The United States of North America: with the British Territories and those of Spain, according to the Treaty, of 1784 Engraved by Wm. Faden 1796.

Faden’s important c.18th map, showing the newly recognised boundaries of the United Sates and the short lived state of Franklinia.

Faden first issued this map in 1777 and published thirteen further updated editions, the last being in 1843. This series of maps represent one of the most historically important cartographic depictions of the newly recognised independent republic.

This edition, published 11 February 1796, states in the title that the map depicts the United States’s boundaries according to the Treaty of 1784. The Treaty of Paris was originally signed on 3 September 1783, but wasn’t ratified by the Congress of the Confederation and the King of Great Britain until 1784. The parties exchanged the ratified documents in Paris on 12 May 1784, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States of America. The map is partly based on John Mitchell’s A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, used by delegates during the treaty’s negotiations that made the former Thirteen Colonies independent from the British Crown. Inaccuracies in Mitchell’s map were later to cause problems in clearly defining the agreed borders. One such example stated that the boundary between U.S. territory and the British possessions to the north, would run ‘through the Lake of the Woods to the northwestern most point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi’. A note at the top left states ‘Due West Course to the Missisipi’, based on the wording of the Treaty. It was not known at the time that the source of the river, Lake Itasca, was in fact further south.

Faden notes numerous interesting pieces of information and includes the region of ‘Franklinia’ or the ‘New State of Franklin’, which is placed between ‘Tannessee Government’ and North Carolina. Franklinia was a short lived attempt by settlers in the Great Smoky Mountains to secede from North Carolina and form a new state. Along the coast coloured in yellow is ‘The Twenty League Line’, which marks the United States’ maritime boundary. The map is beautifully hand coloured and on the right of the key for the colouring, a note states ‘The Whole of the Countries not actually settled by Europeans should belong by right to the Aborigines’.

The map is embellished with a finely engraved decorative title cartouche, comprising a rocky landscape with sailors unloading barrels from a small boat.