| Washington, George. Correspondence concerning improving the navigation of the Potomac River above tidewater. From Abbot & Twohig, Confederation series [The correspondence indicates that Washington always considered the issues of above tidewater and below tidewater separately, concentrating almost all his energies in obtaining agreement on the improvement of navigation above tidewater. In doing so he realized that he had to cater to the interests of Maryland and to lobby with Maryland to exercise its sovereign rights on behalf of his proposed Potomac Company. Almost a year to the day after the most affecting ceremony of his resigning his commission before Congress, then occupying the Old Senate Chamber in the State House in Annapolis, Washington was back before the Maryland legislature lobbying hard for support for the Potomac Company. He was successful. Virginia was forced to repeal any previous laws it had enacted on the subject and to pass the Maryland version of the Potomac Company incorporation law intact without change. Once the above tidewater issues were resolved, then attention was turned to cooperation on the waters below tidewater and the Mt. Vernon conference and resulting compact of 1785 relating to the waters below tidwater ensued. Subsequent negotiations over the Potomac (including the Black/Jenkins Award) did not have the benefit of the full record of the surviving papers of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and other participants in both sets of negotiations. Only in the last fifty years, subsequent to all major Supreme Court cases involving the Potomac, were the surviving records of those who participated in the process of negotiation over the future fate of the Potomac made public in easily accessible and well-edited form. Note that I do not believe that the editors have properly identified the enclosure mentioned in Washington's January 18, 1785 letter to Fitzgerald and Hartshorne. I suspect that that enclosure is now lost and that it reflected Madison begrudging opinion that the ownership of the bed of the Potomac, especially above tidewater, was vested in Maryland by Maryland's charter which during the colonial period had survived innumerable efforts to have it nullified or superceded. ecp editorial note 11/7/00]
See also MSA SC 5796-8-11 for materials posted from Virginia exhibit 58 |
