He sent an emissary to England
to counteract the Spanish and French influence. He converted
Adams to his way of thinking, and even raised doubts in
Franklin's mind. Finally he induced his colleagues to cast their
instructions to the winds and negotiate a treaty with the mother
country independently.
This simplified matters immensely. Great Britain was a beaten
nation, and from the beginning her commissioners played a losing
game. There was much haggling over the loyalists, the fisheries,
debts; but the boundaries were quickly drawn. Great Britain
preferred to see the disputed western country in American hands
rather than to leave a chance for it to fall under the control of
one of her European rivals.
Accordingly, the Treaty of Paris drew the interior boundary of
the new nation through the Great Lakes and connecting waters to
the Lake of the Woods; from the most northwestern point of the
Lake of the Woods due west to the Mississippi (an impossible
line); down the Mississippi to latitude 31 degrees; thence east,
by that parallel and by the line which is now the northern
boundary of Florida, to the ocean.
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