dougvv Wrote:
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> The last British Colony charter that a US State
> surrendered was Georgia. Georgia (like all other
> colonies) had a charter of it spanning coast to
> coast.
Not all of the other colonies. Mass., Virginia & Conn. all did and maybe North Carolina but obiously not Rhode Island. Everybody got in the act trying to claim parts of the Western Territories during the Articles of Confederation era. My personal favorite is South Carolina claiming to have a 12 mile wide strip extending West to the Mississippi starting between the headwaters of the Savannah and the North Carolina boundry. Problem: The Savannah has it's headwaters *in* North Carolina!
Oh, and just to make things perfect, the Brits still held a bunch of forts in US territory until 1796. From upstate New York to Detroit to Mackinac Island, 7 or 8 of them all told.
Any way, all the fun ended when the Constitution was adopted and the states had to surrender their claims.
> Not long after (10-20 years) the Louisianna
> purchase occurred. Using the coast to coast part
> of the colony charter, parts of Louisinna,
> Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and
> California would have been covered buy the the
> Royal charter.
Adams-Onis(sp) Treaty of 1819 set the border between US and Spanish possesions in the West. Not that various US citizens disn't spend the next 30 years violating it. Trying to steal Texas was something of a cottage industry in Louisiana in the 1820's. The treaty line still shows in a lot of places on the map. Start at the Gulf Coast with the Texas-Louisiana border and keep following the Texas border until you get to the top of the panhandle, Extend the East side of the Panhandle (100 deg W)up into Kansas until you reach the Arkansas River, then follow the Arkansas to its head. Now go North from the headwaters of the Arkansas into Wyoming until you're even with the Nort boundry line of California, Nevada and western Utah (42 deg N) and follow that line to the Pacific.
So we had ceded any claim to that area we may have had to Spain, who were ceding their claim to Louisiana at the same time (Napoleon really didn't have the right to sell it to us.) What I wonder is why we were making treaties with Spain regarding boundries with a territory of theirs that was in the middle of a war with them? (Mexican War of Independence 1810-1823)(note: NOT the Mexican Revolution, that started in 1910) Probably could have gotten a better deal from the colonists if we had agreed to support them...
hank
PS Mexico didn't have any railroads when we attacked them. In fact they barely had any roads. That changed during the Porfiriato as US and European firms were allowed to develop(steal) Mexico's resources, keeping the most if it for themselves. Hence the opening Gen. Palmer was trying exploit with his Denver-El Paso-Mexico City 3' gauge ry.
