Did the Treaty of Paris Create the United States?

 

Adel:
Dr. Gould, it’s a pleasure to have you in our program’s special series. Thank you for taking the time for this conversation with me about the American Revolution. So, I want to speak with you about…

Dr. Gould:
Very happy to be here, Adel.

Adel:
Glad to have you. I want to speak with you about the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. And I’ll start by asking what I think is a basic question but may turn out to be more complex.

Is the Treaty of Paris, 1783 Treaty of Paris, one treaty between the U.S. and Britain, or is it like multiple convoluted treaties?

Dr. Gould:
Well, I’ll give you a very complicated answer, which is, it’s both. So, when we talk about… When American historians, and I think the American public, talks about the Treaty of Paris, we’re mainly talking about the Anglo-American Treaty.

That is the treaty that the American peace commissioners, as they were called, signed with their British counterparts. Now, there were two iterations or versions of that treaty. The first one was the Preliminary Treaty, which was signed on November 30th, 1782.

That was…

Adel:
Oh, 1782, so this is months before the final.

Dr. Gould:
Months before, yes.

Adel:
I see.

Dr. Gould:
And the Definitive Treaty was signed on September 3rd, 1783. Now, because, for all sorts of reasons we can go into, the Definitive Treaty was almost identical to the Preliminary Treaty. I mean, right after the Preliminary Treaty was signed, Adams and Franklin and John Jay, the three main negotiators, sat down and made up their list of goals they had for the Definitive Treaty.

None of those were realized. They couldn’t come to agreement. So, the Preliminary Treaty, which was signed in November of 1782, basically became the basis for the Definitive Treaty.

That is the final treaty. So, you know, we do talk about it as though it was one document, but in fact, there were two. And there are two, partly because communication took…

It took a month to cross the Atlantic and another month, this is in good conditions, to come back. So, you know, they signed a Preliminary Treaty. It had to go to Congress in Philadelphia and there in Paris.

That took a month. It actually took about three months because it was in winter. Congress had to debate it and ratify it, send it back.

So, you know, because of those communication lags, you know, there was oftentimes, as in this case, you know, what is it from November 1782 to September 1783, that is… Ten months. Yeah, yeah, something like that.

So, partly it’s that, but it also is because the United States, by 1782, was in an alliance with France. In February of 1778, the United States had signed a Treaty of Alliance with France in Paris. Sometimes that’s called the Treaty of Paris II.

Under the terms of that Treaty of Alliance, the United States was not able to make a separate peace. That means they could not stop fighting until France stopped fighting. So France needed to make its own peace treaty with Britain.

And technically, the United States probably should have coordinated its peace negotiations with Britain, with France. However, the American peace commissioners elected not to do that. Oh, wow.

Oh, yeah. So they negotiated terms with Britain. France actually knew they were talking.

What France didn’t know was that the American peace commissioners, and this is Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and on the final day, Henry Laurens. What France didn’t know was that they intended to, and in fact did, sign that preliminary treaty without showing it to the French. So the French foreign minister, a man named the Comte de Vergine, only saw that peace treaty after the preliminary treaty, after it had been signed.

So even though they had signed that peace treaty, the Americans, one of the terms of the preliminary treaty was that the United States would not withdraw from the war, and they wouldn’t stop fighting until France had realized its objectives. But, you know, nonetheless, it is technically a breach of the alliance.

Adel:
Oh, so how did France or Virginie sort of react to this? Did they see it as a betrayal, or is that how things were done back then? I don’t know.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, Virginie wasn’t happy, and one of the things he wasn’t happy about was the generous terms that the British gave the Americans. So France, and complicating this is the fact that France was was allied with Spain. In fact, their kings are cousins.

They’re both members of the House of Bourbon. So Louis XVI, the French king, and Carlos III, Charles III of Spain, are their cousins, and they are locked into a family alliance or compact. And under the terms of that alliance, Spain had entered the Revolutionary War in 1779, allied with France, though not with the United States.

So this is very complicated. And so Britain, by the end of the war, it’s fighting not just the United States, but France and Spain, and it’s also at war with the Netherlands and with most of the rest of Europe in an alliance headed by Russia called the League of Armed Neutrality. We don’t have to get too deep into that.

The key thing is that France, by drawing Spain into this war, promised to defend Spain’s interests. So the big thing is Spain wanted to get Gibraltar back from Britain, and Britain actually still, Gibraltar is a date of British possession, yeah, on the southern coast of Spain. It’s a real sore point still.

Spain wanted Gibraltar back. It didn’t get it. And Spain also wanted to take back Florida, which Britain had taken from Spain during the previous war.

And Spain also wanted to keep the United States away from the Mississippi River. And France wants that too, because France thinks if the United States is held at basically the ridgeline of the Appalachian Mountains, without Canada, without the Floridas, and there’s both an east and a west Florida, if the United States is basically held to areas that are already under American settlement, the U.S. will be weak and dependent on France. The United States will get its independence, but it’ll be sort of a satellite of France.

And the American peace commissioners in Paris want nothing to do with that. Now, until the Battle of Yorktown, the British agree with France and Spain. Nobody wants the United States to have land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

I should note that I grew up in Pennsylvania. We say Appalachian. I know you have listeners farther south who say Appalachian.

I hope they’ll indulge me in my regional pronunciation.

Adel:
Out in the West, we say Appalachian as well.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, there we go. Okay. So anyway, after Yorktown, the ministry of Lord North resigns.

He says, he’s losing support in the House of Commons. George III didn’t want him to resign, but he did. This is how Britain’s parliamentary democracy worked.

If you lose the support of the House of Commons, you have to resign. So the King had appointed actually two successor ministries, one led by the Marquess of Rockingham, who died actually on July 1st, 1782. He is succeeded by the Earl of Shelburne, and the Earl of Shelburne is in office when that preliminary peace treaty is negotiated and signed in November of 1782.

