Thirteen Colonies

Grand Union Flag used by the Continental Congress and Washington's army in 1775-75.

The Thirteen Colonies were thirteen British colonies in North America, founded between 1607, with the settlement of Virginia, and 1732, with the settlement of Georgia. (See below for a full list.) Although Britain acquired additional colonies in North America and the West Indies, the colonies referred to as the "thirteen" are the ones that rebelled against Great Britain in 1775 and formally declared their independence on July 4, 1776.

List

Contemporaneous documents listed the 13 colonies in geographical order, roughly from north to south, as follows (the division into three regions is a later construct of historians, though New England was always considered to be a distinct region):

• New England:
  • Province of New Hampshire, later New Hampshire
  • Province of Massachusetts Bay, later Massachusetts and Maine
  • Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, later Rhode Island
  • Connecticut Colony, later Connecticut.
• Middle Colonies:
  • Province of New York, later New York and Vermont
  • Province of New Jersey, later New Jersey
  • Province of Pennsylvania, later Pennsylvania
  • Delaware Colony (before 1776, the Lower Counties on Delaware), later Delaware
• Cheasapeake Colonies (considered Southern Colonies in some older texts):
  • Province of Maryland, later Maryland
  • Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia
• Lower Southern Colonies:
  • Province of North Carolina, later North Carolina and Tennessee
  • Province of South Carolina, later South Carolina
  • Province of Georgia, later Georgia

From Colonies to States

Delegates from the thirteen states, who had been meeting in the Second Continental Congress since May 1775, began drafting a national constitution in late 1776, and completed such a constitution in the form of the Articles of Confederation in November 1777. The Articles were sent to the several states, with instructions asking each state to approve them before March of 1778. The Articles, however, required unanimous approval, and that did not come until March of 1781 when Maryland agreed to approve the document in exchange for other states dropping their claims to western lands. During the interim, the Second Contintental Congress continued to operate as a "shadow government", directing the war and conducting diplomacy for the "United States of America", which is how the thirteen states referred to themselves in the Declaration of Independence. With the surrender of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 17, 1781, the war was essentially over. Great Britain officially recognized U.S. independence in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. With the conclusion of the peace treaty, British soldiers and officials evacuated certain U.S. territory they had occupied since the beginning of the war, including New York and Georgia, although the British continued to occupy certain outposts in the Great Lakes area until the signing of Jay's Treaty in 1795.

Following the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789, other states would be admitted to the union, the first being Vermont in 1791.

Other colonies

At various times in the seventeenth and eighteenth century other English (or British) colonies existed that eventually became part of the above 13 colonies. In addition Britain held several other colonies on mainland North America, including the colonies of East and West Florida in 1776 which did not join the thirteen in their Revolution against the Crown. Finally, Britain held several American colonies in the West Indies (such as Jamaica, St. Kitts, Montserrat, Nevis) that did not seek their independence in 1776.

Former English colonies merged or divided into one or more of the 13 British colonies

• Dominion of New England - Created by King James II with the consolidation of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, East Jersey, and West Jersey into a single "super-colony" in 1685. The experiment was discontined with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, and the nine former colonies re-established their separate identies in 1689.
• Maine - Settled in 1622. (An earlier attempt to settle the Popham Colony on Sagadahoc Island, Maine in 1607 was abandoned after only one year.) Massachusetts Bay colony encroached into Maine during the English Civil War, but, with the Restoration, autonomy was returned to Maine in 1664. Maine was officially merged into Massachusetts Bay Colony with the issuance of the Massachusetts Bay charter of 1691.
• Plymouth Colony - Settled in 1620 by the Pilgrims. Plymouth was absorbed by Massachusetts Bay Colony with the issuance of the Massachusetts Bay charter of 1691.
• New Haven - Settled in 1637. New Haven was absorbed by Connecticut Colony with the issuance of the Connecticut Charter in 1662.
• East Jersey - New Jersey was divided into two separate colonies in 1674. The Jerseys were reunited in 1702.
• West Jersey - New Jersey was divided into two separate colonies in 1674. The Jerseys were reunited in 1702.
• Carolina - Founded in 1663. Carolina colony was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1712. (Both colonies became royal colonies in 1729.)

Future Canadian provinces

In 1775, the British claimed authority over the red and pink areas on this map and Spain ruled the orange. The red area is the area of the 13 colonies after the Proclamation of 1763. (Map produced by U.S. Dept. of Interior)

• Nova Scotia (including present-day New Brunswick)
• Newfoundland
• St. John's Island (now called Prince Edward Island)
• the Province of Quebec, which included present day Quebec and Ontario

Future American states that did not join the Rebellion

• East Florida (forming most of what is now the state of Florida, including all of that state but the panhandle)
• West Florida (which forms what is now the panhandles of the states of Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, and the portion of the state of Louisiana that is east of the Mississippi River except for the port of New Orleans)

See also

• History of the United States (1776-1789): Independence and the American Revolution
• British colonization of the Americas
• Colonial America
• Colonial government in America

Bibliography

• Charles M. Andrews. The Colonial Period of American History 4 vol (1934-38).
• Blanco, Richard. The American Revolution: An Encyclopedia 2 vol (1993)
• Cooke, Jacob Ernest et al., ed. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies. Scribner's, 1993. 2397 pp.
• Gipson, Lawrence. The British Empire Before the American Revolution (15 volumes) (1936-1970), Pulitzer Prize; highly detailed discussion of every British colony in the New World
• Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (1985)
• Miller, John C. Triumph of Freedom, 1775-1783 (1948)
• Taylor, Alan. American Colonies (2001)
• Vickers, Daniel, ed. A Companion to Colonial America. Blackwell, 2003. 576 pp.

External links

• British North American Colonies to 1783 - Military History & Institutions
• The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Colonial Charters, Grants and Related Documents
• 13 Originals: Founding the American Colonies, a page that gives a brief history of all the colonies.