 Adams was increasingly concerned by French ambitions in North America.Efforts to manage it through diplomacy, including Pinckney's Treaty of 1795, did little to stop American settlers pushing into Spanish Louisiana; by 1800, nearly 400,000 or 7.3% of Americans lived in trans-Appalachian territories, including the new states of Kentucky and Tennessee.Western economic development required access to the Mississippi and the US much preferred a weak Spain to an aggressive and powerful France on their western and southern borders.