And Shelburne, he actually didn’t even want to grant the Americans independence. He hoped Americans would accept a kind of Commonwealth status, kind of like what Canada has today. Legislative independence, but they would accept a very loose authority of the King.

Interestingly, the British were actually willing to accept the Orders of Confederation, our first constitution, but make it a kind of British imperial constitution. Anyway, so Shelburne, he’s also not a huge fan of seeing a strong and powerful United States. However, little as he wants that, what he really doesn’t like is France.

Shelburne hates the French and he has very good spies. He knows what the French are thinking, and he agrees to give the Americans all the land as far as the Mississippi River, even though this land is controlled by Britain’s indigenous allies. Most of the native nations out there allied with Britain.

So Shelburne basically sacrifices the rights of Native Americans to make a very lenient peace with the Americans. And what he hopes is that the Americans will desert their French allies and either become neutral or better yet, start fighting with as Britain’s allies. And Shelburne also, he would have liked to create a kind of NATO alliance with the United States, draw the United States into a kind of like a federal relationship with the British Empire.

He doesn’t get that. The Americans don’t want that, but they’re very happy to take the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

Adel:
Wow, that’s huge for the 13 colonies at that time. Just a follow-up question. I’m sorry, I’m interjecting here.

Did France criticize or contest this agreement between, I don’t want to call it secret, but maybe it turns out we’re secret, but this agreement that was between the US and Britain, which was not coordinated with France, did they contest it? Yeah.

Dr. Gould:
They are not happy. When the Comte de Virgin sees the boundaries, he says to his undersecretary, a guy named René Naval, Britain buys peace instead of making it. They bought peace, they haven’t made it.

And he said, their concessions are far more than I could ever have imagined. He just didn’t expect that. He’s kind of blindsided.

The problem is, now that this is written down, Britain has accepted it, Shelburne kind of has him in a difficult place. Now, it’s going to turn out that people in Britain don’t like this agreement either. Actually, the other thing that’s really interesting, this treaty is negotiated on November 30th.

That’s around the time when Parliament should have reconvened. Shelburne wants this treaty agreed before Parliament convenes, because once Parliament is in session, they’re going to start talking about it, even if the negotiations are secret. They have friends in Paris.

It only takes a couple of days to go from Paris to London. They’re very close. Parliament will make all sorts of trouble.

He was right to be concerned, because once the terms are announced to Parliament, they’re furious. Why is that? This is a long war.

This war has been going on for seven years. They’ve heard about the Americans are ungrateful rebels. They’re traitors.

It’s a civil war, and there are atrocities on both sides. The atrocities committed by patriots, as the supporters of American independence call themselves, get a lot of play in the British press. They don’t hear so much about the Loyalist atrocities.

The idea that Shelburne has made such a generous and lenient peace with these rebels… There are people in Britain who sympathize with them. In fact, there are quite a lot of sympathizers with the American cause, but most Britons don’t sympathize.

In real strongholds of the places where they had supported the government—Oxford, where I am this year, was a real bastion of American support—they’re appalled. How can you possibly make this kind of peace? There are Loyalists who come over to Britain and write.

Some of them are very good writers. One of them actually is Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son, William Franklin, who had been governor of New Jersey. William Franklin is probably the most notorious Loyalist at the end of the war, even more notorious than Benedict Arnold, but they don’t like him either.

Franklin and his supporters in Britain lead the charge against Shelburne, and Shelburne is driven from power. He’s forced to resign in February.

Adel:
But he’s done his deed already.

Dr. Gould:
He’s done his deed already. The ministry that replaces him, led by our old friend Lord North, and another politician named Charles James Fox, they’re kind of like some politicians I know in Washington today. They promise, we’re going to get a much better deal for you.

In the end, they stick with the agreement, but they’re not willing to negotiate anything else. Adams and Franklin have all of these other things they want. They would have liked to take Canada and Nova Scotia, and there’s no way that’s happening.

The British have their own goals that they would actually like some protection written into the definitive peace treaty for Native Americans. The Americans say, no way, we’re not going to do that. So basically, two sides dig in their heels, and so the preliminary treaty becomes the final treaty.

Adel:
So just to confirm, Lord North leaves, but then he comes back in 1783. He comes back, but he sticks with what Shelburne had done. So let’s take a moment, please, and talk about the American peace commissioners, which included John Adams, John Jay, who’s a later Supreme Court justice, Ben Franklin, of course, Henry Laurens joins him, and also I think Franklin’s grandson is also in there.

So you said they put together a list of goals. Was there, and you just mentioned Canada and Nova Scotia, so I want to know, was there like one big thing that they really wanted to get, and they did get?

Dr. Gould:
Well, so they had a list of necessary or essential articles, and then they also had a list of things that would be nice to have if they could get it, and the necessary articles were the state’s western claims, and these states go back to the state’s colonial charters. The biggest of them all, of course, is Virginia, which claimed everything up to the Arctic Circle, just about. Part of the Canada claim comes out of that, actually, but Connecticut, one of my favorite maps from the, it’s actually at the end of the Revolutionary War, a Hartford, Connecticut map maker named Abel Buell publishes what he calls a new and correct map of the United States.

It’s not new, it’s based on an older map by a Virginia map maker named John Mitchell, and it’s only correct if you’re from Connecticut. It shows Connecticut’s borders extending all the way to the Mississippi. You know, Buell was kind enough to give the Hudson Valley to New York, and northeastern Pennsylvania, what today is, you know, the area around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, that goes to Pennsylvania, but everything from the west branch of the Susquehanna all the way to the Mississippi, including Ohio’s Western Reserve, shows up as Connecticut territory.

Adel:
Connecticut is ambitious.

