in the Mississippi valley lived really in two parallel north and south
plains, having easier outlets through foreign countries and therefore
more points of contact with them than with each other. Although obscured
by the later north and south sectionalism, this east and west difference
for many years caused a fear in the older portion that the newer or
valley part would secede from it. This fear began with the troubles
over the navigation of the Mississippi, it was renewed by Genet's
intrigues, it reached its climax in Burr's expedition, and it subsided
only when railways and canal transportation had levelled the mountains
and thereby lessened the importance of waterways.

European strategists made ready use of the isolated condition of the
western people, not always with the object of absorbing them, but
rather of using them in the great game of territorial acquisition
played so many times on the American board. For instance, in 1787, the
French Minister to the United States forwarded to his Government a
document presented to him, evidently by a native of France residing
in America, which described the extent of the Mississippi valley and
the dissatisfaction of its inhabitants. The paper asserted that the
people beyond the mountains

"seek for a new support and offer to the power which will welcome them
advantages which will before long effect those which America, as it now
is, could promise.... It requires a protector; the first who will stretch
out his arms to it will have made the greatest acquisition that could be
desired in this new world. Fortunate my country if she does not let this
moment escape, one of those not presented twice."

A year or two later, the British consul at Philadelphia was suggesting
to his Government the use of the western settlements of the United