Revolution gives rise to a new Nation

The Alamo Church

At the end of the French and Indian War, with the signing of a treaty in Paris on February 10^th 1763, the British Empire now counted seventeen total colonies in the new world. Two were added by the war with Upper and Lower Canada and another two with East and West Florida.

After the war France saw little value in the Louisiana territories that they retained after the war and ceded it to their war ally Spain. Spain even though lost its claim to Florida now had a buffer of land between Mexico and the English colonies. They also gained the city of New Orleans and navigation on the Mississippi River. Britain, although it looked as if they came out the overall winner in the war, made post war decisions that would be more far reaching and detrimental to their presence in North America.

The first detrimental decision was made by King George III in his Royal Proclamation of 1763. In it he included provisions that reserved lands west of the Appalachian Mountains for the native population.  This angered the thirteen original English colonies that had desires on expanding into these western lands. It was their expansion into those regions that helped to spark the war in the first place. Also with the French gone and the Spanish, for the most part, far away the thirteen colonies didn’t see the need for the protection of the British military. The last fatal decision by Britain was their plan to pay off their large war debt by imposing new taxes on those thirteen colonies. Their new colonies in Canada and Florida were excluded from these taxes. The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Tea Tax in 1773, these being the most infamous of the new taxes. Although each colony had a Colonial government, and the colonists felt that they were equal English citizens with their cousins across the ocean, they were never given a seat in the English Parliament. The new imposed taxes they felt was unjust because they had no representation in Parliament to plead their case. As the unrest grew in the thirteen colonies, especially in the Massachusetts Colony, Parliament and the King sent British troops to subdue the resistance. The actions by these troops further angered the colonists into open rebellion and finally revolution.

On July 4^th 1776 the thirteen colonies declared their independence from their mother country of Britain. As the war draw on King George III lost support in Parliament for the continuation of the fighting in America. On September 3, 1783 “the Treaty of Paris” was signed ending the American Revolution. By the early part of 1784 the Continental Congress had ratified that treaty and the United States of American was officially a born.

The new thirteen Untied States were no longer restricted by King George’s proclamation halting their westward trek. The enterprises and population of those States had been growing at a tremendous rate since their founding and they needed land, and lots of it. The post war westward explosion was beginning, and Spain was watching.