Clymer voices his opposition to western expansion at the expense of the states on the Atlantic Seaboard during the first session of the first Federal Congress as a representative from Pennsylvania. He tells Rush of "A bill now before our house to regulate the role of the back territory, like all others of the kind, giving emigration 'lighter wings to fly,' brings this evil more home to my feelings- This fatal propensity might at all times be opposed with effect by truth and reason, but truth and reason are not always obvious to common apprehensions, and on this subject above all others, there are some who pretend even to think that stand in need of being enlightened. Were I in the habit of addressing the public a pamphlet should come out entitled 'the folly of emigrating to the western lands demonstrated' — I would endeavour in familiar language to show to the meanest capacities that this desire proceeds within from the neglect of calculations or bad calculations. I would go deeply into the comparison of advantages between making a settlement on the western waters and those on the Atlantic- A particularity of facts on this point would seize the senses more strongly than any general warning however good.— I would prove lands producing in the Atlantic market cheaper at 10/ or 15/ per acre than any others obtained by free grant. For example, the settler on the Muskingum or Scoto tho he is to provide for no other expense than what will purchase his implements of husbandry and transport him and them to his plantation, yet he can never propose to himself any thing beyond turning a few hogs loose and scratching his ground for as much Indian corn and wheat as will feed his ragged family. That to attempt a surplus would, even if he could get labourers for it which would be next to impossible, be useless for he could have no steady market for it."

To make matters more complicated, the Spanish, while they had agreed to open the Mississippi for navigation, were demanding a fifteen percent duty on anything passing through New Orleans: "If the Spanish demand is talked of as a permanency— of what importance will it be but to those immediately on their limits. Of what benefit would be the driving of cattle through such great space where, as has been found, they set out flesh and come in bone. So circumstanced a poor man is to remain stationary in all his prospects— having nothing wherewith to purchase labour he can never have the comfortable expectation of getting others to work for him— his lands will gain little additional value, his family may never change their rags, nor his children, running wild, be able to pay the church or the school—And this must be the case until a great internal society in the course Of time, as in Germany, shall be gradually formed." Congress passed the Northwest Territory Bill on 21 July 1789, reaffirming the Northwest Ordinance enacted by the Confederation Congress in 1787 which established that new states joining the Union would be on equal footing as the original thirteen states. Subsequently, the House took up the Land Office Bill for consideration, which provided for inexpensive land for settlers, and in many instances, free land for veterans of the Revolutionary War. Published in the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, Correspondence: First Session, pages 1246-7. One of the notes observes that Rush had written two pieces for the American Museum in January and March 1789, sympathetic to Clymer's views.