NONFICTION:  In 1773, the Seven Years War with France had made Britain the greatest power on earth. But the war had doubled her national debt; interest payments alone consumed five eighths of Britain’s annual budget. To ease this burden, Britain made a fateful blunder--she decided to impose and enforce taxes upon the American colonies.


In 1764, Britain imposed the Sugar Act. This was followed by the Stamp Act and the Townshend Revenue Act, and the Americans openly rebelled. On April 17, 1775, British and American forces first clashed at the Battle of Lexington. The war continued for years, complicated by the fact that some Americans wished to remain British subjects. To those colonists, the American Revolution was a bloody civil war.


On October 19, 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The thirteen colonies had won the war. They would now become the United States of America; but their conflicts with Britain were not over.


The United States at War series is a collection of presentations that review the political, economic, and social forces that have erupted in military conflict. They describe the historical context for each of the major U.S. wars and examine how military conflict resolved or failed to resolve the forces that caused the war.