Dr. Gould:
Oh, they are, and the Western Reserve of Ohio, so-called, because that was the Western Reserve of Connecticut, and so, you know, so Congress is claiming that land based on the colonial charters that these states have been given by, you know, basically, mainly the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, you know, Queen Elizabeth and then James and Charles and those guys, so it’s, I mean, it’s one of the interesting things, you know, they’ve toppled the king, but they’re still claiming under these royal charters, Western land.

Adel:
You’re no longer our king, but you remember, you gave us all this land, so that’s what we want.

Dr. Gould:
Exactly, you got it.

Adel:
That’s really interesting.

Dr. Gould:
These guys are lawyers.

Adel:
Yeah, so let me just home in on this a little bit, but before I do that, I just want to inject my own interest in this. Even before the revolution, we’re going back to 70, even as late as 74, these colonies were in conflict, sometimes even close to military conflicts between each other for these lands that we just discussed. They had their own claims, and much of that conflict comes to bear as they’re negotiating with the British.

So let’s home in, is there one or two or three must-haves that they got or didn’t get?

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, well, so they did, okay, so obviously, they got the Western claims, and that’s huge. The one thing they really, really, really want is the right to resume trading with Britain and its colonies. Shelburne is willing to give them that, and he’s still willing to do this after the Western claims, because he says, this is going to be a huge market for British manufacturers.

Remember, the Industrial Revolution is now well underway in Britain. In fact, there are major machine-breaking riots by the Luddites in the manufacturing districts of the Midlands and Yorkshire and Lancashire during the Revolutionary War. They And in fact, by the time of the American Revolution, their biggest market are the American colonies.

And one of the things that the British were worried about was whether they could maintain that economic dominance that they already had. They’re like eating the lunch of their competitors. The French are nowhere close.

Britain is just beating everyone in terms of cheap, high-quality manufactured goods. And they were worried that if the colonies become independent, they’re going to lose that market. So Shelburne is very willing to grant the colonies continued trading rights.

Now, from the American standpoint, this is huge, because to buy these British manufactured goods, they need to pay in pounds sterling. That is, they need to pay in bills, notes that can be exchanged for hard money, whether it’s gold or silver. And their main access to that hard money is in the West Indies, the British West Indies.

So the big merchants in this process are the New Englanders. And there’s a huge shipbuilding industry in New England. A lot of New England ships are smaller than the British ships, but there are a lot of them.

We estimate that about a third of Britain’s merchant marine in 1775 was built in the American colonies, mainly in New England, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. And so there’s a huge trade going down to the West Indies, and they are shipping everything. They’re shipping fish.

They’re shipping grain, beef, Rhode Island, because it’s got the salt marshes of Rhode Island are great for grazing cattle on. So they’re shipping beef down there. They’re also shipping lumber down there.

They’re sending prefabricated barrel staves to make barrels because the West Indies produce sugar and molasses. And they’ve largely deforested to create their plantations. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in my home state, in 1775, they shipped down 200 prefabricated houses, largely housing for the enslaved.

Adel:
Prefabricated houses in those days?

Dr. Gould:
Yes, down to the West Indies. And what they get in return is hard money because the West Indies themselves do a very brisk trade with Spanish America. And Spanish America produces silver dollars, pesos.

Adel:
Oh, where are they getting the Carlos dollars? Is that what was happening?

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, yeah. They’ve got Carlos III on them. And in fact, the Americans are so dependent on that.

They really have two. They’re two international currencies of account. One is the pound sterling.

The other is the Spanish dollar. And the so-called piece of eight, because it’s divided up into eight parts. And the reason why the continental dollar is called the dollar is it’s pegged to the value of those Spanish silver dollars.

The problem is the way to get those dollars is to trade with British West Indies. And so, you know, Shelburne wants this. The Americans want this.

When the British public gets wind of what Shelburne wants to do, they say, no way, buddy. They are curious. And the key plier in this is a British aristocrat named John Holroyd, Lord Sheffield.

Sheffield is a great patron of the historian Edward Gibbon, who writes The Decline and Fall. Gibbon is writing his history during the American Revolution. But Sheffield, in 1784, publishes an enormously influential pamphlet called The Commerce of the American States.

And what Sheffield says is, we don’t need to give the Americans any concessions. Our products are so good that they’re going to buy them anyway. And he turns out to be right.

The other thing he says is we shouldn’t give them concessions because their ships are now no longer British ships. Their sailors are no longer British sailors. And the Royal Navy, upon which Britain’s empire depends, and the Navy is much, much more important to the British than the army.

The Navy depends upon Britain’s merchant marine. And Sheffield says, if we allow the Americans to trade with the West Indies, we’re going to basically let them hang on to that part of merchant marine, and it may grow at our expense. The only way to build our merchant marine back up and to support our naval power is to reserve the West Indian trade for our remaining colonies.

So we’re going to make it available to Canada, Nova Scotia, and to Newfoundland, and even to ships from Britain proper. But if we allow the Americans to trade with the West Indies, we will destroy our Navy. And this resonates with the British public.

So it’s not popular with manufacturers, and it’s really not popular with the West Indians, who have to pay more for goods that they had gotten quite inexpensively from the American.

Adel:
So one of the major things that American negotiators, the American peace commissioners wanted, was trade with the West Indies. And it makes so much sense. And they don’t get that.

They’re essentially locked out.

Dr. Gould:
They don’t get that. Yeah.

Adel:
Yeah. And this leads to, I suppose, smuggling and all sorts of different issues. Oh, oh, continue.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. Yeah. So, and New Englanders, yeah, they’ve been smuggling forever.

John Hancock, he’s a great smuggler. He knows how to do it. And so, you know, before the, actually one of the kind of flashpoints during the imperial crisis leading up to the Revolutionary War is Britain’s attempt to crack down on that smuggling.

Before the war, a lot of the smuggling had been to the colonies of France and Britain and the Dutch. But after the Revolutionary War, a lot of this is into the British West Indies. And it just so happens that the early 1780s are a period of very active hurricanes.

