were handed
over to Spain in payment for bootless assistance rendered to France
toward the close of the war. Spain also received New Orleans, while
Florida, which then reached westward nearly to New Orleans, passed from
Spanish into British hands. The whole country north of Florida and east
of the Mississippi river, including Canada, was now English. A strong
combination of Indian tribes, chiefly Algonquin, under the lead of the
Ottawa sachem Pontiac, made a last desperate attempt, after the loss of
their French allies, to cripple the English; but by 1765, after many
harrowing scenes of bloodshed, these red men were crushed. There was no
power left that could threaten the peace of the thirteen colonies unless
it were the mother-country herself. "Well," said the French minister,
the Duke de Choiseul, as he signed the treaty that shut France out of
North America, "so we are gone; it will be England's turn next!" And
like a prudent seeker after knowledge, as he was, the Duke presently
bethought him of an able and high-minded man, the Baron de Kalb, and
sent him in 1767 to America, to look about and see if there were not
good grounds for his bold prophecy.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS.

It did not take four years after the peace of 1763 to show how rapidly
the new situation of affairs was bearing fruit in America. The war had
taught its lessons. Earlier wars had menaced portions of the frontier,
and had been fought by single colonies or alliances of two or three.
This war had menaced the whole frontier, and the colonies, acting for
the first time in general concert, had acquired some dim notion of their
united strength. Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against
one another had here fought as allies,--John Stark and Israel Putnam by
the side of William Howe; Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage,--and
it had not always been the regulars that bore off the palm for skill and
endurance. One young man, of immense energy and fiery temper, united to
rare prudence and fertility of resource, had already become famous
enough to be talked about in England; in George Washington the
Virginians recognized a tower of strength.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the great French War.]

[Sidenote: Need for a steady revenue.]

The overthrow of their ancient enemy, while further increasing the
self-confidence of the Americans, at the same time removed the
principal check which had hitherto