Baton Rouge is a city in the province of Georgia in the Southern Confederation of the Confederation of North America. It is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River, seventy miles upstream from New Orleans and across the Mississippi from the Mexican state of Jefferson.
The first European to visit the site of Baton Rouge was Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French explorer who led an expedition up the Mississippi in 1799. D'Iberville and his men found a thirty-foot-high pole painted red which marked the boundary between the hunting grounds of two Indian tribes. A military post established by the French in 1721 marked the original settlement of Baton Rouge. During the Seven Years' War the British expelled 11,000 French-speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia, known as Acadians, many of whom were later settled around Baton Rouge. Under the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years' War, all of French Louisiana east of the Mississippi, including Baton Rouge, was ceded to Great Britain. The British organized the east bank of the Mississippi as part of the colony of West Florida. Following the North American Rebellion of 1775-1778, the British returned the colonies of East and West Florida to Spanish rule.
When a group of American rebels left the Thirteen Colonies on an overland journey in 1780 known as the Wilderness Walk, they spent the winter of 1781-82 at Baton Rouge. Some of the Americans wanted to end the Walk and establish a permanent settlement near Baton Rouge, but the arrival of a ship out of Charleston, South Carolina with additional rebels persuaded the group's leader, Nathanael Greene, to continue on to the original destination of Tejas in northern New Spain. The group left Baton Rouge in April 1782, accompanied by 200 Acadians.
When word reached the province of Georgia in 1795 that the Trans-Oceanic War had broken out between Great Britain and Spain, a force of Georgia militia under Colonel Richard Tomkinson invaded Florida. By 1796 the Floridas, including Baton Rouge, were annexed to Georgia.
During the Rocky Mountain War between the C.N.A. and the United States of Mexico, Baton Rouge became a fortified stronghold on the east side of the Mississippi to counter cross-river raids by the Mexicans, and to launch counter-raids into Jefferson, though these were unsuccessful.