Colonial America/ Revolutionary War

Colonial America/The Revolutionary War
Jamestown was founded in Virginia, by the London Company in the spring of 1607; it was the first stable settlement in America Effective leadership might have spared Jamestown their hardships. It’s governor, John Smith was injured in a gunpowder explosion and had to return to England in 1609. It wasn’t until 1611 that the London Company supplied a new governor. At the time, there were only four carpenters and there was a huge need for buildings and housing. Most of the 500 colonists that settled in Jamestown for the first few years, died. The London Company’s reform program of 1618 expanded land sales, extended English law and rights to colonists, and allowed settlers to elect a representative assembly. Even an additional 4,000 settlers did not end Virginia’s troubles. Poor treatment of nearby Native Americans results in an attack that cost 350 lives. In 1619 a Dutch warship brought 20 enslaved Africans to Jamestown. Virginia law declared that the status of a newborn child depended on the status of the mother. Slavery became a permanent, inherited comdition.   Between 1763, and 1776, many events that would forever change the colonists, and form America itself, had occurred. The American Revolution began in 1763, when the French and Indian War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 ended all settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. The governments also maintained thousands of troops along the frontier- as much to protect the Native Americans and the Settlers from each other. The Americans accepted the Royal proclamation at first, but they soon came to oppose it. They argued that the Proclamation deprived them of the land that was there, and that it interfered with the charter rights of colonies whose grants extended “from sea to sea”. This war between Britain and France ended with the victorious British deeply in debt and demanding more revenue from the colonies. With the...