Slavery in the colonial United States in the Caribbean: Guadeloupe and especially Saint-Domingue.) After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as many as a third of the limited population in that rural area. Slavery was much more extensive in colonial Louisiana, where the French developed sugar cane plantations along the Mississippi river. Slavery was maintained during the French (1699 – 1763, and 1800 – 1803) and Spanish (1763 – 1800) periods of government.
Convention of 1800 This led to the Quasi-War of 1798–1800; largely dismantled after independence, the US Navy was quickly re-established and gained the upper hand, with limited support from the British Royal Navy. Despite this, President John Adams continued to seek a diplomatic solution; in addition to the cost of the Quasi-War, the US was increasingly concerned by French ambitions in North America. France ceded Louisiana-New Spain to Spain by the 1763 Treaty of Paris; combined with Spanish Florida, Spain controlled the Mississippi River basin (see Map), effectively blocking US expansion to the South and West. Efforts to manage this through diplomacy, including