Tuesday, November 30, 2010

American Revolutionary War Ends (1782)

Treaty of Paris — In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

1872???? vs 1782 which? and where in Paris was this deal done, Don? Must have been a cold day!

Unknown said...

Dear Anonymous Reader,

Yes, it was a cold morning!

You are quite correct, 1872 was a typo. As to where the treaty was signed in Paris, the only citation I can find of an actual location was a hotel called Hotel d’York. (But as that comes from Wikipedia and I really don’t like using Wikipedia as a primary source… Who can say?)

It is interesting to note, however, that in my research for this answer I discovered something I had often wondered about. There is a bump on the northern border of Minnesota that has always puzzled me. If you look at the map, the northern border of the US (once you leave the New England states) runs traight and true all the way across the US Hugging the 48th parallel. Then you get to Minnesota and there is this bump that sticks up into Canada and takes a piece of land on the western shore of the Lake of the Woods.

Apparently the map they used at the talks had this lake improperly oriented so the border as drawn would have had this bit of land down below the 48th parallel. Too bad Google Earth wasn’t around back then!

Thanks again for reading and commenting on my blog!

Don