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French-Indian War (1756-1763)
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 (1763)
The Navigation Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament that imposed restrictions on colonial trade. British economic policy was based on mercantilism, which aimed to use the American colonies to bolster British state power and finances. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act 1765, also known as the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, was an Act of the 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 and 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. -
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 -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act stated that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses. And if soldiers outnumbered colonial housing, they would be quartered in inns, alehouses, barns, other buildings, etc. -
Intolerable Acts (aka Coercive Acts)
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition, written in 1775, was the final effort of the Second Continental Congress to persuade King George III of England to respond to the concerns of the American Colonists and to settle their differences amicably. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord (aka “The Shot Heard Around the World”)
The gunshot was the first shot of the American Revolution and the start of the war. It was called the "shot heard around the world" by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem Concord Hymn. No one is actually sure who fired the first shot or if it was an American or British soldier. -
Common Sense
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. -
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. -
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. The Congress created a new country it first named the United Colonies and, in 1776, renamed the United States of America. -
Declaration of Independence
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." -
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. -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787 -
Constitutional Convention (aka Philadelphia Convention)
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The point of the event was decide how America was going to be governed. Although the Convention had been officially called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation, many delegates had much bigger plans.