territory west of the Alleghanies. The English had always claimed this territory as the legitimate extension of the lands which they occupied on the seacoast; the French claimed it by the right of discovery and occupation. The most direct entrance to the rich lands west of the Alleghanies was by way of the upper Ohio River, and it was the attempt of the French and English to fortify and hold the upper Ohio at the place where the present city of Pittsburg stands that precipitated the French and Indian War. After a long and difficult struggle, the English won, both in Europe and in America. By the Treaty of Paris of 1763 the French were practically expelled from North America, and England acquired all of her possessions east of the Mississippi.

The year 1763, which marks the close of this seven years' conflict, was an important date in the history of the world. In Europe the war had taken the form of an attempt to destroy the rising power of Frederick the Great. That object was not attained, and the chief results of the war were, therefore, two: it assured the ultimate ascendancy of Prussia over Austria in Germany, and it assured the maritime and commercial ascendancy of England over France in India and America. Yet the Treaty of Paris, which seemed to open the way for a great extension of the British

Empire in North America, was in fact the prelude to the loss of its chief possessions there; for with 1763 we may date the beginning of that long conflict between the Colonies and the mother country of which the outcome was the establishment of the United States as an independent nation.

The war itself laid the foundation for this conflict. During the war the Colonies levied and equipped about twenty-five thousand troops, and these troops, although they could not alone have driven the French out of Montreal and Quebec, gave essential assistance in achieving that end. The Colonies had good reason, therefore, to feel that they had done their full part in expelling the French from North America; and they were much inclined to think that for the future, especially as the danger from France was now once for all removed, they could easily defend themselves without any British aid at all. The general effect of the French and Indian War upon the Colonies was one of emancipation— it gave them a sense of power and independence such as they had never known before.

This feeling of emancipation was due not only to the fact that the Colonies had aided in winning the war, but also to the fact that for the first time they had acted together for a common end. The Colonies had always

been noted for the spirit of jealousy and suspicion which characterized their dealings with one another. Puritan New England had looked askance at her neighbors because of their religious beliefs and practices, while the Virginia and South Carolina planters, and the wealthy merchants of New York, who copied the manners and the dress of the English "gentleman," made sport of the grave manners and precise speech of the solemn NewEnglanders. In 1760 Benjamin Franklin

wrote that no one need fear that the Colonies would "unite against their own nation, which protects them and encourages them, with which they have so many ties of blood, interest, and affection, and which 'tis well known they all love much more than they love one another." Intercolonial jealousy and suspicion -the spirit of provincialism or particularismwas indeed still very strong after the war, and for many generations it was to play a great part in the history of the United States; but although the French and Indian War did little or nothing to bring about a formal union of the Colonies, it led them to realize that they could unite if they wished to do so, and that they had, after all, much in common, which ought to make them wish to do so. The men from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Virginia, who had been brought together and

who had fought side by side with the British regulars during the war, came to realize as never before that these Englishmen were somehow different from the colonials, and that a Massachusetts man was, after all, much more like a Virginian than either was like the Englishman. The French and Indian War, in fact, greatly strengthened the sense of intercolonial solidarity. Men began to think of themselves as in some sense Americans and not simply as Virginians or Massachusetts men; they thought of themselves as BritishAmericans, and to think of themselves so was to be aware that there was something more fundamental than mere geographical location which separated Americans from British. In a vague and intangible way the conception of an American nation was beginning to take form.

The feeling of intercolonial solidarity was strengthened by the rapid growth of the Colonies in wealth and population. Some years before, Franklin had pointed out the fact that the population of the Colonies doubled every twenty years, and on account of the immense stretches of free land it would continue to do so for an indefinite future. On the other hand, no European country had ever attained such a rate of increase, and during the last hundred years the population of England had not doubled once. From these

facts it seemed reasonable to suppose that within the next hundred years the center of wealth and population of the British Empire would be in America rather than in Europe. Furthermore, on account of this increase in population, the Colonies were every year becoming more important to England as markets for her manufactured goods. Thus at the moment when the Colonies were beginning to feel strong enough to get along without the protection of Great Britain, they were also coming to feel in some measure that Great Britain could not very well get along without them.

Not only did the French and Indian War change the attitude of the Colonies toward Great Britain, it also changed the attitude of Great Britain toward the Colonies. For seven years Great Britain had been fighting not only in America, but in Europe and in India and on the sea—in the "four parts of the world," as Voltaire said. Within seven years, as a result of these wars for the defense and extension of the Empire, the public debt had doubled. Much of this debt had been contracted for maintaining the English fleet and army in America, and Englishmen were inclined to overlook the assistance rendered by the Colonies and to take to themselves the credit for the expulsion of the French from Canada-without the British troops, they