A School History of the United States eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 507 pages of information about A School History of the United States.

A School History of the United States eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 507 pages of information about A School History of the United States.

     1744.  French attack Canso and Annapolis (Port Royal).
     1745.  Louisburg (Cape Breton Island) taken.
     1748.  Louisburg given back to the French.

THE STRUGGLE FOR NEW FRANCE AND LOUISIANA.

Occupation of Louisiana: 

1699.  The French at the mouth of the Mississippi.
1701.  The occupation of the valley begun.
1701-1748.  The chain of forts joining New Orleans and Montreal.
1749.  The French on the Allegheny.  Celeron’s expedition.  The buried
plates.
1753.  The French fortify the Allegheny valley.

The French and Indian War: 

1754-1763.  The struggle for final possession. 1758.  The capture of Louisburg. 1759.  The capture of Quebec. 1760.  The capture of Montreal. 1763.  The French abandon America.

CHAPTER IX

LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763

%91.  Things unknown in 1763.%—­Had a traveler landed on our shores in 1763 and made a journey through the English colonies in America, he would have seen a country utterly unlike the United States of to-day.  The entire population, white man and black, freeman and slave, was not so great as that of New York or Philadelphia or Chicago in our time.  If we were to write a list of all the things we now consider as real necessaries of daily life and mark off those unknown to the men of 1763, not one quarter would remain.  No man in the country had ever seen a stove, or a furnace, or a friction match, or an envelope, or a piece of mineral coal.  From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail.  From our houses would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water; and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many varieties of summer fruits.  We should have to destroy every railroad, every steamboat, every factory and mill, pull down every line of telegraph, silence every telephone, put out every electric light, and tear up every telegraphic cable from the beds of innumerable rivers and seas.  We should have to take ether and chloroform from the surgeon, and galvanized iron and India rubber from the arts, and give up every sort of machine moved by steam.

[Illustration:  Lamp and sadiron]

[Illustration:  Postrider (Footnote:  From an old print, 1760)]

%92.  State of the Arts, Sciences, and Industry.%—­The appliances left on the list, because in some form they were known to the men of 1763, would now be thought crude and clumsy.  There were printing presses in those days,—­perhaps fifty in all the colonies.  But they were small, were worked by hand, and were so slow that the most expert pressman using one of them could not have printed so much in three working days as a modern steam press can run

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A School History of the United States from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.