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Navigation Acts
acts of Parliament intended to promote the self-sufficiency of the British Empire by restricting colonial trade to England and decreasing dependence on foreign imported goods. -
French and Indian war
England and her colonies defeated France and Native American allies. British treasury drained. Britain thought colonists should pay their share. -
Stamp act
taxed newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. -
Boston Massacre
group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. -
Tea act
granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England -
Boston Tea Party
frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
Coercive Act
a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
First Continental Congress
The primary accomplishment of the First Continental Congress was a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods -
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. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. -
Declaration of Independence adopted
The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. By declaring themselves an independent nation, the American colonists were able to confirm an official alliance with the Government of France and obtain French assistance in the war against Great Britain. -
Battle of Saratoga
marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign, giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War. -
Winter at Valley Forge
as the third of eight winter encampments for the Continental Army's main body, commanded by General George Washington, during the American Revolutionary War. In September 1777, Congress fled Philadelphia to escape the British capture of the city. -
Battle of Yorktown
joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. Which ended military operations -
U.S. Constitution Written
to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk -
U.S constitution adopted
39 of the 55 delegates signed the new document, with many of those who refused to sign objecting to the lack of a bill of rights. At least one delegate refused to sign because the Constitution codified and protected slavery and the slave trade.