Thirteen Colonies

The Thirteen Colonies were some of the colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America founded between 1607 (Virginia) and 1733 (Georgia) by a variety of interests from England and later Great Britain. They are best known as the founding political entities of the United States of America.

The colonies were: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Each colony developed its own system of self-government. Residents of these colonies were mostly independent farmers, who owned their own land and voted for their local and provincial government. Benjamin Franklin, in 1772, after examining the wretched hovels in Scotland surrounding the opulent mansions of the land owners, said that in New England "every man" is a property owner, "has a Vote in public Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of good Food and Fuel, with whole clothes from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own family." Following a series of protests in the 1760s and 1770s, these colonies united militarily in opposition to Great Britain and the rule of King George III with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. In 1776 they declared their independence and formed a new nation, the United States of America.

Before independence, the thirteen were part of a larger set of colonies in British America. Those in the British West Indies, Newfoundland, the Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia and East and West Florida remained loyal to the crown throughout the war, although there was a degree of sympathy with the Patriot cause in several of them. However, their geographical isolation and the dominance of British naval power precluded any effective participation.