5.1 Reading

By 1750, the American colonies were bursting with growth. In just a century, the population of the colonies had grown from 50,000 to more than a million people. What brought about this rapid growth? Cheap land? Religious tolerance? Economic opportunity? While all of these were important in attracting people to the colonies, there was another important reason.

For more than a century, the British government had, for the most part, left the colonies alone to solve their own problems. During this time of salutary neglect, Americans in each colony had learned to govern themselves by electing their own assemblies. Like the British Parliament, the assemblies had the power to pass laws and to create and collect taxes. Each assembly also decided how the colony's tax money should be spent. Americans had more freedom to run their own affairs than ordinary people in any country in Europe. Self-government also made the colonies attractive to settlers.

Conflict in the Ohio Valley As the colonies grew, settlers began to dream of moving 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. In 1754, the French honored their claim by building Fort Duquesne (du-KANE) where the city of Pittsburgh stands today.

News of the fort alarmed the governor of Virginia. He ordered a small force of Virginia militia, or a small army of citizens trained to fight in an emergency, to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley. The head of the militia, the governor decided, would be a 22-year-old volunteer named George Washington.

Today, Americans remember George Washington as a great Patriot, a military hero, and the first president of the United States. In 1754, however, he was just an ambitious young man. Washington wanted to become an officer in the British army. There was only one problem with his plan—most British officers believed that colonists made terrible soldiers.

The expedition into the Ohio Valley gave Washington a chance to prove them wrong. Near Fort Duquesne, Washington came across a French scouting party that was camped in the woods and ordered his men to open fire, leading to an easy victory. “I heard the bullets whistle,” he wrote afterward. “And, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.”

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's whistling bullets were the first shots in a conflict known as the French and Indian War. This war was part of a long struggle between France and Great Britain over territory and power. Because many American Indians fought with France in this latest conflict, the colonists called it the French and Indian War. At the beginning of the war, the colonies met at Albany, where Benjamin Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union, which called for the British colonies to form an alliance for their own defense. However, his plan did not win much support because the colonies did not think it was necessary to work together, and many of them relied on British protection. To their credit, the British took measures to defend their colonies during the French and Indian War.

In 1755, Great Britain sent 1,400 British soldiers, led by General Edward Braddock, to Virginia to finish the job that Washington had started. Hoping to make a good impression on General Braddock, Washington joined the army as a volunteer, aiding the soldiers in clearing the French out of the Ohio Valley.

However, Braddock's march into the Ohio Valley was a disaster. The troops were ambushed by French sharpshooters and their American Indian allies. Two-thirds of the soldiers were killed in the attack, including General Braddock.

Washington himself narrowly escaped death. “I had four bullets through my Coat and two horses shot under me,” he wrote in a letter. Showing great courage, Washington led the survivors back to Virginia. There, he was greeted as a hero.

The turning point of the French and Indian War came in 1759, when British troops captured Canada. As a result, in 1763, Great Britain and France signed a peace treaty, or agreement, finally ending the seven year war. In this treaty, France ceded, or gave, its claim of land in Canada to Great Britain.

Americans were thrilled with this victory because Great Britain now controlled a vastly expanded American empire. However, as the conflict with France drew to a close, new issues began to emerge between the colonists and Great Britain. A dramatic new chapter was about to begin for the American colonies.

What powers did colonial governments have in the 18th century?

Which event of the French & Indian War do you think was most significant and why?

Why was the outcome of the war important for the colonists?