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Navigation Acts
The Navigation Act of 1651, aimed primarily at the Dutch, required all trade between England and the colonies to be carried in English or colonial vessels, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch War in 1652. -
French-Indian War
The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. 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, and ultimately to the American Revolution. -
Stamp Act
The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. It was a direct tax imposed by the British government without the approval of the colonial legislatures and was payable in hard-to-obtain British sterling, rather than colonial currency. -
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
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. Nonimportation. In response to new taxes, the colonies again decided to discourage the purchase of British imports. -
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
A tense standoff and public debate ensued but no compromise was reached. On the night of December 16, 1773, dozens of disguised men, some as Indigenous Americans, boarded the three East India Company ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. -
Intolerable Acts
The act authorized the Royal Navy to blockade Boston Harbor because “the commerce of his Majesty's subjects cannot be safely carried on there."1 The blockade commenced on June 1, 1774, effectively closing Boston's port to commercial traffic. Additionally, it forbade any exports to foreign ports or provinces. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
In this first battle of the American Revolution, Massachusetts colonists defied British authority, outnumbered and outfought the Redcoats, and embarked on a lengthy war to earn their independence. American victory. -
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. -
Common Sense
Common Sense made a clear case for independence and directly attacked the political, economic, and ideological obstacles to achieving it. Paine relentlessly insisted that British rule was responsible for nearly every problem in colonial society and that the 1770s crisis could only be resolved by colonial independence. -
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 served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. -
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. -
Second Continental Congress
They established a Continental army and elected George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, but the delegates also drafted the Olive Branch Petition and sent it to King George III in hopes of reaching a peaceful resolution. The king refused to hear the petition and declared the American colonies in revolt. -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion
A violent insurrection in the Massachusetts countryside during 1786 and 1787, Shays' Rebellion was brought about by a monetary debt crisis at the end of the American Revolutionary War. Although Massachusetts was the focal point of the crisis, other states experienced similar economic hardships.