The United State of America was a union of thirteen different republics, each one with territorial claims over unorganized territory. Georgia and North Carolina had claims over the British territory of East Mississippi, but that territory belonged to Britain according to the treaty of Paris. Virginia had also claims on East Mississippi, but most of the claims laid on the unorganized territories that laid between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. Pennsylvania and New York had also claims on those territories. Vermont was disputed between New York and Massachusetts, and Maine between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The first solution to those disputes came in the New England territories: Maine became part of New Hampshire and Vermont part of Massachusetts. The problem, however with the Northwestern territory was that it was too vast to be left for only one of the states, or even to be partitioned between two or three claiming states. The Northwest then became Federal Territory, and would be administrated from the Union capital, Columbia. Many people opposed that, however. Not only had the Federal government an island in the Potomac, but they also had a big an fertile territory in their hands.
North Carolina and Georgia had another solution in mind: to drive the English out of East Mississippi (and the Spanish from Florida) and so the new territories would be partitioned between more than three states. This was not a solution for states like Maryland, New Jersey or Rhode Island that had no place to expand. The discussion ended quickly, however, and the Northwestern territories were de facto a Federal administrated territory.
Florida was being transformed. Spain was dealing with a few insurrection in her colonies, mostly product of the taxation the last war represented. The worse of them started in the communes of Boyaca, Viceroyalty of New Granada, and captured the viceroyalty capital Santa Fe. The insurrection had extended in almost all the mountains of New Granada, and Spain was forced to crush the insurrection and set precedence. It was not difficult to control it, as regular troops marched up from Cartagena, the commoners dispersed. For the next few years Spain kept chasing the leaders and the participants of the insurrection, executing and dismembering the leaders and replacing the other participants, usually breaking the families and sending them to different force labor camps all across the Empire.
Florida and California were forcibly populated by the depopulation of Boyaca.