" 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.
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