In the early 1800's, many Americans believed that isolation and poor communication might cause the Mississippi Valley settlements to break away as a separate nation. To help hold the frontier, Congress established a post route from Nashville to Natchez in 1800. The Natchez Trace, then a series of Indian trails, had been so slow for mail travel that the Secretary of State complained that mail from Natchez was as tedious as passage from Europe when westerly winds prevailed. President Jefferson then ordered the Army to clear the trail and make it a road. Post riders carrying letters, dispatches, and newspapers helped bind the vast, turbulent frontier to the Republic, but by the mid-1830's steamboats running from New Orleans to Pittsburgh had taken away the Trace's usefulness as a main post road.