Background
Following the entry of Spain into the American Revolutionary War in 1779, British military planners in London wanted to secure the corridor of the Mississippi River against both Spanish and Patriot activity. Their plans included expeditions from West Florida to take New Orleans and other Spanish targets, and several expeditions to gain control of targets in the upper Mississippi, including the small town of St. Louis. The expedition from West Florida never got off the ground, since Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, had moved rapidly to gain control of British outposts on the lower Mississippi, and was threatening action against West Florida's principal outposts of Mobile and Pensacola.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of St. Louis
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)