<P> After the American Revolutionary War, in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Britain ceded most of its North American territory to the United States, while Spain, a U.S. ally, took over in West and East Florida . In 1787 the United States Congress organized the Northwest Territory and established rules for founding new states, but the Old Southwest proved more difficult to manage . The southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia each claimed that their western boundary extended to the Mississippi River . </P> <P> White residents of Virginia's western territory separated in 1790 and entered the union as the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1792 . North Carolina's western claim briefly became the illegal State of Franklin in the 1780s . In 1790 it was organized as the Southwest Territory, and in 1796 it became the State of Tennessee . In the 1790s, Georgia politicians conspired to sell off western land in the Yazoo land scandal . The state finally gave up all its western claims to the federal government in 1802, in exchange for a promise to acquire all property belonging to Indians in Georgia . The western land was organized as the Mississippi Territory, which eventually became the states of Mississippi (1817) and Alabama (1819). </P> <P> The Spanish province of West Florida extended along the Gulf Coast from the Mississippi River to the Apalachicola River . American incursions between 1811 and 1818 gradually absorbed most of West Florida, and in 1819 Spain ceded all its Florida land to the United States . </P> <P> The region's climate and soils favored commodity agriculture over industrial development . The U.S. purchase of New Orleans from France in 1803 gave the region a large seaport to facilitate global trade . American troops annexed the Spanish port of Mobile in 1813, then occupied Pensacola . </P>

What nation was the main us rival for control of the old southwest after the revolution