Winning Independence

The new nation needed allies. Congress sent its most famous citizen, Benjamin Franklin, to Paris. The French already admired him for his experiments with electricity. Benjamin Franklin is famous for many things^Q85, and one of them is as an inventor: he created the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and the Franklin stove. In 1778, his diplomacy brought France into the war on America's side.

In 1777, Congress adopted a national flag of stars and stripes. The flag has 13 stripes^Q121 because there were 13 original colonies, the ones that declared independence. It still has those 13 stripes today.

In 1781, George Washington's army, with French help, trapped the British at Yorktown, Virginia, and the British surrendered. A year later, Congress chose "E Pluribus Unum^Q124" for the Great Seal of the United States as the nation's first motto. The Latin phrase means "out of many, one," a promise that we all become one: many states and many peoples joined as one nation. You can still find it on U.S. coins; "In God We Trust" became the official motto in 1956.

The peace treaty signed in Paris in 1783 recognized the United States as an independent nation.