And when a hurricane strikes, I mean, they’re devastating. The descriptions of these on some of the smaller islands, the storms are so intense that it rains saltwater. You know, it sucks.

And these are devastating. When that happens, the British governors in these islands, under tremendous pressure from the planters who control the assembly, these are wealthy white enslavers who kind of control the politics down there. They will suspend the British trade restrictions that the so-called Navigation Acts and allow American vessels to trade on an emergency basis.

And this happens quite a lot. So a lot of trade does get through, but a lot of it’s illegal. And one of the most fascinating observers of this, he’s a very hostile observer, is a young naval captain named Horatio Nelson.

Now, you know, anyone who knows their British naval history knows that Nelson is the great hero of Trafalgar. You know, he is, you know, he almost single-handedly defeats Napoleon and the French Revolutionary’s navies during the French Revolution. He’s a young guy.

He had seen service in the American War, and he’s put in charge of the naval station in the so-called Leeward Islands. He’s based in Antigua. Nelson is trying to stop these American smugglers.

But the governors keep suspending the trade restrictions, which is their right to do. And, you know, Nelson’s head literally explodes. And I think part of Nelson’s greatness is that he can write.

He writes beautifully. And you can get his letters. They’ve been published from the West Indies.

And, you know, he just, you know, he doesn’t like the West Indians. They’re a bunch of traitors. He hates the Americans.

He keeps calling them rebels, even though they’re now citizens of an independent state. He hates the Irish. They like the Americans.

And he hates the loyalists. They’re no better. So he hates everybody.

He does. And he has these wonderful turns of phrase. My favorite is he claims that if he were to go up in a hot air balloon, and the first successful balloon ascents were in 1783.

So this is it’s all the rage. And Nelson imagines himself sailing into, you know, a West Indian port in a hot air balloon. And he said, if I came down, I wouldn’t know if I was in an American port or British West Indian port.

There’s so many American ships flying.

Adel:
That’s telling a lot. That’s telling a lot.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. Yeah. He just, you know, he’s got away with metal.

Adel:
In the few minutes that we have left of this segment, I just want to ask two follow up questions. They’re kind of confirmations more than follow ups. So we mentioned the four American peace commissioners, John Adams, John Jay, Ben Franklin and Henry Laurens.

Did any of them play a more significant role than others? Is there anything to tell us about that? Or just yeah, there’s no story there.

And that’s there is.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, there is a story. I mean, so Franklin, he’d been in Paris the longest. He’d hadn’t gone native.

But when Adam showed up, he thought he had. So Adams and Jay think Franklin is way too accommodating of the French. And there are, in fact, divisions in Congress between people who are pro-French.

Some of them are actually on France’s payroll versus people who are there. They’re the anti-Gallic and they don’t like the French. So those tensions also play out in Paris.

But Franklin, when they start talking to the British in October of 1782, he says, I will go along with you and I’ll say nothing to the French. They say nothing to us after all. And so Franklin, when push comes to shove, the other crucial player, and we haven’t talked about Laurens and his contribution to the peace treaty, but it’s really important.

He had been locked up in the Tower of London for much of the war. He’s actually on his way to Europe to be a peace commissioner. He gets captured by the British and they throw him in the tower.

He gets released and he shows up, as I often say in my classes, like a bad dream on November 29th. And he insists at the 11th hour, it’s actually on the morning that the preliminary treaty is signed, that a clause be inserted in the seventh article that Britain, the British army will withdraw from posts that it holds in North America without carrying away Negroes or other American property. That’s a direct quote I’m quoting from the treaty.

And in so doing, he obligates the British not to legally, they’re not supposed to bring African-Americans who had earned their freedom by serving in the British army. That clause in the treaty obligated Britain to leave them in America to be re-enslaved by the enslavers. So that is, Laurens is only there for like 24 hours before the, or 48 at most, before the treaty is signed.

But with that, he introduces this. Now it has to be said, everyone in Paris agrees with him. And that includes Richard Oswald, the British peace commissioner, who is a Scott.

He had been a merchant involved in the North American trade during the colonial period. And one of his partners in that trade had been Henry Laurens. And together, they’re probably the biggest American slave traders.

So it’s like Richard Oswald, he sees things the same way that Laurens does. And they agree, but so too, Franklin, Adams, and Jay, all of whom are on record being opposed to slavery.

Adel:
So this is my final question for this segment. And it’s this, was the Treaty of Paris, the final treaty, the second document, thought to be a success by the Americans, by the commission? There’s two parts, one by the commissioners in Paris and two by the American public.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, the answer is yes. The failure to mention native rights, we can talk about that. That actually had first happened in the earlier 1763 Treaty of Paris, the clause relating to what Southerners will insist on calling stolen Negroes.

It becomes hugely controversial, and in fact, contributes to the first sectional crisis over slavery. But that isn’t overly troubling the 80% of the colonies who are white. The black loyalists are appalled.

And when the treaty reaches New York, where the British headquarters are, they can’t believe it. They know they’ve been betrayed. But there’s more to talk about if you want to.

Adel:
And we’ll do that. Let’s take a break here. In the next segment, Dr. Gould and I talk about his two books on the history of the Treaty of Paris. We’ll be right back. Dr. Gould, in this book, Among the Powers of the Earth, the American Revolution, and the Making of a New World Empire, you explored the early American Republic’s quest to be accepted, and this is the key phrase, as a treaty worthy nation. What do you mean by that, treaty worthy?

What does that mean?

Dr. Gould:
So, yeah, I mean, treaty worthiness, and it is a phrase I’ve coined. You don’t really find it elsewhere in the literature. But the reason I liked it is it captured what, in fact, was a central goal.

It’s not a phrase the founders used, but it was what they were striving for. And that is to have a nation, or as I would have described it, a union, that other powers would accept as being treaty worthy. And, you know, we sometimes forget the extent to which the United States needed the acceptance of its European neighbors, in particular, in order to achieve its goals both overseas—they certainly needed treaties to trade with other nations—but they also needed European treaties to expand.

