DOUGLAS GINSBURG, Federal Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit:
The thirteen original states are the thirteen former British colonies along our Eastern Seaboard.

New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
So why were there thirteen colonies instead of one British colony? Because they weren’t all British to begin with. Early in the 17th century, the Swedes founded a colony, New Sweden, in parts of what are now Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It lasted less than two decades but left behind an American icon: the log cabin.

New Sweden was soon conquered by the Dutch, who founded their own colony after buying Manhattan from the Natives – one of the shrewdest real estate deals in history. Or it would have been if Holland hadn’t lost the colony to England in 1664. In the early 1600s, a private English company chartered a colony in Virginia – and another in Massachusetts.
Across the decades, English kings granted lands to other colonizers, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. The common goal was to make money – from harvesting lumber to growing tobacco. Democracy also took root. You see, in those days it took weeks to send a message across the Atlantic. Alone in a new world, the colonists had no choice but to draft rules for their day-to-day governance. By the time of the American Revolution, we Americans already had, as a practical matter, 150 years of self-government.
During the first three decades of English settlement, most of the colonists perished. Yet more followed. Without their optimism and their sacrifice – we wouldn’t be here.