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French and Indian war ends
The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent. -
Navigation Acts
Navigation Acts prevented the colonies from shipping any goods anywhere without first stopping in an English port to have their cargoes loaded and unloaded. -
Stamp Act
Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London which included an embossed revenue stamp. -
Boston Massacre
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 harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. -
Tea Act
The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
American colonists, 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/ Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act -
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support 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. -
Battle of Saratoga
The American defeat of the superior British army lifted patriot morale, furthered the hope for independence, and helped to secure the foreign support needed to win the war. -
Winter at Valley Forge
The Continental Army's transformative experiences at Valley Forge reshaped it into a more unified force capable of defeating the British and winning American independence. -
Battle of Yorktown
The last major battle of the American Revolution and the start of a new nation's independence. It also cemented Washington's reputation as a great leader. -
U.S. Constitution written
Founding Father James Madison drafted what we know as the United States Constitution. -
U.S. Constitution adopted
The U.S. constitution went into full effect across the nation.