All of the United States’ territorial acquisitions have been done, confirmed, ultimately, by international treaties. And that includes not just with their European and Creole neighbors, in the case of Mexico, but also with Native Americans. So, treaty worthiness even carries over into Indigenous relations.

Now, the United States hasn’t always lived up to its treaties. In fact, more often than not, it hasn’t. Yet, the need to be treaty worthy has remained a goal and an objective in the back-and-forth between the federal government and the various Native nations with which we have treaty and run into the hundreds.

Adel:
To be treaty worthy, is that like to be accepted as a nation among nations?

Dr. Gould:
Yes. So, I mean, and it covers a number of things. I mean, starting with the Treaty of Paris, you know, there are all sorts of things the United States got from that treaty, but the treaty came with a number of obligations that the United States was expected to fulfill.

The most important was to compel Americans to repay their pre-war debts to British creditors. And we estimate that, you know, in 1783, there are about 5 million pounds in outstanding pre-war debts. And that’s, you know, I don’t have, you can correct me if I’m wrong, that figure, I think, probably comes to, I mean, it goes into, it certainly approaches a billion dollars today.

Adel:
But that’s not in the treaty. Is that in the treaty?

Dr. Gould:
It is. It is Article 4. And so, and, you know, in parts of the United States, they’re willing to pay up, particularly in New England, because, of course, this is where the big merchant houses that want to, you know, they want to restart British trade as soon as possible.

And, you know, about half the debts are owed by New Englanders. In Virginia, on the other hand, they recognize they need to pay the debts, but they also say they are owed compensation for formerly enslaved African Americans, Black Americans, who were allowed to leave New York in 1783, even though the Treaty of Paris was supposed to obligate the British not to take them. But the British commander in chief, a guy named General Carlton, defies that.

He actually keeps a record of who leaves, because he knows that Britain may have to pay compensation. Britain never does. And in Virginia, the enslavers, former enslavers of those people are furious, and they refuse to allow British creditors to make claims in Virginia state courts until compensation is paid for Black loyalties.

So there’s a standoff there.

Adel:
You mentioned how New Englanders are jumping at the bits to trade with Britain again.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah.

Adel:
For our audience, and perhaps for myself, I just want to draw a clear line here. Trading with Britain is not the same as trading with the West Indies. Those are two separate things, right?

By Britain, you mean the British Isles, and perhaps… Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. And Britain, the prohibition on trade with the West Indies, it actually happens while the negotiations for the definitive treaty are underway. So it’s not written into the treaty and said it’s a unilateral order by the British Privy Council, but it has the same effect.

But Britain does allow Americans to trade with Britain proper. And actually, Americans also start trading with China and India into factories, as they’re called, the trading posts controlled by the British East India Company. So there are other channels for Americans to trade with the British.

And New Englanders who are leading the way on this, they don’t want these British debts in the way. So they basically cut their own deals. They negotiate it.

For the most part, the debts owed by New England debtors are paid off. The debts particularly owed in Virginia are not.

Adel:
Interesting. The New Englanders see bigger opportunities and they just want to clean the slate and go forward.

Dr. Gould:
Exactly.

Adel:
And take advantage of those new opportunities. I want to ask you a question, a big question. Well, I think it’s a big question.

But did the 1783 Paris Peace Treaty set the stage for who we are now, a superpower? You even allude to that, you say in the title of your book, and you say, and the making of a new world empire. So does this go back to the Paris Peace Treaty?

Dr. Gould:
Yes. So again, the treaty worthy nation, this standoff over the debts, Congress is unable to do anything under the Arrows of Confederation, the so-called Confederation Congress. The most they can do is on a like every year, they urge the states to comply with the treaty, but they can’t force the states.

They just don’t have the power to compel the states to fulfill article four. And there are other articles as well related to the loyalists and wartime confiscations of property. All of that is Congress is, you know, they’re powerless.

Adel:
And by Congress, you’re talking about the Congress in the 1780s before we have the Constitution.

Dr. Gould:
Exactly.

Adel:
Okay.

Dr. Gould:
So, and that is one of the driving factors, forces behind the Constitutional Convention that meets in Philadelphia in May of 1787. One of the big things they want is to create a United States that can abide, that can enforce treaties. And the treaty they are thinking of in that moment is the Peace Treaty, the Treaty of Paris.

And article six of the Constitution makes duly ratified treaties, the law of the land. Now you can go and read it. I don’t know if that’s an exact quote, but law of the land, it’s the supreme law of the land.

Adel:
Which means that if we have a treaty with Britain, Virginia can’t say, no, we’re not going to comply.

Dr. Gould:
Exactly. Yeah. And so the creation of the federal judiciary is designed to give teeth to that article in the Peace Treaty.

And in fact, the creation of the district courts, and it is a fascinating story. It’s at the center of the final chapter of this book that I’m finishing. In Virginia, that’s basically what they do.

They enforce debt cases.

Adel:
Federal courts in Virginia are enforcing debt cases against Virginians.

Dr. Gould:
Right. Brought by British creditors.

Adel:
Wow.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah.

Adel:
We’re now getting into federalism.

Dr. Gould:
Yes. So the Peace Treaty, before the Constitution, the treaty and the Arrows of Confederation together potentially are creating a new constitution. Alexander Hamilton, who is an attorney, makes that argument in a famous case in New York in 1784.

And in fact, that’s basically what the Constitution does. It blends the Union’s international obligations with its domestic authority. And, you know, for a long time, that’s kind of what the federal government did.

It kind of struck a balance between the Union’s international obligations and its domestic responsibilities.

Adel:
And you think by creating this necessity for having a national government, a truly national government in which Virginia or Connecticut or whoever, new states can’t say, oh, no, no, thank you. We don’t want to impose or comply with this law. You can’t have that anymore.

