November 30: Water Rights

November 30 is the anniversary of the Treat of Paris, signed in 1783. The treaty formally ended the American Revolutionary War. In the treaty, Great Britain recognized the United States as a sovereign nation and established its borders. You can see the document here

 

Article 8 of the treaty is interesting : it says “The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States."

 

Yes, you read that right: it gave perpetual access to the British subjects to the Mississippi river. At that time, the river was the western border of the US.

So you may ask: does that right still exist? After a lot of Google searching, I could find anything formally ending this right, but I doubt the right still exists.

This may be explained by the Treaty of Ghent (1814) that ended the War of 1812 between the US and Britain. Some argue that this treaty, by not re-affirming the provisions of the 1783 treaty, ended the right to navigation.

 

There are two interesting historical documents supporting this, from people who were there.

The first is a book about Henry Clay (one of the US negotiators in 1814). This book chapter seems to confirm that leaving out any mention of the navigation rights terminated those rights.

The second is John Quincy Adam’s Duplicate Letters. He was also one of the negotiators, and felt that the British had implicitly given up the right because the British position was that new treaty abrogated the old one, and since this right was omitted from the new treaty, it was gone.