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Conflict in the Ohio Valley
The French begin building a fort in the area between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. They called it Ft. Duquesne and it stood where Pittsburg, Pennsylvania is located today. George Washington was sent by the governor of Virginia to warn the French to leave. -
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A Series of Unfortunate Events
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French and Indian War
The British sent troops to the colonies to fight against the French and their Indian allies. The war ended with France ceding all of Canada to England. -
Proclamation of 1763
To avoid conflict with the Native Americans in the new lands won from France, England forbade any settlers to move west of the Proclamation Line which roughly followed the line of the Appalachian Mountains. This angered many colonists. -
The Stamp Act
To help raise money for the cost of the French and Indian War and defending the colonists agains the Indians, English hoped to raise money with a new tax on the colonists. The Stamp tax required a stamp to be purchased and placed on every piece of paper the colonists used. -
The Quartering Act
This law required colonists to to provide British troops with quarters, or housing. -
The Townshend Acts
A new set of taxes passed by Parliament required a duty, or tax, on popular items as glass, paint, paper, and tea. -
Repeal of Townshend Acts
Lord North persuaded Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts except for one tax on tea. -
The Boston Massacre
A group of Bostonians harrassed a group of British soldiers who shot into the crowd. Five Bostonians were killed and ten were injured. -
The Tea Act
The Tea Act allowed the British East Indian Company to have a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies. Also, the cost of the tea was greatly lowered but it was still taxed. Even so, the cost of the tea would be lower than anything the colonists could smuggle into the colonies without a tax. -
The Boston Tea Party
Colonists in Boston took matters in their own hands to "unload" tea with the tax on it. The result was the "tea party." -
The Intolerable Acts
Parliament passed a series of laws to punish Boston for the tea party and the destroyed tea. These laws were called the Coercive Acts by England but the colonists called them intolerable because they were too hard to bear. -
Fighting at Lexington and Concord
Finally, British troops march into the countryside from Boston searching for weapons and gunpowder they believed the colonists were stockpiling in nearby Concord. Shots were fired at locale militiamen gathered in Lexington and several were killed. The soldiers traveled on to Concord where they found no supplies because the colonists had successfully hidden them.
