The colonial period and independence

People lived in North America for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, in many different nations.

• Before the Europeans came, Native American nations lived across the continent, among them the Cherokee, the Navajo, the Sioux, the Chippewa, the Choctaw and the Iroquois.
• Europeans came for religious freedom, political liberty, economic opportunity and to escape persecution. The first permanent English settlement was Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.
• The Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plymouth in Massachusetts. Thanksgiving remembers the harvest feast that they shared with Native Americans.
• There were thirteen British colonies on the east coast. Many Africans were brought as enslaved people and forced to work, and slavery was part of the economy of the colonies.
• The colonists were ruled from London, paid taxes to Great Britain and had no representatives in the British Parliament.

The colonies fought a war against Great Britain from 1775 to 1783 and won their independence.

• Reasons for the Revolution: the colonists did not want to pay British taxes without having a say (“no taxation without representation”), did not want British soldiers to live in their homes, and wanted self-government.
• The Boston Tea Party (1773) was a protest against a tax on tea. The war began in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence was adopted on 4 July 1776.
• General George Washington led the American army. He crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to surprise the British at Trenton.
• France helped the Americans with soldiers, ships and money. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognised the independence of the United States.
• Famous people of the time: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death”) and Paul Revere.

Exam tip: Washington led the army; Jefferson wrote the Declaration; Franklin was a diplomat and inventor.

After the war, the new country needed a stronger government. This led to the Constitution.

• The first government was based on the Articles of Confederation, which was too weak. In 1787 the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia and wrote the Constitution.
• The Federalist Papers were essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay to persuade people to approve the Constitution.
• George Washington was the president of the Constitutional Convention and became the first president of the United States in 1789. He is called the “Father of Our Country”.
• The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) was added in 1791. Benjamin Franklin was known as a writer, inventor and diplomat, and he started the first free libraries.