Washington crossing the delaware

American Revolution Timeline

  • Stamp Act

    Stamp Act
    The Stamp Act of 1765 was a direct tax that required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.
  • Sons of Liberty

    Sons of Liberty
    The Sons of Liberty was a political group made up of American patriots that originated in the pre-independence North American British colonies. The group was formed to protect the rights of the colonists from the usurpations by the British government after 1766.
  • Declatory Act

    Declatory Act
    The Declaratory Act was a declaration by the British Parliament in 1766 which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act of 1765. The government repealed the Stamp Act because boycotts were hurting British trade and used the declaration to justify the repeal and save face.
  • Townsend Act

    Townsend Act
    The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed beginning in 1767 by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America. One of which was to raise revenue in the colonies to pay the salaries of governors and judges so that they would be independent of colonial rule.
  • Boston Massacre

    Boston Massacre
    The Boston Massacre, called the Boston Riot by the English, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British redcoats killed five civilian men.
  • Tea Act

    Tea Act
    The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its principal overt objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses. A related objective was to undercut the price of tea smuggled into Britain's North American colonies.
  • Boston Tea Party

    Boston Tea Party
    The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies.
  • Intolerable Acts

    Intolerable Acts
    The Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. The acts triggered outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States, and were important developments in the growth of the American Revolution.
  • First Continental Congress

    First Continental Congress
    The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American colonies that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution.
  • Lexington and Concord

    Lexington and Concord
    The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.[9][10] They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston.
  • Second Continental Congress

    Second Continental Congress
    The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun.
  • Common Sence

    Common Sence
    Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense, signed "Written by an Englishman", became an immediate success.
  • Declaration of Independence

    Declaration of Independence
    The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
  • Battle of New York

    Battle of New York
    The Battle of New York was a series of battles for control of New York City and the state of New Jersey in the American Revolutionary War between British forces under General Sir William Howe and the Continental Army under General George Washington in 1776 and the winter months of 1777.
  • Battle of Trenton

    Battle of Trenton
    The Battle of Trenton took place on December 26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, after General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey.
  • Battle of Saratoga

    Battle of Saratoga
    The Battles of Saratoga, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777), conclusively decided the fate of British General John Burgoyne's army in the American Revolutionary War (known outside the US as the American War of Independence) and are generally regarded as a turning point in the war.
  • Battle of Yorktown

    Battle of Yorktown
    The Battle of Yorktown, or Surrender of Yorktown in 1781 was a decisive victory by a combined assault of American forces led by General George Washington and French forces led by the Comte de Rochambeau over a British Army commanded by Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis.
  • Treaty of Paris

    Treaty of Paris
    The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ratified by the Congress of the Confederation on January 14, 1784, and by the King of Great Britain on April 9, 1784 (the ratification documents were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784), formally ended the American Revolutionary War between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America, which had rebelled against British rule.