In
1763 AD England won the French and Indian
War against France. To pay for that war,
the English government began to make the English-speaking settlers pay more and
more taxes. This brought the
English a lot of money, but it made the settlers
more and more angry. They were especially angry because they couldn't vote or
speak for themselves in England about these taxes. The settlers said this was "taxation
without representation" and it was wrong.
The
settlers decided to boycott everything they had been buying from English
traders - they would not buy their tea, clothes,
glass, paper, and so on (This
is when many Americans began to drink coffee). To show that they meant it, in
1773 they threw a lot of tea on an English ship overboard, into the ocean -
this is called the "Boston Tea Party."
In
1775, two years later, the first shots were fired in Massachusetts.
England and
the United States were now at war.
George
Washington was the commander in chief of the United States' army. At first he
won, and on July 4th, 1776 the United States government published the Declaration of Independence. But then the English government sent lots more men to fight and soon
the United States was losing the war.
By
1781, the United States (with the help of the French general Lafayette, other
French soldiers, and lots of French money) had won several big battles. So in
October the English army surrendered to George Washington. That was the end of
the Revolutionary War.
