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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, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. -
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660) were 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.To continue intercolonial trade, the colonies resorted to smuggling. -
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
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. ... Early attempts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765—which taxed colonists for every piece of paper they used—were met with widespread protests in America. -
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
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. -
Intolerable 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 adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, and signed on July 8 in a final attempt to avoid war between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in America. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775 in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies in America that united in the American Revolutionary War. -
Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776 -
common sense
Common sense is sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge in a manner that is shared by nearly all people. The everyday understanding of common sense derives from historical philosophical discussion involving several European languages. -
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
ence Hall) in Philadelphia. ... It was contemporarily known as the Federal Convention, the Philadelphia Convention, or the Grand Convention at Philadelphia. Nor did most of the delegates arrive intending to draft a new