Acquisition of Territory.
The original territory of the
United States as acknowledged by the treaty with
Great Britain, in 1783, consisted of the following thirteen States:
New Hampshire,
Massachusetts Bay,
Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations,
Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey,
Pennsylvania,
Delaware,
Maryland,
Virginia,
North Carolina,
South Carolina, and
Georgia.
The boundaries of many of these States, as constituted by their charters, extended to the
Pacific Ocean; but in practice they ceased at the
Mississippi.
Beyond that river the territory belonged, by discovery and settlement, to the-
King of
Spain.
All the territory west of the present boundaries of the States was ceded by them to the
United States in the order named:
Virginia, 1784:
Massachusetts, 1785;
Connecticut, 1786 and 1800;
South Carolina, 1787;
North Carolina, 1790:
Georgia, 1802.
This ceded territory comprised part of
Minnesota, all of
Wisconsin,
Michigan,
Illinois,
Indiana,
Ohio (see
Northwest Territory),
Tennessee, and a great part of
Alabama and
Mississippi.
Vermont was admitted as a separate State in 1791;
Kentucky, then a part of
Virginia, in 1792; and
Maine, till that time claimed by
Massachusetts, in 1820.