Why Is Land Important To The Revolutionary War

“Preventing our obtaining more subsistence by cultivating of new lands, [the French] discourage our marriages, and keep our people from increasing; thus…killing thousands of our children before they are born,” wrote Benjamin Franklin. Franklin regarded the importance of expanding westward necessary for the American colonists; more land was needed for the colonists to keep growing, but the French were in their way. As the continent of North America was tossed repeatedly back and forth from the hands of the French to the hands of the British, the American colonists could not wait to devour the heavily contested lands west of the Appalachians. But through a combination of politics and economics, the colonists were not allowed easy access to those rich lands. Land was of such importance to the colonists that it caused the American Revolutionary War. Tremendous population growth and depletion of nutrients from overplanting were causing great demand for land. The birth

The New York Journal read, “The finger of God points out a mighty Empire to our sons; the Savages of the wilderness were never expelled to make room in this, the best part of the continent, for idolators and slaves.” In other words, the American colonists deserve their land to build an empire for future generations, but that land, although won, is still the land of Indians and Catholics. The French and Indian War was fought over that fertile land, and now the British were giving that land back to Canada. Colonists were the ones that needed that land; they depended on farming, and the overused infertile land coupled with overpopulation greatly escalated the demand for even more land. This frustration and need for fertile soil pushed the Americans to rebel against the British, causing the American Revolutionary