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French-Indian War
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 -
Indian war Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament that imposed restrictions on colonial trade. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act, (1765), in American colonial history, the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) -
Stamp Act
The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
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. -
Boston Massacre
On March 5, 1770, seven British soldiers fired into a crowd of volatile Bostonians, killing five, wounding another six, and angering an entire colony. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. -
Intolerable Acts
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. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5, 1775, to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declare -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord was the first major military campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in an American victory and outpouring of militia support for the anti-British cause. -
Common Sense
Among the most influential authors and reformers of his age, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was born in England but went on to play an important role in both the American and French Revolutions. In 1774, he emigrated to America where, for a time, he helped to edit the Pennsylvania Magazine -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, formally titled The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America in both the engrossed version and the original printing, is the founding document of the United States. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 states of the United States, formerly the Thirteen Colonies, that served as the nation's first frame of government -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was the late 18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War, which established American independence from the British Empire. -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion
Shays's Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades. -
Constitutional 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.