territories of the United States

Examples of territories of the United States in the following topics:

• The 21st Amendment

  • The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which had mandated nationwide Prohibition on alcohol on January 17, 1920.
  • The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
  • The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
  • This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
  • Joint Resolution Proposing the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• Settlement of the New Land

  • The United States began continental expansion immediately after the Constitution of 1789 through war, treaty, land deals, and settlement.
  • Control and settlement of the North American territories was a centuries-long contest that affected Britain, Spain, France, and, from 1776, the United States.
  • Aggressive negotiations with Spain brought acquisition of some Floridian territory and Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the size of the United States.
  • Alaska was added to the United States in 1867 as part of a land deal with the Russian Empire.
  • Identify key dates in the history of the United States' territorial expansion

• Land Ordinances and the Northwest Territory

  • Therefore, the immediate goal of the ordinance was to raise money through the sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states acquired in the Treaty of Paris.
  • Over three-fourths of the area of the continental United States ultimately came under the rectangular survey.
  • The primary effect of the Northwest Ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the United States out of the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River.
  • The first state created from the Northwest Territory was Ohio, in 1803, at which time the remainder was renamed Indiana Territory.
  • The new United States Territory that included the Appalachian mountains and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was the subject of the 1784 Land Ordinance

• Congress and the West

  • Following the British defeat in the Revolutionary War, the United States Congress looked westward for further expansion of the United States.
  • Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not have the power to raise revenue by direct taxation of the inhabitants of the United States.
  • The Land Ordinance of 1785 was adopted by the United States Congress in May 1785 to do just that.
  • The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Northwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio.
  • The territory included all the land of the United States west of Pennsylvania and northwest of the Ohio River.

• Land Policy

  • During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States acquired much of the present-day American territories after the 13 colonies.
  • The Jay Treaty of 1795, signed between the U.S. and Britain, not only ceased most of the hostilities, but also normalized trade relations with Britain and resolved the disputed claim over the western territories in favor of the United States .
  • The Republic of Texas sought U.S. annexation, despite Mexico's threat to go to war with the United States.
  • In 1853, the United States purchased a strip of land along the U.S.
  • A government map, probably created in the mid-20th century, that depicts a simplified history of territorial acquisitions within the continental United States

• The Northwest Territory

  • The Northwest Indian War (1785–1795) led to further expansion of the United States into American Indian territory.
  • In the Treaty of Paris (1783), Great Britain nominally ceded control of the Northwest Territory (which was primarily occupied by various American Indian tribes) to the United States.
  • The Northwest Indian War, or Little Turtle's War, resulted from conflict between the United States and the Western Confederacy over occupation of the Northwest Territory.
  • Following the battle, the Western Confederacy and the United States signed the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795, to end the Northwest Indian War.
  • Army records as the "Miami Campaign," was the first major military endeavor of the post-revolutionary United States, historians have sometimes overlooked it.

• Settlers and the West

  • In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, a delegate from Virginia, proposed that the states should relinquish their particular claims to all the territory west of the Appalachians, and the area should be divided into new states of the Union.
  • The ordinance was thus the prototype for the subsequent organic acts that created organized territories during the westward expansion of the United States.
  • The balance of the number of free versus slave states was not affected, as most slave states in 1790 were south of the Ohio River.
  • Many Native Americans in Ohio refused to acknowledge treaties signed after the Revolutionary War that ceded lands north of the Ohio River inhabited by them to the United States, on the grounds that they were not parties in those treaties.
  • The territories northwest and southwest of the Ohio River are depicted on this map of the early United States (1783–1803).

• Pinckney's Treaty

  • Pinckney's Treaty between Spain and the United States defined the boundaries of the Spanish colonies of West and East Florida.
  • Primarily, it defined the boundaries between the United States and the Spanish colonies and guaranteed the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River.
  • Rather, their growing fear of an alliance between the United States and the British—prompted by the signing of Jay's Treaty in 1794—spurred Spain to negotiate with the United States.
  • With the signing of the treaty in 1795, the border between the United States and the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida became what is now the line through the present-day states of Georgia and Florida, respectively, and the territory extended from the northern boundary of the Florida panhandle to the northern boundary of that portion of Louisiana East of the Mississippi.
  • When France then sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, disputes arose again between Spain and the United States regarding which parts of West Florida Spain had ceded to France.

• Land Policy under the Confederation

  • Following the defeat of the British that led to the end of the Revolutionary War, the US Congress looked westward for further expansion of the United States.
  • Therefore, an immediate goal was to raise money through sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states that was acquired via the 1783 Treaty of Paris after the war.
  • The ordinance, a resolution written by Thomas Jefferson, proposed that the states relinquish their claims to all territory west of the Appalachian Mountains, and that the area be divided into new states of the Union.
  • The Congress of the Confederation enacted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to provide for administration of the territories and set rules for admission as a state.
  • Illustration of the state cessions that eventually allowed for the creation of the territories north and west of the River Ohio.

• The Missouri Compromise

  • The Missouri Compromise of 1820 concerned the regulation of slavery in the western territories.
  • It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri.
  • When the status of the Missouri territory was taken up in earnest in the U.S.
  • Under the Admission Act of Missouri, it ruled that African Americans and mixed-race individuals did not qualify as citizens of the United States.
  • This map of the United States, circa 1820, shows the line between free and slave states that was established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820.