Pinckney's Treaty

Pinckney's Treaty (1795).During the Revolutionary War, Spain reconquered Florida from Great Britain. Contrary to the border agreed to by the British and Americans (31° north latitude), Spain claimed that Florida extended into the Ohio valley. By this border claim, Spain sought to keep the expansive United States away from the Mississippi River and Spain's other major colony in the area, Louisiana. With Louisiana occupying the west bank of the Mississippi and Florida controlling the east bank from at least 31° southward, Spain in 1784 closed the mouth of the river to U.S. navigation. This made the river useless as a means of getting goods from U.S. territory west of the Appalachian Mountains to markets in the East. To further discourage settlement beyond the Appalachians, the Spanish also supported the hostile southwestern Indian tribes.

By 1794, however, the Spanish feared that the Americans might use the opportunity of the ongoing European war to attack Spanish territory. Consequently, they negotiated a treaty with the U.S. minister Thomas Pinckney (1750–1828) that guaranteed Americans free navigation of the entire Mississippi and a three‐year renewable right to unload riverboat goods at New Orleans for reshipment on oceangoing vessels. The treaty (signed in Madrid on 27 October 1795) also set the Florida boundary at 31° and promised noninterference with the Indians along the border between Spanish territory and the United States.

President George Washington and the Senate welcomed Pinckney's Treaty, and it was ratified in 1796. But it only temporarily settled Spanish‐U.S. border disputes because expansionists in the United States were determined to acquire Florida and New Orleans and gain sole control of the navigation of the Mississippi. Within twenty‐five years, both goals were accomplished.
See also Adams‐Onís Treaty; Early Republic, Era of the; Expansionism; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Louisiana Purchase; Spanish Settlements in North America.

Bibliography

Arthur P. Whitaker , The Spanish‐American Frontier, 1783–1795, 1927.
Samuel Flagg Bemis , Pinckney's Treaty, rev. ed. 1960.

Jerald A. Combs