And you think by creating a solid constitution that leads to a robust national government by their standards, though it’s not by our standards, obviously, that eventually leads to America becoming a strong nation and a superpower after World War Two.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. And so and, you know, part of it is enforcing the terms of the treaty against U.S. citizens. They also want a government that can insist on the things Britain had promised under that peace treaty, force Britain to actually fulfill those.

So, you know, there’s a kind of carrot and stick quality. I actually use that metaphor in one of my sections. And Washington is thinking this way as the first president.

You know, on one hand, OK, you know, we’re going to get these private creditors out of your hair. And the British government is tired of hearing from these creditors because they’re not only are they bothering the Americans, they’re also complaining to the British government in London. It’s like, you know, Britain wants this solved and they say, OK, we’ll do that.

But in exchange, they keep pushing for compensation for the black loyalists. They never get that. They eventually the federal government gives up on that, partly because it’s become an embarrassment.

Anti-slavery is becoming increasingly popular. Washington, who we know famously a freeze a lot of the slaves at Mount Vernon. He’s not supportive.

So the that article seven stolen Negro clause is abandoned. However, the British are continuing to occupy Detroit, Fort Niagara and a series of other strongholds on the American side of the treaty’s new border. And Washington makes clear now that we’ve got a government that can impose taxes, Congress couldn’t tax under the US Confederation.

It can. We are much more formidable military power because we can tax. And that’s what taxes do.

They’re part of military power. And we’re going to use that power to take those forts by force. If you don’t, you aren’t willing to negotiate a peaceful handover at the end.

The handover is peaceful, but they want to use their power for that. The other article in the peace treaty, we haven’t talked about it, but Article eight of the peace treaty had guaranteed that the Mississippi River would be open to the citizens of subjects of both the United States and Britain. Well, the problem with that is Spain controlled the mouth of the Mississippi River.

New Orleans is a Spanish possession and Spain had reconquered Florida, including West Florida, basically what is today the Southern part of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, east of the Mississippi River. And Spain closes the Mississippi River to American ships and goods. And this is a real problem if you’re in Kentucky or Tennessee, because the way you get your goods to market is down that river.

And, you know, the stronger government, the Americans, particularly in the West, want the government to use its power to kind of force Spain to pry open the Mississippi River. And by the mid 1790s, it’s largely succeeding. The Mississippi becomes what it will be, still is the most important highway for farmers and eventually manufacturers in the Mississippi Valley.

And of course, you know, the center of the country is drained by the Mississippi’s waters. So, you know, that also, that is part of the peace treaty and that is a driving force behind the effort in the constitution to create a stronger union.

Adel:
So, in a way, the Paris Peace Treaty enables the expansion of America West and also enables the export of American goods, sort of international commerce from the center, places that are not coastal, right? And that’s a big deal. And over time, throughout in the 19th century, that eventually leads to the, our expansion to the Pacific Ocean and the rest is history, as they say.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. And the Louisiana Purchase is, you know, famously, your listeners who know their history will know that what Jefferson sent James Monroe over to Paris to do was to acquire New Orleans. And maybe West Florida, he’s not thinking of anything west of the Mississippi, except for New Orleans.

And instead, you know, Monroe comes back or he doesn’t come back, but he negotiates the Louisiana Purchase. But the Louisiana Purchase is basically an attempt to secure the navigation rights on the Mississippi River. So, yeah, the whole Western expansion, it grows out of Article 8 of the Treaty of Paris.

Adel:
Wow. So, that sort of breathes new life or new importance into the Paris Peace Treaty, particularly for people like us that are not experts in history, sort of just the people at large. This is interesting.

As you were explaining this, I sort of, it almost sounds like the Paris Peace Treaty has a huge role in the founding of the nation. And you have a book, a forthcoming book on this, and it’s titled Peace and Independence, the Turbulent History of the United States Founding Treaty. So, let me parse two words here.

First, the minor question, and the second one is the bigger question. I’ll start with the minor. Why do you say turbulent history of the Paris Peace Treaty?

Why is it turbulent? Was it everything we discussed back and forth regarding death, slavery, and all of that?

Dr. Gould:
Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So, it’s turbulent because the interesting thing about the Arts of Confederation, we always think of the Confederation as a failure here, and ultimately is.

It’s weak. Congress can’t tax. It’s on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, which would have been a disaster for merchants and, you know, speculators, the money, anyway.

So, the Constitution, we get the Constitution partly because it’s a failure, yet it is very successful at accommodating the democratic impulses that the revolution unleashes. And American historians, historians of the revolution, we do a lot of arguing about what we think of those democratic impulses, but the really three important are, well, there are four. The first is, and probably the most important, is the move to abolish slavery, and that doesn’t happen everywhere.

It doesn’t happen at all in South Carolina and Georgia, which are bastions of the slave interest. We see stirrings of it in Virginia, though Virginia also ends up coming down on the side of slave power with some qualifications. You know, we do have people like Washington who acknowledge it in his will, freeing the slaves that he owns outright.

But in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, it produces measures. In Pennsylvania, it’s an act of the state assembly. In Massachusetts, it’s a combination of Massachusetts 1780 Constitution and the interpretation that the state courts put on it in freedom suits brought by enslaved Massachusetts African-Americans who successfully sued for their freedom.

In Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the revolution leads to the legal abolition of slavery. Now, there are all sorts of caveats and qualifications built into this. You know, by the early 19th century, we were seeing slavery being replaced with what looks like an early form of Jim Crow, so we shouldn’t read too much into this.

Nonetheless, by the time Washington takes the oath of office at the end of April 1789 as the first president of the United States, there is already a divide opening up over increasingly slaves of so-called free soil states north of the Mason-Dixon line and slave states to the south. And the Treaty of Paris, that Article 7, becomes a bone of contention. And one of the things it does is to force the Constitutional Convention to recognize slavery in ways that the Arlison Confederation didn’t.

