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American colonists cast off British rule to create a new nation.

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Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763 which forbade American colonists to settle on Native American territory to maintain a more peaceful relationship between colonists and Native Americans.

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The British Prime Minister Georage Grenville began to carry out a series of initiatives to collect revenue to recover the costs of the war; this included the Navigation Acts of 1764, the Sugar Act to tax sugar, the Currency Act to remove paper currencies from circulation, and the Stamp Act which placed a tax on printed materials; these Acts helped recover costs of the war.

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Parliament continued to pass acts which changed another series of taxes on paints, tea, and lead. As a result of these changes, a group of Bostonians assaulted the home of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

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Four thousand Redcoats, (a popular name for British army soldiers) landed in the city to help maintain the order.

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Another angry mob engaged with several British troops. Five colonists died, and the news of the Boston Massacre rapidly spread throughout the colonies.

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Delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies met in response to the Coercive Acts, passed by Parliament which intended to restore order in Massachusetts. The first meeting of delegates from the colonies became known as the First Continental Congress.

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Also, to punish the Boston Tea Party in which a band of Bostonians boarded British merchant ships in Boston, and overboard crates of tea in protest of the Tea Act.

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The British attempted to unarm the colonists in the townships of Lexington and Concord. The colonists refused and a fight began between the two opposing forces. The British promptly retreated to Boston, and an armed rebellion had begun. The Second Continental Congress chose George Washington to command the semi-trained militiamen besieging Boston in the north. They also appropriated money to create a small navy, and to transform paramilitary groups into a Continental Army. Many colonists continued to advocate for total independence to having full rights within the British Empire. There were still colonists who wanted to continue life under British rule. There were fears among the colonial elites that outbreaks of rebellion would not just focus on the British, but would create a social crisis.

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Congressmen voted on July 2, 1776 to declare their independence. Thomas Jefferson, a young lawyer from Virginia drafted the Declaration of Independence, a contract grounded in the Enlightenment ideas, especially those of John Locke. Locke had asserted that people had the right to rebel against an unjust ruler; the Declaration of Independence included a long list of George III’s abuses. The contract ended by breaking the ties between the colonies and Britain.When war was first declared, the odds seemed heavily weighted against the Americans because of their lack of military organization. The Americans did not fight alone in their pursuit of independence.

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France spent over 1.3 lives in loans and supplies to America. Extra expenses to equip and send the French army and navy to America added to their financial burden.

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The combined forces of about 9,500 mericans and 7,800 French trapped a British army commanded by Charles Comwallis at Yorktown, Virginia.

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Cornwallis surrendered due to being unable to escape, and in the end the Americans won their war for independence in 1783.

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The new US Constitution created a federalist system in which power was shared between the national government and state governments. The Constitution further divided the government into three separate branches of government powers, the legislative, executive, and judicial branch which was advocated by the Enlightenment thinker Baron de Montesquieu. For Montesquieu, the new Constitution gave each of these government branches several ways to “check” the other branches.

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The Constitution and Bill of Rights marked a turning point in people’s ideas and trust in the government. Although both  documents officially put Enlightenment ideas into practice,  many challenges continued to stem from both the constitution and the Bill of Rights, for each document refused to eradicate slavery or guarantee  the right to vote for women.

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France spent $1.3 billion US dollars in 1778. (approximately $250 billion dollars in 2017)