THE TREATY OF PARIS AND BEYOND The Revolutionary War had ended after six hard years, and it took two more years to finish a formal peace treaty. The British were in no rush to satisfy the Americans, and they hoped delay would persuade the states to pay the Loyalists for
The Decision to Declare Independence By the spring of 1776, the Americans had been in the war for a year. A growing number were convinced that they were fighting to be permanently free of Britain’s rule, and that the time had come to issue a declaration of independence. In January,
CREATING A NEW NATION (1763-1800) The cordial relationship between Great Britain and the American colonies soured shortly after the French and Indian War. The English king needed to raise money to pay for the war and offset the cost of protecting and governing Britain’s huge empire. The decision to tax
Slavery Emerges! As colonial farms and industries thrived, the need for workers grew. Slavery had existed around the world throughout history; in the 1600s, Europeans introduced it to the New World to provide cheap labor. Wrenched from their homes in faraway Africa, slaves were shipped to the Americas then sold
Colonial America (1607-1763) By the early 1600s, Europeans had established colonies along the waterways of North America. These settlements struggled to survive their first winter but soon prospered. Settlers came to the New World for religious freedom or economic opportunity, or to acquire great fortune for the “mother country.” Many
Two Worlds Meet (1000-1607) The first Europeans traveled to North America in about 1000 CE, when Leif Eriksson and his Viking crew discovered a land they called Vinland, after the grapes that grew there. The Vikings eventually abandoned their settlements in eastern Canada and returned to their homes in Greenland.