, who, If Bryan had
been active in Jackson's days, Jack
son would have been strongly tempt
ed to hang, as he did Ambrister and
Arbuthnot in Florida during the
Seminole war. This year when Bryan
spoke at the exercises in the national
capital on February 22nd, the mem
ory.of the first Of American expan-
pansionist was celebrated by the
noisiest and most persistent of
American anti-expansionists.
Earlier even than Hamilton or
Jefferson, Washington was an ex-
pansionist. Long before the war of
independence, Washington saw the
necessity of uniting the region West
of the Alleghanies TO the Eastern
states by wagon roads and waterways.
When he went on that historic en-
bassy in 1853 to warn the French to
get out of the Ohio valley he saw
the military importance of the site
on which Pittsburg now stands, and
began his studies of the best way to
connect the rivers flowing into the
Mississippi with those running to the
Atlantic. This was when the whole
region east of the Alleghenies be
longed to England, and sixteen years
before Daniel Boone got his first
glimpse of Kentucky. He had socisl
interest IN the Western country be
fore the French ard Indian war, and
his confidence in the future of the
trans-Allegheny locality led MIN to
be among the first of investors in it's
lands. He formed projects for con-
Meeting the Potomac with the
Youehlogheny river by high road
over the mountains, and thus estab-
lish close connection between the
Ohio and Mississippi and the At
lantIc seaboaId.
At time when the Eastern states
were either jealous or apathetic in
their attitude toward the West,
Washington saw the importance of
keeping interests of the Western
settlers closely united with those of
the older part of the country. With
&clear vision regarding the necessity
of knitting the West to the East by
bonds of social and pecuniary in
terest than was possessed by any
other man of his day, and thus to
head off the secession and separatist
movements which he foresaw would
arise in the West if the needs of that
section in the way of communication
with the outer world were neglected
by the East, he urged congress to,
in his own words in one of his letters
to congressman in 1777. ssextend
the navigation of the Eastern waters,
10 open them TO the Ohio, and to
bind the Western people to us by
a chain which can never be broken. .
AS president few years later, he
advanced the same ideas IN messages
to congress and in letters to infiu-
ential men West and East. He was
the first of great Americans to cross
the AlleghenIes; he saw more of the
Eastern side of the Mississippi valley
than any other American statesman
OF his day; he grasped the necessity
of extending the settlements to the
Mlssissippi earlier and IN q clearer