Adams-Onis Treaty

The Adams-Onis Treaty, signed in 1819 by United States Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Spanish minister Luis de Onis, ceded Spanish Florida to the United States and fixed the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase along a line running to the Pacific coast at the 42nd parallel. In exchange the United States assumed up to five million dollars in claims by its citizens against Spain and renounced any claim to Texas. The treaty is also known as the Transcontinental Treaty because it defined, for the first time, a boundary stretching the full width of the continent.