What the Confederation did was to create the space for the states to experiment with anti-slavery in ways that would have been much harder to do and where it was much harder to do under the Constitution. And the Treaty of Paris is a driving force in that. And so that’s one of the big, that’s probably the biggest hot-button topic.

I see.

Adel:
You said there were four, right?

Dr. Gould:
Okay, so the other three, Native American rights, and Native Americans who are not mentioned in the peace treaty, see negotiating with the United States as an opportunity to claim rights as free and independent nations. They use those words even though they hadn’t been written into the Treaty of Paris. And instead, Congress takes their absence from the treaty to classify Native Americans, that is, indigenous nations that have fought for Britain, as the most powerful ones had as a conquered people.

So the absence in the Treaty of Paris carries very, you know, dire implications for Native Americans. They can’t look to the Treaty of Paris for support. The other two hot-button issues aren’t directly affected by the Treaty of Paris, though the creation of the Constitution carries implication.

One is the right to vote. And the right to vote is in the hands of the individual states, and it varies widely. In some states, it’s pretty narrow.

In Virginia, the franchise of the right to vote is pretty narrowly defined. And in most states, it’s tied to property. In New Jersey, it is tied to property, but in New Jersey, property-owning women gain the right to vote.

How does this relate to the Treaty of Paris again? Well, it relates to the treaty in that the creation of this stronger union closes, reduces the space for states to innovate within this. And in fact, in New Jersey, women will lose the right to vote in the early 19th century.

We sort of see this as part of the Jacksonian democracy. So, you know, it’s indirect, but this stronger union means that we’re starting to see national discussions over who has the right to vote and who doesn’t. And African Americans also have the right to vote, free Blacks, property-owning Blacks in a number of northern states.

In most of those states, those rights will be reduced in the early 19th century as a part of this increasingly consolidated politics, which is growing out of the Treaty of Paris.

Adel:
And your number four?

Dr. Gould:
Number four is freedom of religion. And the shining example, and the interesting thing about this is there’s states that score high marks on one metric and not on the other. When it comes to the freedom of religion, Virginia is the great leader.

Massachusetts is not. In Massachusetts, the Congregational Church remains the established church in the 1830s, whereas in Virginia, under the statute of religious freedom, which is adopted in the mid-1780s, they totally disestablish the Church of England and remove any kind of religious privilege for any religious.

Adel:
How does that relate to the Treaty of Paris?

Dr. Gould:
Again, that happens in the space that is open under the Arts of Confederation. It’s very indirect. It’s kind of the consolidation of a kind of Protestant identity, Christian identity, if you will.

But by the early 19th century, that is taking shape, and it is part of this consolidated nation. But I want to say very loudly, that idea of the United States as a Christian, let alone a Protestant nation, is no part of the national constitution under the Arts of Confederation. It’s just not there.

Some states adhere to that. Massachusetts, my home state of New Hampshire, do. Virginia totally breaks with it.

And part of the statute of religious freedom holds that Jews and Muslims have the exact same rights as Christians. There’s to be no preference whatsoever.

Adel:
They don’t specifically identify Jews and Muslims. They just say other religions.

Dr. Gould:
Oh, no. Well, this is mentioned in the, if you look at the legislative history, that is brought up.

Adel:
Interesting. So let’s go back to the title again, the part that really intrigued me. I said, this is the big question.

It turned out that my minor question was also big. You call it the founding treaty. So when we think of founding, you think of documents.

You think of the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution. One, I want you to explain that, please. But let me ask this question before you even begin explaining.

Do other scholars also call the Treaty of Paris a founding document?

Dr. Gould:
They do. I don’t know if there’s a book that makes that point as forcefully as I’m making it. But the key point here is that independence is a three-legged stool.

And this is particularly true of post-colonial nations like the United States. And of course, we started out as British colonies. So you need three things.

And the United States sort of becomes the model for this. First, you need to declare independence. You need a Declaration of Independence.

And remember, the Declaration of Independence is addressed to a candid world. They’re particularly addressing it to the European powers. But it is an international statement.

It’s for domestic consumption, too. But they are appealing to the powers of the earth. So that’s the first thing you need.

The second thing you need is a charter of government. Now, in fact, we’ve had two. First, there is the Confederation.

And Congress starts work on the articles. They’re already working on it by the time they declare independence. So it’s finally adopted in 1777, ratified by the final state, Maryland, in 1781.

So that’s the second leg of the stool or tripod. The third leg is the recognition of the power whose authority or jurisdiction you are rejecting. And that’s the Treaty of Paris.

Until George III recognized the independence of the United States, those other two documents might just be scraps of paper, you know, stirring, you know, full of wonderful ideas, but worth, you know, no more valuable than the paper that they’re written on.

Adel:
The war could have gone on. You may have, you know, taken a breaking return.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah. And look at the nations that lack that recognition. You know, think of Taiwan, an independent state in every sense, except the recognition of the nation that claims the right to govern them.

Adel:
And, you know, And it happens to be a powerful nation, hence leaves Taiwan in limbo like that.

Dr. Gould:
Exactly, exactly. Or, you know, Haiti, and there’s been quite a lot written about this. Haiti declares independence in 1804.

They don’t get France’s recognition until the 1820s. And when France recognizes them, they insist that Haiti compensate the former enslavers of the Haitian now citizens who had been enslaved by those French planters. And it’s a huge indemnity.

A lot of some Haitian historians trace Haiti’s current problems to that indemnity. Yeah. So again, you know, recognition, we partly because Britain granted such lenient terms, we tend to forget just how important that document was, but that it was important.

Adel:
Now that you say just how important that document was, let me ask you this, is this document one of the least studied documents of our early years? Why is that?

Dr. Gould:
Well, a couple of things. You know, partly, we like the documents that we wrote. We didn’t write, you know, we Americans had to write the Treaty of Paris with the British.

