<P> An upper - class, with wealth based on large plantations operated by slave labor, and holding significant political power and even control over the churches, emerged in South Carolina and Virginia . A unique class system operated in upstate New York, where Dutch tenant farmers rented land from very wealthy Dutch proprietors, such as the Rensselaer family . The other colonies were more equalitarian, with Pennsylvania being representative . By the mid-18th century Pennsylvania was basically a middle - class colony with limited deference to its small upper - class . A writer in the Pennsylvania Journal in 1756 summed it up: </P> <P> The People of this Province are generally of the middling Sort, and at present pretty much upon a Level . They are chiefly industrious Farmers, Artificers or Men in Trade; they enjoy in are fond of Freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to Civility from the greatest . </P> <P> The French and Indian War (1754--63) was a watershed event in the political development of the colonies . It was also part of the larger Seven Years' War . The influence of the main rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada, the French and North American Indians, was significantly reduced with the territory of the Thirteen Colonies expanding into New France both in Canada and the Louisiana Territory . Moreover, the war effort resulted in greater political integration of the colonies, as reflected in the Albany Congress and symbolized by Benjamin Franklin's call for the colonies to "Join or Die". Franklin was a man of many inventions--one of which was the concept of a United States of America, which emerged after 1765 and was realized in July 1776 . </P> <P> Following Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 with the goal of organizing the new North American empire and protecting the native Indians from colonial expansion into western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains . In ensuing years, strains developed in the relations between the colonists and the Crown . The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765, imposing a tax on the colonies without going through the colonial legislatures . The issue was drawn: did Parliament have this right to tax Americans who were not represented in it? Crying "No taxation without representation", the colonists refused to pay the taxes as tensions escalated in the late 1760s and early 1770s . </P>

Who is credited for the idea of forming the united states of america