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French-Indian War (1756-1763)
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was also known as the Seven Years' War, at the end of the war england had a huge debt and began to tax the colonies -
Declaratory Act 1765
Declaratory Act, (1766), declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. -
Stamp Act 1765
The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
Townshend Acts 1767
The townshend act initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. -
Boston Massacre March 5 1770
On March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired upon a group of rowdy colonists, killing five and wounding others. -
Boston Tea Party 1773
It was an act of protest in which a group of 60 American colonists threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to agitate against both a tax on tea (which had been an example of taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company. -
Intolerable Acts (aka Coercive Acts) 1773
The act was a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
Quartering Act 1774
The last act passed was the Quartering Act of 1774 which applied not just to Massachusetts, but to all the American colonies, and was only slightly different than the 1765 act. This new act allowed royal governors, rather than colonial legislatures, to find homes and buildings to quarter or house British soldiers. -
Second Continental Congress May 1775
The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775, to plan further responses if the British government did not repeal or modify the acts; however, the American Revolutionary War had started by that time with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Congress was called upon to take charge of the war effort. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord 1775
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775, the famous 'shot heard 'round the world', marked the start of the American War of Independence (1775-83). -
Common Sense 1776
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. -
Declaration of Independence 1776
The Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence.