Ownership of the Bahamas has passed back and forth between Spain and Great Britain for one hundred and fifty years, until British ownership is established by treaty in 1783, when Great Britain cedes East Florida to Spain, receiving the Bahamas in return.

About fifteen hundred Loyalists leave New York and move to Abaco in the summer of 1783.

They plan and build the town of Carleton, probably present-day Hope Town.

Disputes over food distribution lead some of these settlers to found a rival town at Marsh Harbour.

Conflict between disgruntled settlers and the officials responsible for helping become a constant feature of life on the islands.

Sea island cotton is first sown by the settlers in 1785 and although both 1786 and 1787 produce good crops, the 1788 crop is blighted by caterpillars.

Other settlements on the islands are Green Turtle Cay, Man-o-War Cay, and Sandy Point.

Britain, under the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, recognizes an independent United States of America as all lands east of the Mississippi, north of Spanish Florida and New Orleans, and south of the Great Lakes and the provincial frontiers of Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Washington disbands the army and resigns his command.

John Hanson dies, and Thomas Mifflin is elected the third President of Congress Assembled.

Both Loyalist soldiers and civilians are evacuated from New York City, most heading for Canada, following the end of the Revolution and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

The Crown land in Canada set aside for the Loyalists is sometimes allotted according to which Loyalist regiment a man had fought in.

This Loyalist resettlement is critical to the development of present-day Ontario, and some ten thousand refugees go to Quebec (including the Eastern Townships and modern-day Ontario), but Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick) receives three times that number: about thirty-three thousand Loyalist refugees.

These include some three thousand formerly enslaved Black Loyalists, who had gained freedom from the British for working with them during the war.

At the same time, some white Loyalists in Nova Scotia had brought their slaves with them, and will hold them until slavery is abolished in 1834.

Prince Edward Island received two thousand refugees.

Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Ottoman Empire have all become members of the League of Armed Neutrality by the time the Treaty of Paris ends the War of American Independence in 1783.

As the British Navy outnumbers all their fleets combined, the alliance as a military measure is what Catherine will later call it, an "armed nullity".

Diplomatically, however, it carries greater weight; France and the United States of America se quick to proclaim their adherence to the new principle of free neutral commerce.

Britain—which does not—still has no wish to antagonize Russia, and had avoided interfering with the allies' shipping.

While both sides of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War tacitly understand it as an attempt to keep the Netherlands out of the League, Britain does not officially regard the alliance as hostile.

Throughout the war most of the naval supplies of the Royal Navy had continued to come from the Baltic Sea.

The British largely abandon the Indian allies living in the new nation.

They are not a party to this treaty and will not recognize it until they were defeated militarily by the United States.

However, the British do promise to support the Indians.

They will sell them munitions and maintain forts in American territory until the Jay Treaty of 1795.

The terms of the peace, particularly the proposed treaty with the United States, had caused a political storm in Britain.

The concession of the Northwest Territory and the Newfoundland fisheries, and especially the apparent abandonment of Loyalists by an Article which the individual States would inevitably ignore, had been condemned in Parliament.

The last point had been the easiest solved—British tax revenue saved by not continuing the war will be used to compensate Loyalists.

Nevertheless, on February 17, 1783 and again on February 21, motions against the treaty had been successful in Parliament, so on February 24 Lord Shelburne had resigned, and for five weeks the British government had been without a leader.

Finally, a solution similar to the previous year's choice of Lord Rockingham had been found.

The government was to be led, nominally, by the Duke of Portland, while the two Secretaries of State were to be Charles Fox and, remarkably, Lord North.

Richard Oswald had been replaced by a new negotiator, David Hartley, but the Americans have refused to allow any modifications to the treaty—partly because they would have to be approved by Congress, which, with two Atlantic crossings, would take several months.

Therefore, on September 3, 1783, at Hartley's hotel in Paris, the treaty as agreed by Richard Oswald the previous November is formally signed, and ...

...at Versailles the separate treaties with France and Spain are also formalized.

The Carlisle Grammar School had been founded in 1773 as a frontier Latin school for young males in western Pennsylvania.

Within years, Carlisle's elite, especially James Wilson and John Montgomery, were pushing for development of the school as a college

In 1782 Benjamin Rush, a leader during the American Revolution and the preeminent physician in the new nation, had met in Philadelphia with Montgomery and William Bingham, a prominent businessman and politician.

As their conversation about founding a frontier college in Carlisle took place on his porch, "Bingham's Porch" will long be a rallying cry at Dickinson.

Dickinson College is chartered by the Pennsylvania legislature on September 9, 1783, six days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris that ends the American Revolution; it is the first college to be founded in the newly independent nation.

Rush intends to name the college after the President of Pennsylvania John Dickinson and his wife Mary Norris Dickinson, proposing "John and Mary's College."

The Dickinsons have given the new college an extensive library which they jointly owned, one of the largest libraries in the colonies.

The name Dickinson College is chosen instead.

When founded, its location west of the Susquehanna River makes it the westernmost college in the United States.

Nathanael Greene's Southern Campaign showed remarkable strategic features.

He excelled in dividing, eluding, and tiring his opponent by long marches, and in actual conflict forcing the British to pay heavily for a temporary advantage, a price that they could not afford.

However, he had been defeated in every pitched battle which he fought against the British during his time as southern commander.

He has been greatly assisted by able subordinates, including Polish engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko, brilliant cavalry officers Henry ("Light-Horse Harry") Lee and William Washington, and partisan leaders Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens, Elijah Clarke, and Francis Marion.

In the end, Greene and his forces have liberated the southern states from British control.

When the Treaty of Paris ends the war, British forces control a couple of southern coastal cities, but Greene controls the rest.