It is a bilateral document. And, you know, it’s not entirely a welcome truth that one of our three founding documents is an international document. You know, when I give PowerPoint talks about this, I actually just gave one last Friday.

One of the slides I show is- You gave one at Oxford, right? Actually, I gave this at a club that is in the London home of the Earl of Shelburne. Oh, wow.

That is fascinating.

Adel:
That is great.

Dr. Gould:
I’ve been giving a lot of talks over here. So, and the slide shows the so-called Charters of Freedom. You can Google it at the National Archives.

And in those Charters of Freedom, and actually, this is also in most post offices in the United States. So, you just go to your local post office, you’ll see the same display. It has the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

And I’m not taking anything away from any of those. But the Treaty of Paris is also a Charter of Freedom. The legislation for that display was passed by Congress in the 1920s.

This, of course, is the same Congress that refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War, that refused to join the League of Nations, the moment that produced the original America First moment, you know, people like Charles Lindbergh. And, you know, so this runs deep, and it runs very deep, even, you know, in kind of the isolationist wing of, you know, some of our parties. I know this is not a political broadcast.

Adel:
No, it’s not. It is part of our history. Let me just clarify this point.

So, if I go to a post office or another federal building, and I ask him, hey, do you have a display of Charters of Freedom? The Paris Peace Treaty will be listed there as well?

Dr. Gould:
It won’t be.

Adel:
It won’t be. Okay, that’s the point.

Dr. Gould:
Yeah, yeah, that’s the point. It’s not there.

Adel:
Yeah, yeah. Hence, least studied. Hence, least studied.

I see. Yeah, because I’m I’ve never seen that. Okay.

Okay, that clarifies. Now that you mentioned Oxford University and your presentations in London, as we approach our 250th anniversary and 4th of July this year, 2026, are you also talking to British students, audiences? I know you also teach some Americans about the American Revolution.

Dr. Gould:
Oh, yeah, yeah. So, a lot of the students here at Oxford are American, but they’re also British. And, you know, they’re interested to hear about this.

You know, I mean, obviously, the treaty is an international document. If you’re over here, you’re very interested in the United States history as a global power. In 1783, the United States wasn’t a global power like it is today.

But, you know, there is interest in that. And here at Oxford, you know, most of the academic defenders of the American Revolution in 1776 were at Cambridge. Oxford was a real bastion of the conservative Tories.

And the college where I’m a fellow, Queen’s College, one of its alumni, if you will, its old members, was a guy named Jeremy Bentham. And Bentham helped write the official, unofficial response to the Declaration of Independence. It arrives over here in Britain in, you know, we think it probably showed up sometime in August.

It takes a little over a month to cross the Atlantic. And eventually, George III kind of recognizes it when he denounces it to Parliament. But initially, it’s like, you know, what do we do with this?

We can’t let it go unanswered. But to publish a formal, authorized response would suggest that Congress is legitimate.

Adel:
So they hire. You’re almost recognizing him by responding to that.

Dr. Gould:
Right, exactly. So they hire two guys, John Lynn and the son of one of his attorneys, a guy named Jeremy Bentham, to write an answer to the American Congress’s declaration. It makes fascinating reading.

Basically, what it is, is a line by line response to the grievances showing why nothing that the British government had done was exceptional or an act of tyranny or oppression. Nothing George III had done made him unfit to be the ruler of a free people, which the declaration says. And Bentham wrote a short review at the end where he takes aim at the famous words, we hope these truths will be self-evident that all men are created equal.

Bentham said, that’s crazy. We know all men are not created equal.

Adel:
Just look around.

Dr. Gould:
Some are smarter than others. Some are richer than others. Some are freer than others.

That’s just absurd. And the minute you admit that, you’re going to have problems. Again, this is in this answer.

It’s a fascinating document, but it’s totally unofficial. But it has a huge print run and they bundle 500 copies onto a ship for New York, where they really, really hope Americans will read it and think better of this stupid declaration.

Adel:
Oh, wow.

Dr. Gould:
That’s what I think, but it’s what they did think.

Adel:
That’s the stupid year saying that they thought that.

Dr. Gould:
Right. I think the declaration is wonderful. I totally love the words all men are created equal.

I would add women to it.

Adel:
But so women are eventually added to it. They are 100 some years. So do you ever get questions that you think an American audience would not ask you?

And when you’re when you’re there in Britain?

Dr. Gould:
Um, well, that’s a good, that’s a really good question. Question that an American, I mean, I think the interest in the international consequences of this have an immediate meaning over here that they don’t in the United States. Yes.

Yeah. I think we think when you know, we tend to focus on the words, you know, all men are created equal. And that’s true over here, too.

But But I think, you know, over here, people are aware that this was a civil war, it was a war of secession. It, you know, there are parallels between what the United States did, Congress did in 1776. And the failed war of secession, that is the, the American Civil War.

Yeah. And, you know, I think the I think British readers and listeners are alive to that, in ways that, you know, an American audience probably wouldn’t.

Adel:
Yeah. And in our program, we really do. Many of your colleagues, we have 33 historians that cover the American Revolution from different angles, we really do.

Well, they really do emphasize the global dimensions of the American Revolution. If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about the Treaty of Paris, after everything we’ve talked about, what would that one point be?

Dr. Gould:
The one point would be that as Americans, you know, we do make our own history, but no nation totally makes its own history. At the end of the day, we also make the history that others are willing to let us make. And, you know, that the treaty reminds us of that.

Adel:
Wow, that’s wonderful. Dr. Gould, thank you so much for educating me and our audience about the American Revolution. And to our audience, if you know of any history that could provide more perspective about the American Revolution, please share it with us and tell us what’s your perspective.

Thank you so very much. This was wonderful.

Dr. Gould:
My pleasure, Adel. Thanks for having me on.