His first act in foreign affairs, on entering the Presidency, was to make the minister of France understand that the government of the United States was to be treated with due formality and respect.  His second was to examine the whole mass of foreign correspondence collected in the State Department of the confederation, and he did this, as has been said, pencil in hand, making notes and abstracts as he went.  It was well worth doing, for he learned much, and from this laborious study and thorough knowledge certain facts became apparent, for the most part of a hard and unpleasant nature.  First, he saw that England, taking advantage of our failure to fulfill completely our obligations under the treaty, had openly violated hers, and continued to hold the fortified posts along the northwestern and western borders.  Here was a dangerous thorn which pricked sharply, for the posts in British hands offered constant temptations to Indian risings, and threatened war both with the savages and with Great Britain.  Further west still, Spain held the Mississippi, closed navigation, and intrigued to separate our western settlers from the Union.  No immediate danger lay here, but still peril and need of close watching, for the Mississippi was never to slip out of our power.  The mighty river and the great region through which it flows were important features in that empire which Washington foresaw.  His plan was that we should get them by binding the settlers beyond the Alleghanies to the old States with roads, canals, and trade, and then trust to those hardy pioneers to keep the river and its valley for themselves and their country.  All that was needed for this were time, and vigilant firmness with Spain.

Beyond the sea were the West India Islands, the home of a commerce long carried on by the colonies and of much profit to them, especially to those of New England.  This trade was now hampered by England, and was soon to be still further blocked, and thereby become the cause of much bickering and ill-will.

Across the ocean we maintained with the Barbary States the relations usual between brigands and victims, and we tried to make treaties with them, and really paid tribute to them, as was the fashion in dealing with those pirates at that period.  With Holland, Sweden, and Prussia we had commercial treaties, and the Dutch sent a minister to the United States.  With France alone were our relations close.  She had been our ally, and we had formed with her a treaty of alliance and a treaty of commerce, as well as a consular convention, which we were at this time engaged in revising.  To most of the nations of the world, however, we were simply an unknown quantity, an unconsidered trifle.  The only people who really knew anything about us were the English, with whom we had fought, and from whom we had separated; the French, who had helped us to win our independence; and the Dutch, from whom we had borrowed money.  Even these nations, with so many reasons for intelligent and profitable interest in the new republic, failed, not unnaturally, to see the possibilities shut up in the wild American continent.