Why Declare Independence?
Today they are states, but in 1776, these were the original 13 British colonies. When we declared independence in 1776, our mother country, Great Britain, was the most powerful nation in the world, and the ties between Britain and her colonies were strong. Great Britain was the colonies’ biggest trading partner, and Britain’s Navy protected our trade with the rest of the world. Most of our people could trace their ancestry to English roots, and there was a free flow of people and ideas across the Atlantic. Many of our more well-to-do citizens sent their children to British universities. And just 13 years before the Declaration, in 1763, Britain and her colonies defeated France, Spain, and Austria in what, for the time, would surely qualify as a World War. In Europe, it was called the Seven Years’ War. In America, where the colonists fought side by side with the British and captured Canada and all the land east of the Mississippi, it was known as the Old French (1) or French and Indian
