IN THE EARLY LIFE OF WASHINGTON, IN CONNECTION WITH THE NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE POTOMAC COMPANY. BY JOHN PICKELL. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & CO., 346 AND 348 BROADWAY. 1856. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by D. APPLETON & CO., in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States in and for the Southern District of New York. PHILADELPHIA: T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. DEDICATION. TO THE HONORABLE JOHN P. KENNEDY. MY DEAR SIR: In 1823, after the lapse of many years, the project of connecting the East and the West, through the valleys of the Potomac River, and that of the most convenient tributary to the Ohio west of the mountains, was revived in the form of a proposition for a continuous canal navigation. To consummate this connection, required the rights and privileges secured under the existing charter of the Potomac Company to be surrendered. This was done; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company was organized, and all the original papers, books, records, and notes, belonging to that time-honored enterprise, were deposited in its office. My connection with this Company for several years, as one of the Board of Directors, enabled me to collect the interesting details for the narrative from the materials thus deposited. Their arrangement in chronological order required much care and labor, but was necessary to give it the unity of history. To preserve it in this form I was not altogether prompted by motives of personal interest; it appeared to me a duty to avail myself of the opportunity that was afforded, to give the authenticated facts to the public, however unimportant in themselves, in which the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY took the most prominent part, and which might contribute to shed additional light upon the beauty, the harmony, and the virtue of his illustrious life. The extracts from the private correspondence of General Washington, and for which I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Jared Sparks, form perhaps the most interesting part of the volume. In appropriating my labors, I cannot refrain from their introduction to the American public, through the name of one whose public and private life is distinguished by every virtue that adorns the good citizen, the patriotic legislator, and the sound statesman. Recognizing in him also a highly valued per |