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Chapter III - The Treaty of Paris and Independence Won
The Treaty of Paris and Independence Won 1782 - 1783
Whatever hopes of victory the British may have harbored sank at Yorktown. When British Prime Minister Lord North heard of the defeat he groaned, "Oh God, it's all over." On February 27. 1782, the House of Commons voted against continuing the war, authorizing the king to make peace on March 5. The British were tired of fighting the stubborn Americans and were concerned that the French planned to reestablish a colonial empire in North America, As a result, they gave the Americans favorable terms. Both sides agreed to cease "hostile action," and the fighting officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783.
The American government promised to limit the confiscation of loyalist property and to urge state governments to return property already confiscated. The British kept Canada but yielded the unspoiled territory east of the Mississippi River and promised to evacuate their land and sea forces "with all convenient speed." They also recognized American fishing rights off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Most significantly, the British "finally and formally" recognized American independence.
After eight years of fighting, Americans had finally achieved the freedom they demanded of Britain. They had not fought merely to preserve their prerevolutionary society, but to create a new kind of society based on republican principles of liberty and equality. However, the revolutionary coalition of Southern planters, New England merchants, small farmers and urban artisans still had differing opinions about how to achieve such a society. The common ties that bound these dissimilar people together to defeat the world's most powerful army began to unravel by the 1780s.
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