father angry. But when his father asked him about it, he told him, 'I cannot tell a lie, l cut down the tree The colonies did not say that they wanted to be fully independent until the summer of 1776. A man called Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous Declaration of Independence' where he sa d that the king, George the Third, was not a good king because he had not let his people have their rights: the right to life, to freedom and to happiness. The day of the Declaration of Independence. 4 July, is another important American holiday The Americans finally won the war in October 1781, and two years after that, they were free to govern themselves. In 1789 they made George Washington their first president. Although he wanted go back to his farm at Mount Vernon and enjoy a quiet life he stayed president until 1797. He died in 1799, just two years after he returned home. The คnames United States of America' and American were first used at the time of the War of Independence. The thirteen colonies became the first thirteen states of the United States. In 1803, after Jefferson b ecame the third president, he bought a large area of land in the Midwest from France. It was five times as big as France, and it only cost 15 million dollars. Jefferson then sent two brave men Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to travel across America all the way to the Pacific. With a young Native American woman called Sacagawea to help them,