The Story Behind The War

     The 13 colonies didn't like the way Parliament was treating them so they decided to start their own nation. The war began on April 19, when British soldiers fired at the minutemen of Lexington, Massachusetts. The war ended when the British surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.   In 1783 Great Britain signed a treaty recognizing that the colonies were free. Through the hard times in life in a new land, American settlers got strength and a strong belief in the rights and liberties of the plain man. They wanted to be free because Britain messed their trade up and made them pay unfair taxes .  They also sent British soldiers to live in colonists' houses .  At first the colonies only fought for some of their freedoms and rights. After a year of war they fought for total freedom.

       The Treaty of 1763 ending the war made Britain ruler of Canada and the land between the Appalachian Mountain and the Mississippi River .   The British people already staggered under an immense national dept , and their taxes were higher than ever before.  Settlers were moving into the Ohio Valley , and land observers were busy with ideas for opening the country .  Such things made Native Americans mad.  Land, fur-bearing animals and the Native Americans' life  all would be ruined by the ways of the white men.   Fur traders were getting the Native Americans drunk and insane with rum and cheating them  out of their furs.  To quiet the Native Americans, England issued the Proclamation of 1763.  This treaty prohibited settlers from buying lands beyond a line that ran though the sources of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.  The invisible "line" was the Mississippi River.