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erri Button, Supervisor History, Government, and Geography Service State Department of Education Thomas A. Elliott, Assistant Supervisor History, Government, and Geography Service State Department of Education Clyde J. Haddock, Assistant Supervisor History, Government, and Geography Service State Department of Education James C. Page, Assistant Supervisor History, Government, and Geography Service State Department of Education Dr. D. Alan Williams, Consultant THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE: VIRGINIA 1763-1783 Professor of History University of Virginia _The Road to Independence:_ _Virginia 1763-1783_ Part I: 1763: The Aftermath of Victory [Sidenote: "_He has refused to assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good...._"] Virginia in 1763 appeared to stand on the edge of a new era of greatness. The Peace of Paris signed that year confirmed the total victory of the British in North America during the long French and Indian War (1754-1763). Virginia's natural enemies were subdued: the French were driven from Canada, the Forks of the Ohio, the Illinois Country, and Louisiana; the Spanish were forced to give up Florida; and the Indians, now without any allies, were defeated or banished beyond the Appalachians. Virginians were free to continue their remarkable growth of the past 40 years during which they had left the Tidewater, pushed up the James, Rappahannock, Appomattox, and Potomac river basins, and joined thousands of Scotch-Irish and Germans pushing southward out of Pennsylvania into the Valley of Virginia. Although they were halted temporarily in 1755 when Braddock's disastrous defeat in Pennsylvania and the massacre of frontier pioneer James Patton at Draper's Meadow (Blacksburg) encouraged the Indians to resist the white man's advance, Virginians eagerly eyed the lands in southwestern Virginia along the Holston, Clinch, and French Lick Rivers and those that lay beyond the mountains along the Ohio. This territory, from which was carved the states of Kentucky and West Virginia, made Virginia, even without considering her strong claim to all the lands north of the Ohio, the largest of the American colonies. Following the end of the French and Indian war, Virginians expected to recapture the economic prosperity that had been interrupted by the conflict. In 1763, they were the most affluent and the most populous white colonists. There were at least 350,000
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