The Development Of The United States In — страница 3

165) The people of America wanted their independance from England and in 1775 they all joined together to fight the Revolutionary War to give America its freedom. The War for American Independence was terrifying to the people caught up in it as well as destructive of lives and property. Throughout the war soliders suffered from shortages of supplies. During the terrible winter of 1777-1778 men hobbled about without shoes or coats. Many soliders died for Americas freedom, how many soliders actually died we do not know. The most conservative estimate is over 25,000 a higher percentage of the total population than for any other American conflict except the Civil War. The Revolution altered people’s lives in countless ways that reached beyond the sights and sounds of battle. No

areas of American life were more powerfully charged than politics and government. As the war ended, problems of demobilization and adjustment to the novel conditions of independence troubled the new nation. Whether the Confederation Congress could effectively deal with the problems of the postwar era remained unclear. (Nash 194, 203, 222) The American colonies robust and expanding, matured rapidly between 1700 and 1750. Full of strength yet marked by awkward incongruities, colonial America in 1750 approached an era of strife and momentous decisions. The colonial Americans who lived in the third-quarter of the eighteenth century participated in an era of political tension and conflict that changed the lives of nearly all of them. Yet it left them with difficult economic

adjustments, heavy debts and growing social divisions. Independence and war redrew the coutours of American life and changed the destinies of the American people. By 1783 a new nation had come into being where none had existed before. (Nash 142, 175, 218) The American People. Gary B. Nash, 1988. 380