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Stamp Act of 1765
The British Parliament passed the “Stamp Act” to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
Townshend Act
the Townshend Act constituted an attempt by the British government to consolidate fiscal and political power over the American colonies by placing import taxes on many of the British products bought by Americans, including lead, paper, paint, glass and tea. -
Boston massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. -
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. -
Thomas Paine's Common Sense published
Writer Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries. -
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Battle of yorktown
A joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. The siege virtually ended military operations in the American Revolution. -
Treaty of Paris signed
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, officially ending the American Revolutionary War.