People started coming to North America in the 1600s. Those people were called colonists. They were from all over Europe, but the most people came from England. Soon the British were the strongest influence in America. Because of this, all of the colonies became part of Great Britain. For a while people liked being part of a very large kingdom. It meant that they would be protected by a strong government. Then, In the middle of the 1700s, that changed. People started getting uncomfortable with how much power the king had.
The biggest problem people had was how much money they were paying in taxes. They sent the British a lot of money, but they didn't get to be part of the government. That meant they could not choose how their taxes were spent. Colonists started saying "taxation without representation" to talk about the problem. The phrase caught on, and was part of what started the American Revolution. In 1776, the colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence. The letter told the king that the colonies didn't want to be part of England anymore.

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