Thirteen colonies declared independence in the 1776 document honored by America250.
The colonies were British possessions along the Atlantic coast of North America: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Their delegates participated in the Second Continental Congress.
The Declaration's original formal title referred to “the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” The wording reflected a political transformation: the colonies were presenting themselves as states with a shared claim to independence.
The thirteen colonies were not identical. They differed in geography, economies, religious traditions, forms of settlement, and relationships with Indigenous nations and enslaved people. Their cooperation in Congress did not erase those differences. It created a new political union whose institutions changed repeatedly during and after the Revolutionary War.
The number thirteen is also why early United States symbols often used thirteen stars or stripes. The stars on the national flag later changed as new states joined the Union, while the thirteen-stripe design was preserved.