V.
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.
1765–1812 From the Stamp Act Congress to the Second War with England.
Colonial Union. — We have already seen that during the preceding period a new idea had been steadily growing throughout the plantations of America, — an idea undreamed of in earlier days. The Colonies had been settled at different times and for widely different reasons. The primary motive of many of them had been to seek isolation, to found a new order of things in a corner of the earth. The mere suggestion of a union with the Colony of Pennsylvania, or indeed with any other plantation, would have made a Massachusetts Puritan open wide his eyes in amazement.
But the thirteen Colonies represented England's share of the great Continent of North America, and, as viewed from across a thousand leagues of ocean, they appeared rather as one vast possession settled in thirteen places, than as thirteen units with little connection. British policy was ever in advance of Colonial thought. England had recognized her American possessions as a unit almost from the beginning, passing the first of the Navigation Acts as early as 1651. From this time
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