Even a more efficient government than a Confederation would have
experienced difficulty in overcoming these decentralising effects of
the Alleghany Mountains, before improved methods of transportation had
annihilated the barrier. The people along the Atlantic Ocean and those
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.
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