Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History podcast.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and that you're having a

relaxing week as we head into 2016. Today is December 29th, 2015, and 170 years ago today,

United States President James K. Polk signed a document admitting Texas as the 28th state of the United States of America.

So in this episode, I'm going to give you an overview of that process and a couple of the

stories about Texas's joining of the union. So we're going to go all the way back to 1803 and get

wise about Texas. Let's think first about the migration and settlement of Texas.

In 1803, with the Louisiana purchase from France, the United States acquired a vast amount of

territory, which, at least according to many in the United States, included parts of Texas,

which was then, of course, a Spanish territory.

Also in dispute during this time period was Florida.

Spain had some problems with revolutionaries in South America and wanted to discourage the

U.S. from supporting those revolutions. It was certainly a tense time in North America.

And over a period of two years, from 1817 to 1819, the U.S. Secretary of State, who was John Quincy Adams,

met with the Spanish ambassador to the U.S., who was Luis de Onis and Gonzales Varra.

They concluded negotiations with what is often called the Florida Treaty or the Adams-O-Nice

treaty.

Now, this treaty was a feat of diplomacy in a very interesting study.

Unfortunately, we don't have time to dive in too deep to the treaty, but the result was very important.

With this treaty, the U.S. acquired Florida from Spain, as well as Oregon, although Great Britain had a claim in Oregon.

Most importantly, for this show, it established the Sabine River as the

boundary between the U.S. and Spain. Some of that territory would later be disputed, but for our

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