Meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, because Congress lacked a permanent capital, delegates ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784, completing the legal process that ended eight years of war and formally recognized the United States as a sovereign nation. The treaty, signed the previous September in Paris, set the new country's boundaries and marked Britain's reluctant acceptance of its former colonies' independence.
Getting enough delegates to Annapolis for a quorum proved almost comically difficult. Congress needed representatives from at least nine of the thirteen states to ratify the treaty, but travel in the dead of winter over rough colonial roads meant delegates trickled in slowly. Thomas Jefferson, chairing the relevant committee, fretted for weeks as the treaty's deadline for ratification, set at six months from signing, crept closer.
Finally, on January 14, 1784, with delegates from just barely nine states present, Congress ratified the treaty. It was a quiet, almost anticlimactic end to a war that had reshaped the world, fought not with cannons but with a handful of men signing documents in a modest Maryland statehouse.
The treaty's terms were remarkably generous to the fledgling United States: Britain recognized American independence and ceded vast territory extending to the Mississippi River. For Britain, it marked a humbling retreat from its most valuable American possessions; for the thirteen former colonies, it was the legal birth certificate of a new nation, still fragile and deeply in debt, but sovereign.
Key people: Thomas Jefferson