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French-Indian War (1756-1763)
The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribe -
Navigation Acts (1763)
A series of British laws that restricted the use of foreign shipping for trade only between England and its colonies -
Stamp Act
an act of the British Parliament in 1765 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the Crown. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act, (1765), in American colonial history, the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) requiring colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns or villages. -
Townshend Acts
To help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Nonimportation. In response to new taxes, the colonies again decided to discourage the purchase of British imports. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers killed three people of a crowd of three or four hundred who were abusing them verbally and throwing various missiles. -
Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party, (December 16, 1773), incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians -
Intolerable Acts (aka Coercive Acts)
The Intolerable Acts (passed/Royal assent March 31–June 22, 1774) were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was a final attempt by the colonists to avoid going to war with Britain during the American Revolution. It was a document in which the colonists pledged their loyalty to the crown and asserted their rights as British citizens. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord (aka “The Shot Heard Around the World”)
"The shot heard round the world" is a phrase that refers to the opening shot of the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, which began the American Revolutionary War and led to the creation of the United States of America, and was an early event in the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions, an 18th and 19th century revolutionary wave in the Atlantic World which includes the French Revolution. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress met inside Independence Hall beginning in May 1775. It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. -
Declaration of Independence
By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion
Shays's Rebellion, (August 1786–February 1787), uprising in western Massachusetts in opposition to high taxes and stringent economic conditions. In September 1786 Daniel Shays and other local leaders led several hundred men in forcing the Supreme Court in Springfield to adjourn. -
Constitutional Convention (aka Philadelphia Convention)
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.