1763-1766 English Dominion LETTERS AND ENCLOSURES TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE JOHNSTONE COMPILED AND EDITED BY DUNBAR ROWLAND, LL. D. Director Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Member American Historical VOL. I NASHVILLE, TENN.: PRESS OF BRANDON PRINTING COMPANY 1911 The long contest between England and France for supremacy in North America had its end February 10, 1763. On that day the Treaty of Paris was made, and by it France lost all of her possessions east of the Mississippi River except the Island of Orleans. Under its provisions the English gained control of the Mississippi, and with it an outlet to the Gulf of Mexico. The section of the treaty which transferred what is now the southern part of the State of Mississippi is in the following words: "The Most Christian King cedes to his Britanic Majesty the river and the port of Mobile, and all that ho possesses on the left side of the river Mississippi, with the exception of New Orleans and the island on which it is situated." Out of a part of the territory conveyed by that section of the Treaty of 1763, the King of England, by his proclamation of October 7, 1763, laid off the British Province of West Florida, extending from the Chattahoochie River to the Mississippi, bounded on the south by Gulf of Mexico and the Iberville River and on the north by the thirty-first parallel. In 1764 the boundaries of West Florida were more accurately described, as follows: "A line to begin at the mouth of the Yazoo, where the stream joins the Mississippi, and to run east to the Chattahoochie; thence down the Chattahoochie to the mouth of the Apalachicola; thence westward along the coast of the Gulf and through Lakes Borgne, Ponchartrain and Maurepas, up to the River Amite, then along Bayou Iberville to the Mississippi River, and up the middle of the river to the mouth of the Yazoo." The occupation of that territory, and the organization of local government, marks the beginning of English dominion in what is now the lower South. It began in 1763 and ended in 1781, the most interesting period of American colonial history. The English colonists of West Florida came in closer touch with French and Spanish civilization than those along the Atlantic Coast, and the impress of the Latins upon them is worthy of the most painstaking study. (i) 251317 |