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Founding of Jamestown
jamestown was the America’s first permanent English colony, in Virginia in 1607 – 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in Massachusetts. Jamestown sparked a series of cultural encounters that helped shape the nation and the world. The first two English women arrived at Jamestown in 1608, and more came in subsequent years. In Jamestown men outnumbered women, however, for most of the 17th century. -
Founding of the Virginia House of Burgesses
The first form of government that ever began in America was the House of Burgesses, which started in Virginia in 1619. People were encouraged to come to the “New Land” because of its success, also leading them to North Carolina. It is important to realize how the House of Burgesses was successful. First of all, the members of the House disagreed a lot less, and this created a friendly environment where more important things could be accomplished. Another reason, is that it gained more power. -
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
The political development of the colony began with the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1638), a civil covenant by the settlers establishing the system by which the river towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield agreed to govern themselves. The orders created an annual assembly of legislators and provided for the election of a governor. Separate New Haven Colony had its Fundamental Laws. -
Maryland act of Toleration
Maryland act of toleration did not bring complete religious freedom. it also didnt come about because of a profound humanistic conviction on the part of Lord Baltimore, the Maryland proprietor. The Toleration Act was a way of providing protection for Catholics while at the same time representing a nod in the direction of the English government, which in 1649 and for a dozen years thereafter was firmly under the control of the English Puritans. -
Halfway covenant
The halfway convenant is a doctrinal decision of the Congregational churches in New England. The nickname Half-Way Covenant became attached,it provoked much controversy and was never adopted by all the churches. -
King Philip's War
In colonial New England, King Philip's War begins when a band of Wampanoag warriors raid the border settlement of Swansee, Massachusetts, and massacre the English colonists there. -
Bacon's Rebellion
When Bacon's Rebellion erupted with surprising and stunning swiftness, William Berkeley had been governor ot Virginia for more than thirty years. Through the years he introduced more rigidity in the use of power while, at the same time, aging deprived him of a recognition of the economic, political, and social transition that Virginia, as well as other settled colonies, was undergoing. Berkeley saw Bacon's action as a direct challenge to his own authority - which it was. -
Massachusetts Bay Founding
John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, and other non-separatist Puritans founded Massachuesetts bay. The Puritans wanted to create a colony where they would be free to practice their religion. In 1629, King Charles I began to take action against the Puritans. John Winthrop, who had previously not been associated with the company decided to join and help colonize the Massachusetts Bay colony. He would later become its governor, -
The Salem WitchCraft Trials
In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, are charged with the illegal practice of witchcraft. Later that day, Tituba, possibly under coercion, confessed to the crime, encouraging the authorities to seek out more Salem witches. -
First Great Awakening
Edwards barked out from the pulpit against these notions. "God was an angry judge, and humans were sinners!" he declared. He spoke with such fury and conviction that people flocked to listen. This sparked what became known as the great awakening in the American colonies. -
John Peter Zinger Trial
John Peter Zenger arrived in New York from Germany in 1710 and served an apprenticeship to William Bradford, printer of the New York Gazette. In November, 1734, Cosby had Zenger arrested and put in jail incommunicado for ten months. On August 4, 1735, Zenger was brought to trial and charged with seditious libel. He was defended by Philadelphia lawyer, Andrew Hamilton. The prosecution argued that the sole fact of publication was sufficient to convict and excluded the truth from the evidence. -
Stono Rebellion
Stono's Rebellion was the largest slave uprising in the Colonies prior to the American Revolution. 20 black slaves met in secret near the Stono River in South Carolina to plan their escape to freedom. Minutes later, they burst into Hutcheson's store at Stono's bridge, killed the two storekeepers, and stole the guns and powder inside. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' 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. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation 0f 1763, as it is known, acknowledged that Indians owned the lands on which they were then residing and white settlers in the area were to be removed. The Proclamation of 1763 was a well-intentioned measure. -
March of Paxton Boys
The village of Paxton (Paxtang), a few miles east of Harrisburg in eastern Pennsylvania, became a hotbed of racial and political unrest during Pontiac`s Rebellion. A group of Paxton men took matters into their own hands in December 1763 and raided a small settlement of Conestoga Indians in Lancaster County. -
Stamp Act
The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. The money collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains (10,000 troops were to be stationed on the American Frontier for this purpose). -
Boston Massacre
Tensions between the American colonists and the British were already running high in the early spring of 1770. Late in the afternoon, on March 5, a crowd of jeering Bostonians slinging snowballs gathered around a small group of British soldiers guarding the Boston Customs House. The soldiers became enraged after one of them had been hit, and they fired into the crowd, even though they were under orders not to fire. Five colonists were shot and killed. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, took place when a group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm. -
Olive Branch Petition
John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5 and submitted to King George on July 8, 1775. It was an attempt to assert the rights of the colonists while maintaining their loyalty to the British crown. King George refused to read the petition and on August 23 proclaimed that the colonists had "proceeded to open and avowed rebellion.'' -
Common Sense
wrote Common Sense in January 1776, but it was not published as a pamphlet until February 14, 1776. He wanted people to think about what was happening. He explained that the people must fight against the unfair and unjust ways of King George III and the British Parliament. He used plain, simple common sense in his writing to show the Colonists there was no other way to protect their rights, but to declare their independence. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the founding document of the American political tradition. It articulates the fundamental ideas that form the American nation: All men are created free and equal and possess the same inherent, natural rights. the Declaration of Independence announced to the world the unanimous decision of the thirteen American colonies to separate themselves from Great Britain. -
Writing of the AOC
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. It established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy. -
Writing of the Constitution
The Declaration of Independence established an underlying foundation later realized through the Constitution of the United States of America. After the American Revolution, each of the original 13 states operated under its own distinct rules of government. Plans for colonial union were proposed from time to time, one of which was the Albany Plan of 1754. Benjamin Franklin was the author of this plan. -
Leisler's Rebellion
Leisler's willful personality was similar to that of Peter Stuyvesant, but for a while he enjoyed popular support because he established a legislative assembly that was not dominated by the wealthy merchants and landowners. Leisler's rule was short-lived.
