The Pinckney Breakdown

In 1796 the Spanish Cortes and the United States Senate failed to exchange ratifications of the treaty negotiated at San Lorenzo del Escorial, leaving the Mississippi closed to American deposit at New Orleans and the thirty-first parallel boundary unsettled. The collapse pushed the trans-Appalachian settlements toward separate accommodations with Spanish Louisiana and, later, with each other, rather than toward Philadelphia.

Diverged 1796 · “The United States and Spain fail to ratify the Treaty of San Lorenzo.”