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The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. -
British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to help replenish their finances after the costly Seven Years' War with France. -
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. -
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were abusing them verbally and throwing various missiles. -
Colonists disguised as red coats and when on a Boston ship dumped £10,000 worth of tea into the harbor. -
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. -
Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression. -
Convinced that war with Great Britain was inevitable, Virginian Patrick Henry defended strong resolutions for equipping the Virginia militia to fight against the British in a fiery speech in a Richmond church with the famous words, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” -
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775, the famous 'shot heard 'round the world', marked the start of the American War of Independence. -
Breed’s Hill in Charlestown was the primary locus of combat in the misleadingly named Battle of Bunker Hill, which was part of the American siege of British-held Boston. -
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. -
The Declaration of Independence expresses the ideals on which the United States was founded and the reasons for its separation from Great Britain. -
Nathan Hale, a Connecticut schoolteacher, and captain in the Continental Army, is executed by the British for spying. -
George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, which occurred on the night of December 25–26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. -
General Wilhelm von Knyphausen led British soldiers on a raid of Valley Forge, where American troops had built a handful of storage facilities. -
British Major General John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 men to the Continental Army at Saratoga, New York. The surrender came following battles in and around Saratoga in September. -
Valley Forge is the location of the 1777-1778 winter encampment of the Continental Army under General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. -
The United States and France signed the Treaty of Alliance, creating a military alliance against Great Britain. This guide provides access to digital materials, links to external websites, and a print bibliography. -
The Siege of Yorktown was a joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender.