On September 3, 1783, American and British commissioners signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hotel de York in Paris, formally ending the American Revolutionary War and recognising the United States as an independent nation. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay signed for the Americans. David Hartley signed for Britain.
Britain conceded far more than the military situation required, setting the western boundary of the new country at the Mississippi River and granting fishing rights off Newfoundland, because ministers in London wanted the United States trading with Britain rather than tied to a French alliance. The treaty also promised that Congress would recommend to the states that property taken from Loyalists be restored.
The negotiations had a secret dimension. Jay and Adams distrusted the French foreign minister Vergennes and negotiated separately from him, breaking an instruction from Congress to act only with French agreement. It worked. France was already settling its own war with Britain and could not stop it.
The treaty did not settle everything. Britain ignored the Loyalist clause in practice, and disputes over the northern boundary and over prewar debts ran on for decades. Congress ratified in January 1784. What the treaty did settle was the fact of independence, and the size and shape of the country that held it.