Mike,
In one of your messages "Re: Grosvenor on maps," you inventoried a small but
intriguing collection of ghost points within the present USA. I commend you for
your ingenuity in rooting these out, but I must differ with your interpretation
of one. You wrote:
> btw
> the one other de jure ghost tricountry point possibility in the usa
> 1783esgbus1803
> may fall at the point where the full mississippi river descends into
> louisiana
> if i have it all right
As I understand you, the point that you intend is the southwestern corner of
Mississippi. For the reasons that I will give below, I do not believe that this
point was ever an international tripoint.
The east-west boundary between southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi follows
the 31st parallel. This line was first mentioned as a boundary in 1763. In
that year's Treaty of Paris, by which French sovereignty was expunged from North
America, the Spanish (as allies of the French) had also lost their Floridas.
Thus, a 1763 royal proclamation created two new British provinces, East Florida
and West Florida, divided at the Apalachicola River, with the 31st parallel
specified as the northern boundary of West Florida to the Mississippi River.
West of the Mississippi was Spanish Louisiana, and north of the 31st parallel
was, presumably, the Georgia colony (under its charter reaching to the South
Sea).
The very next year (1764), however, the British extended the northern boundary
of West Florida to an east-west line running through the mouth of the Yassous
[Yazoo] River (just above present-day Vicksburg). Land north of this line was
given to the new Province of Illinois. This, of course, was one of the irksome
British actions calculated to deprive the people of Britain's Atlantic coastal
colonies of the western lands for which they felt they had fought the French and
Indians--one of the festering seeds of the coming American Revolution.
The British province of West Florida was governed from Fort George at Pensacola.
The British presence also included Fort Charlotte at Mobile, Fort Bute on the
Mississippi below Baton Rouge, Fort New Richmond at Baton Rouge, and Fort
Panmure at Natchez.
During the American Revolution, Spain declared war on Britain in May 1779. Don
Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana (and later Viceroy of New
Spain) personally led Spanish forces up the Mississippi from New Orleans and
captured Forts Bute, New Richmond, and Panmure in September 1779. He then
sailed eastward along the Gulf Coast, capturing Fort Charlotte in March 1780,
and besieging Fort George with 3,500 men. The British authorities at Pensacola
formally surrendered West Florida to the Spanish on May 10, 1781. (The
Daughters of the American Revolution admit to membership the descendants of all
Spanish forces who fought under Gálvez!)
So, by the time the British recognized American independence in the Treaty of
Paris of 1783, West Florida was in Spanish hands. In the treaty, the British
recognized the boundary of the United States in the west as extending down the
Mississippi River to the 31st parallel and Spanish sovereignty south of that.
The Spanish, however, claimed the whole of the former British West Florida
northward to the Yazoo as theirs by conquest. They established Fort Nogales at
Vicksburg in 1791. This matter was not settled between the US and Spain until
1795, when the Pinckney Treaty (Treaty of San Lorenzo el Real) finally clarified
the boundary as the 31st parallel. (The discussion above relies upon the first
several paragraphs of the Florida section of BUS&SS plus various works on the
histories of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.)
So, at whatever time one considers US sovereignty to have arrived de jure at the
corner of the Mississippi River and the 31st parallel (whether 1783 or 1795),
both the land to the west of the river and to the south of the parallel belonged
to Spain. Thus, there was no international tripoint.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA