disobey or even interpret the provisions of a national treaty. Congress
adopted resolutions to the same effect. But without coercive power,
resolutions of Congress were idle as the wind. Jay confessed to
Jefferson in France, his fears that "some of the States had gone so
far in their deviations from the treaty that I fear they will not
easily be persuaded to tread back their steps." He also stated his
conviction after investigation that there had not been a single day
since the treaty had been signed in which it had not been broken by
some State. Washington also testified to the helplessness of Congress
by saying, "If you tell the Legislatures that they have violated the
treaty of peace, and invaded the prerogatives of the Confederacy, they
will laugh in your face." In this manner, a series of unfortunate
diplomatic complications turned upon the British possession of the
American forts along the frontier.

Nor was the impotence of the new nation exhibited toward England only
in the western country. Because it drained almost the whole of the
great inland valley, forming with its tributaries a network of
ready-made highways, the Mississippi River assumed an importance to
the trans-Alleghanian settlers which is lost in these days of
artificial means of transportation. As Madison once said, "It is the
Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable waters of the
Atlantic States formed into one stream." It is true that the freedom
of navigating the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence was secured to these
western people by the Treaty of 1783, but these ways to the sea were
closed by ice during a portion of the year and were impeded by falls.
The lower Mississippi, on the other hand, had neither of these
obstructions to navigation. Near its mouth was the city of New Orleans,
where ocean vessels lay ready to receive western products. The current
made easy the voyage thither. For twenty years the traditionally