Settling the west

Women help.Thousands of women followed their husbands and sons to army camps to help them. They marched, cooked and even fought side by side with men. One of such women was Mary Hays.

THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE

Preparing for War. In Massachusetts people were especially upset by the blockade of Boston Harbour. Farmers in the area began organizing to practice shooting and marching. These men were called minutemen, because they could get ready to fight at a minute's notice.

On the cold Wednesday morning of April 19, 1775, the tension which existed between the colonists and the British led to shooting. British soldiers met a group of armed colonists at Lexington. A shot was fired. That shot was the start of the War for Independence, in which a brave group of colonists fought mighty Great Britain.

In the spring of 1775 the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. They met to organize an army and navy to defend and support colonial rights.

In June 1775 the Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the colonial army. Washington left Philadelphia to take command of the army near Boston.

By the following year more and more people had come to believe that the colonies should be independent. Colonial soldiers had died fighting for colonial rights. British leaders had shown no respect for the colonists' rights.

In the spring of 1776 the Continental Congress decided to take action. Thomas Jefferson, a young Virginian, was asked to write a declaration explaining why the colonies should be free.

In the declaration Jefferson described his ideas about human rights. Jefferson said that all people had the right to life and liberty. No government could take these rights away. If the rulers tried to do so, the people had the right to choose a new government. Jefferson blamed the King for ignoring colonial laws, ruining trade and making people pay high taxes.

On July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted Jeffereon's Declaration of Independence. The colonies stated that they were no longer a part of Great Brit­ain. A new nation was born.

Defending the nation. The war lasted six years. It was a difficult war for both sides. The British were fighting far from their homeland. Supplies had to be sent from across the ocean. Although the Americans lacked supplies and military training, they were fighting on the land which they knew well. And they were fighting to protect their newly declared independence. The Revolutionary War was fought in the farmyards, fields and forests of America. Thousands of men and women helped in the fight for independence.

Mary Hays's husband, John, was a gunner in charge of firing a cannon. While he fought, she helped to take care of the wounded and cooked. Sometimes, in the heat of a battle, she brought cool pitchers of water to the soldiers. The soldiers called her Mary Pitcher.

During the battle of Monmouth in New Jersey John Hays was wounded. Mary Hays took her husband's place at the cannon and fought bravely.

Unlike Mary Hays, many women stayed at home. They ran family farms and businesses. While their husbands and sons were away, these women took over men's jobs and did their own work, too. In addition, some women collected money for the needs of the war.

Blacks help. Major John Pitcairn was a popular British officer. He had led British troops in many battles. He was planning to lead his soldiers into battle at Bunker Hill. But a bullet stopped him.

The bullet was Peter Salem's. Peter Salem, a black man, had already fought at Lexington. Then he became one of 21 blacks who joined with whites to fight at Bunker Hill. Peter Salem and two other blacks, Cuff Whitemore and Salem Poor, were honoured for bravery in that battle.

During the Revolution some blacks formed their own military units. One Rhode Island unit was made up of 125 blacks. These soldiers fought in the battle of Rhode Island, where their unit did not give up any ground to the British. Later, one leader called the battle of Rhode Island "the best fought action of the war."

Help from overseas. Many people in Europe admired the colonies' fight for freedom. Some Europeans even came to America to help in the fighting.

The Marquis de Lafayette was a 20-year-old French nobleman and military officer. Lafayette hired soldiers and a ship and sailed to America. When he arrived, he offered his services to Congress. Congress made Lafayette a major general, and George Washington asked him to serve on his staff. The young officer and Washington soon became close friends.

Lafayette served bravely in the war. At one battle he was wounded. In the final battle at York-town he helped to defeat the British.

Baron Friedrich von Steuben was a German officer who came to help the Americans. Von Steuben was good at training soldiers. In winter at Valley Forge⁵ he helped to train American soldiers to be bet-The Marquis de Lafayette the fighters.

The War ends. On October 19, 1781, the war was over with the victory of the Americans.

In 1783 the British and Americans met in Paris and signed a treaty. In the Treaty of Paris Great Britain agreed to recognize the independence of the United States. The Americans had won their revolution.

Many of the early Americans were adventurous people. They crossed mountains and made homes in the wilderness. In 1790 the United States was a small country of 13 states on the Atlantic coast. By 1850 the nation had grown until it stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

As the nation expanded, Americans kept trying to make their life better. Many new inventions changed the American way of work and life.

Settling the frontier. In the middle of the 18th century much of the land west of the Appalachian Mountains was a rich wilderness. It was a hunting ground for the American Indians. Bear, buffalo, deer and wild turkey were plentiful. Many colonists wanted to claim some of this land for themselves.

Daniel Boone. The first settlers in new areas, people who opened the way west for others, were called pioneers. One of the pioneers was Daniel Boone.

Daniel Boone grew up in Pennsylvania. Later his family moved to North Carolina on the frontier. A frontier is the very edge of a settled area that borders on an unsettled area.

As a young man, Boone heard stories about the Kentucky wilderness beyond the Appalachians. In 1769 Boone and a few friends decided to explore Kentucky.

They spent many months on their way. They folded mountain paths and finally came to an open-between the mountains called Cumberland Gap. When Boone finally saw Kentucky for the first he thought it i₀oked like a paradise. Much of the land was covered with trees. Buffalo, bears and deer ran through the fields.

Daniel Boone spent more than two years in Kentucky, exploring the beautiful land and hunting. He returned to the East with tales of the beauty of the land he had seen.

In 1775 Richard Henderson, a businessman, hired Boone to build a road through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. With a group of strong men armed with axes and guns, Boone went west again.

The road which Boone and his men built was called the Wilderness Road.

The way west. The Wilderness Road was steep and narrow. The trip to Kentucky was difficult. People loaded their goods on farm animals and walked alongside the animals as they made their way up and down the steep mountain road.

But walking was not the only way of getting over the mountains. Thousands of pioneers travelled by land to Pittsburgh. There they bought or built boats, loaded their belongings and sailed down the Ohio River to the Ohio Territory. Travelling by boat was easier and quicker than travelling by land. And settlers could bring more belongings with them on a boat than they could carry over the Wilderness Road.

But river travel also had its problems. In spring the rivers flooded. Dangerous rapids and waterfalls could break a boat. Besides, bandits, pirates and American Indians often attacked and sank the boats and stole the pioneers' goods.

Flatboats and keelboats. The pioneers used many different kinds of boats. The most popular was the flatboat. It was built of wood and it had a large deck with a small cabin at one end. The pioneer family stayed in the small cabin. The farm animals and most of the family belongings were kept on the deck. The flat bottom of the boat made it possible to travel in shallow parts of the river.

Flatboats had one disadvantage. They could travel in only one direction - downstream. When pioneer families reached their destination, they usually took their boats apart and used the timber to build houses.

Keelboats were smaller than flatboats, but they could travel both downstream and upstream.

By the 1790's many boats sailed along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers carrying pioneers and their belongings. From Pittsburgh the boats followed the Ohio River west to where it joined the Mississippi River. On the Mississippi boats could sail south as far as New Orleans.

New states. In 1791 Vermont became the fourteenth state in the United States. Kentucky became the fifteenth state in 1792. A few years later, in 1796, Tennessee became a state. The frontier was quickly becoming settled.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11