With them were some English and Scotch, and the Americans themselves had little sympathy with the colonies, feeling instead a certain dread and dislike of the rough Carolinian mountaineers, who were their nearest white neighbors on the east.[7] They therefore, for the most part, remained loyal to the crown in the Revolutionary struggle, and suffered accordingly.
When Louisiana was ceded to Spain, most of the French creoles who formed her population were clustered together in the delta of the Mississippi; the rest were scattered out here and there, in a thin, dotted line, up the left bank of the river to the Missouri, near the mouth of which there were several small villages,--St.Louis, St.Genevieve, St.
Charles.[8] A strong Spanish garrison held New Orleans, where the creoles, discontented with their new masters, had once risen in a revolt that was speedily quelled and severely punished.

Small garrisons were also placed in the different villages.
Our people had little to do with either Florida or Louisiana until after the close of the Revolutionary war; but very early in that struggle, and soon after the movement west of the mountains began, we were thrown into contact with the French of the Northwestern Territory, and the result was of the utmost importance to the future welfare of the whole nation.
This northwestern land lay between the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes.

It now constitutes five of our large States and part of a sixth.

But when independence was declared it was quite as much a foreign territory, considered from the standpoint of the old thirteen colonies, as Florida or Canada; the difference was that, whereas during the war we failed in our attempts to conquer Florida and Canada, we succeeded in conquering the Northwest.

The Northwest formed no part of our country as it originally stood; it had no portion in the declaration of independence.