Episode Details

In 1763, the proudest British subjects in the world were Americans. They had just helped win the greatest war in their empire’s history, expelling France from the continent and lighting bonfires from Boston to Charleston in honor of their King. Benjamin Franklin believed the future of the entire British Empire lay in America. So how did it all come apart?

It began not with a tax, but with a bill and a map. Victory had nearly bankrupted Britain, and the army that had won the war still had to be paid for. A careful, methodical new minister named George Grenville decided the long age of leaving the colonies alone was finished. Then King George III drew a line down the Appalachian Mountains and closed off the West, the very prize the colonists believed they had bled to win.

This is the story of the moment the long quarrel began, of Pontiac’s war on the frontier, and of a loyal Virginia colonel named George Washington, who read his King’s proclamation, called it a “temporary expedient,” and quietly set out to break it.