ts of London declare
that under the administration of William Pitt, the imperial genius of
this world-wide conflict, commerce had been "united with and made to
flourish by war."

From the point of view of the British empire, the results of the war
were momentous. By the peace of 1763, Canada and the territory east of
the Mississippi, except New Orleans, passed under the British flag. The
remainder of the Louisiana territory was transferred to Spain and French
imperial ambitions on the American continent were laid to rest. In
exchange for Havana, which the British had seized during the war, Spain
ceded to King George the colony of Florida. Not without warrant did
Macaulay write in after years that Pitt "was the first Englishman of his
time; and he had made England the first country in the world."

THE EFFECTS OF WARFARE ON THE COLONIES

The various wars with the French and the Indians, trivial in detail as
they seem to-day, had a profound influence on colonial life and on the
destiny of America. Circumstances beyond the control of popular
assemblies, jealous of their individual powers, compelled cooeperation
among them, grudging and stingy no doubt, but still cooeperation. The
American people, more eager to be busy in their fields or at their
trades, were simply forced to raise and support armies, to learn the
arts of warfare, and to practice, if in a small theater, the science of
statecraft. These forces, all cumulative, drove the colonists, so
tenaciously provincial in their habits, in the direction of nationalism.

=The New England Confederation.=--It was in their efforts to deal with
the problems presented by the Indian and French menace that the
Americans took the first steps toward union. Though there were many
common ties among the settlers of New England, it required a deadly
fear of the Indians to produce in 1643 the New England Confederation,
composed of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. The
colonies so united were bound together in "a firm and perpetual league
of friendship and amity for offense and defense, mutual service and
succor, upon all just occasions." They made provision for distributing
the burdens of wars among the members and provided for a congress of
commissioners from each colony to determine upon common policies. For
some twenty years the Confederation was active and it continued to hold
meetings until after the extinction of the Indian peril on the immediate
border.