colonies, Virginia and Massachusetts. Prior to this time, the other
colonies had not produced much that had literary value. No national
literature could be written until the colonists were welded together.

The French and Indian War, which decided whether France or England was to
be supreme in America, exposed the colonists to a common danger. They
fought side by side against the French and Indians, and learned that the
defeat of one was the defeat of all. After a desperate struggle France
lost, and the Anglo-Saxon race was dominant on the new continent. By the
treaty of Paris, signed in 1763, England became the possessor of Canada and
the land east of the Mississippi River.

THE REVOLUTION.--All of the colonies had been under English rule, although
they had in large part managed in one way or another to govern
themselves. At the close of the French and Indian War, the colonists had
not thought of breaking away from England, although they had learned the
lesson of union against a common foe. George III. came to the throne in
1760. By temperament he was unusually adapted to play his part in
changing the New World's history. He was determined to rule according to
his own personal inclinations. He dominated his cabinet and controlled
Parliament by bribery. He decided that the American colonies should feel
the weight of his authority, and in 1763 his prime minister, George
Grenville, undertook to execute measures in restraint of colonial trade.
Numbers of commodities, like tobacco, for instance, could not be traded
with France or Spain or Holland, but must be sent to England. If there
was any profit to be made in selling goods to foreign nations, England
would make that profit. He also planned to tax the colonists and to
quarter British troops among them. These measures aroused the colonies
to armed resistance and led to the Revolutionary War, which began in
1775.