Thirteen colonies declared independence in the Declaration of Independence commemorated by America250.
The thirteen colonies were British colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. Their representatives formed the Continental Congress and declared that the colonies were becoming free and independent states. The Declaration’s closing language refers to the “thirteen united States of America.”
The colonies were Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. They did not all have identical economies, religious cultures, or political traditions, but they joined in the revolutionary movement against British rule.
The number thirteen can be confused with the fifty states in the modern United States. The original declaration concerned the thirteen revolutionary colonies, not the later national territory. Vermont, for example, was not one of the thirteen colonies and became the fourteenth state in 1791.