University:
East Georgia State College
Course:
HIST 2111 | Survey of U.S. History I
Academic year:

2021
Views:

276

Pages:

2
Author:

Alma Stephenson

1. Before 1763 By 1750, the 13 colonies were experiencing a population boom. In a century, the colonies had grown from 50,000 to over a million people. What brought about this rapid growth? Access to land? Religious freedom? Economic opportunity? Yes, but there was another reason. For more than a century, the British government had let the colonies solve most of their own problems. During this time, Americans in each colony had learned to govern themselves by electing their own assemblies. However, only White men could vote, and usually, they had to own land. Like the British Parliament, assemblies had the power to pass laws and collect taxes. Each assembly also decided how to spend the colony’s tax money. American colonists had more freedom to run their affairs than ordinary people in any country in Europe. Self government made the colonies attractive to new colonists from Europe. Conflict in the Ohio Valley As the colonial population grew, colonists began to seek land to the west—land that had already been settled by Indigenous peoples. Regardless, they moved across the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Valley, the region between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Both Great Britain and France claimed this area, although it was Indigenous land. In 1754, the French staked their claim by building Fort Duquesne (du-KANE), where the city of Pittsburgh stands today, on land taken from the Lenape and Shawnee people, as well as from tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, including the Seneca and Cayuga. News of the fort alarmed the governor of Virginia. He ordered a small force of Virginia militia to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley.The governor chose 22year-old volunteer George Washington to lead the militia. Today, many remember George Washington as a famous Patriot, a military leader, an enslaver, and the first president of the United States. In 1754, however, he was an ambitious young man who wanted to be an officer in the British army. There was only one problem with his plan—most British officers did not respect colonial militia soldiers. The expedition into the Ohio Valley gave Washington a chance to prove his military value. Near Fort Duquesne, Washington ambushed a group of French soldiers camped in the woods and ordered his men to open ﬁre, killing 10 people and taking 21 prisoners. “I fortunately escaped without a wound,” he later wrote, “though the right wing where I stood was exposed and received all the enemy's ﬁre.” This drawing by Benjamin Franklin is considered the ﬁrst political cartoon in American history. In it, Franklin compares the colonies’ lack of unity to a snake cut into pieces. Although the drawing was originally used to promote the Albany Plan, it would soon become a symbol of colonial unity and freedom. The French and Indian War Washington and his men ﬁred the ﬁrst shots in a conﬂict known as the French and Indian War. This war was part of the Seven Years’ War, a long global struggle between France and Great Britain over territorial claims and power. Indigenous tribes, particularly the Lenape and Shawnee, fought with France to prevent British settlers from violently taking their land. Because of this, colonists called the conﬂict the French and Indian War.

Before 1763

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