Like a swollen stream, it should be allowed to flow freely, which in effect meant that families should pursue their happiness wherever they wished, so that new settlements would pop up like flowers wherever fertile land beckoned. It was a laissez-faire approach to American expansion. Washington preferred a more controlled approach, what he called “compact and progressive seating,” which was designed to transform the flood of settlers into a more regulated flow that assured density of occupation in discrete waves of settlements.
