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End of French and Indian War
France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought the country into armed conflict with the British colonies. The British formally declared war against France. -
Pontiac's Rebellion
Pontiac’s Rebellion begins when a confederacy of Native American warriors under Ottawa chief Pontiac attacks the British force at Detroit. After failing to take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac’s forces, made up of Ottawas and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas, and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that would stretch into months. -
Proclamation of 1763
In 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British issued a proclamation,mainly intended to conciliate the Indians by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands -
Paxton Boys attack Pennsylvania Indians
Paxton Boys uprising, attack in 1763 by Pennsylvania frontiersmen upon an Indian settlement during the Pontiac Indian uprising and the subsequent events related to the attack. -
Sugar Act
The Sugar Act, also known as the American Revenue Act or the American Duties Act, was a revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on 5 April 1764. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of British Acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 and relating to the British in North America. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program. -
Treaty of Fort Stanwix
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty between Native Americans and Great Britain, signed in 1768 at Fort Stanwix, in present-day Rome, New York. It was negotiated between Sir William Johnson, his deputy George Croghan, and representatives of the Six Nations -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on King Street in Boston. -
Somerset Decision
British courts dealt with the Somerset Case, whereby James Somerset (a slave) was forcibly taken from England to the colonies. Lord Mansfield presided over the case, and Granville Sharp (a noted abolitionist) attended the case with aims to abolish slavery. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act was the final straw in a series of unpopular policies and taxes imposed by Britain on her American colonies. The policy ignited a “powder keg” of opposition and resentment among American colonists and was the catalyst of the Boston Tea Party. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
The British defeated the Americans at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. -
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord kicked off the American Revolutionary War. Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. -
Second Continental Congress
Convened in May, 1775, the Second Continental Congress decreed that a Continental Army be formed under the command of George Washington. -
Common Sense
Thomas Paine published the pamphlet Common Sense in 1776, in which argued that the colonists should free themselves from British rule and establish an independent government based on Enlightenment ideals - one that would protect man's natural rights. -
Battle of Trenton
General George Washington's army crossed the icy Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 and, over the course of the next 10 days, won two crucial battles of the American Revolution. In the Battle of Trenton, Washington defeated a formidable garrison of Hessian mercenaries before withdrawing. -
Declaration of Independence
In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence–written largely by Jefferson–in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence. -
Battle of Saratoga
Fought eighteen days apart in the fall of 1777, the two Battles of Saratoga were a turning point in the American Revolution. -
Treaty of Alliance
During the American War for Independence, representatives from the United States and France sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. -
Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington
British General Charles Cornwallis formally surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing the American Revolution to a close. -
Treaty of Paris (American Revolution)
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the American Revolutionary War. American statesmen Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay negotiated the peace treaty with Great Britain. -
Newburgh Conspiracy
The Newburgh Conspiracy was what appeared to be a planned military coup by the Continental Army in March 1783, when the American Revolutionary War was at its end. -
Annapolis Convention
The Annapolis Convention was a national political convention held at Mann's Tavern in Annapolis, Maryland -
Shays' Rebellion
Shays’ Rebellion was a series of violent attacks on courthouses and other government properties in Massachusetts, beginning in 1786, which led to a full-blown military confrontation in 1787 -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. -
Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance, adopted July 13, 1787, by the Second Continental Congress, chartered a government for the Northwest Territory, provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the territory, and listed a bill of rights guaranteed in the territory. -
The Federalist Papers published
The Federalist is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. -
Bill of Rights ratified
The first Congress of the United States approved 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The amendments were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government would be reserved for the states and the people. -
Election(Inauguration) of George Washington
The first inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States was held on Thursday, April 30, 1789 on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, New York. ... Chancellor of New York Robert Livingston administered the presidential oath of office. -
Beginning of the French Revolution
The French Revolution was a watershed event in modern European history that began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. -
Washington DC chosen as the Capital
Founded in 1790, the nation's capital has been a dynamic city with plenty of highs and lows to match its place in American history. Founded on July 16, 1790, Washington, DC is unique among American cities because it was established by the Constitution of the United States to serve as the nation's capital. -
Hamilton's first report on Public Credit
Alexander Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit, delivered to Congress on January 9, 1790, called for payment in full on all government debts as the foundation for establishing government credit. -
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington, ultimately under the command of Revolutionary war veteran Major James McFarlane. -
Hamilton's report on Manufactures
The Report on Manufactures was one of the most penetrating statements of the protectionist philosophy ever made. Hamilton urged the expanded use of protective tariffs as a means to protect the nation's infant industries -
First Bank of the United States Chartered
The President, Directors and Company, of the Bank of the United States, commonly known as the First Bank of the United States, was a national bank, chartered for a term of twenty years, by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791 -
Citizen Genet Affair
Citizen Genêt Affair, (1793), incident precipitated by the military adventurism of Citizen Edmond-Charles Genêt, a minister to the United States dispatched by the revolutionary Girondist regime of the new French Republic, which at the time was at war with Great Britain and Spain. -
Battle of Fallen Timbers
The Battle of Fallen Timbers was the final battle of the Northwest Indian War, a struggle between Native American tribes affiliated with the Western Confederacy -
Pinckney's Treaty
Pinckney's Treaty was signed in San Lorenzo de El Escorial and established intentions of friendship between the United States and Spain. -
Treaty of Greenville
The Treaty of Greenville may refer to one or two treaties at Fort Greenville, now Greenville, Ohio. The first was signed on August 3, 1795, following the Native American loss at the Battle of Fallen Timbers a year earlier. -
Jay's Treaty
The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, commonly known as the Jay Treaty, and also as Jay's Treaty, was a 1795 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that averted war, resolved issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 -
Election of John Adams
The Constitution in 1796 required presidential electors to place the names of two individuals on their ballots; the candidate with the highest vote count, if a majority, became the president and the runner up the vice president. -
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a diplomatic incident between French and United States diplomats that resulted in a limited, undeclared war known as the Quasi-War. U.S. and French negotiators restored peace with the Convention of 1800, also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine. -
Quasi-War with France
The Quasi-War was an undeclared naval war between the United States and France during the Presidency of John Adams. It grew out of the XYZ Affair and ended when French politics changed direction after Napoleon came into power. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
A series of laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. -
Election of Thomas Jefferson
Vice President Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party defeated incumbent President John Adams of the Federalist Party. The election was a realigning election that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican rule. -
Judiciary Act of 1800
The Judiciary Act of 1801 reduced the size of the Supreme Court from six justices to five and eliminated the justices' circuit duties. To replace the justices on circuit, the act created sixteen judgeships for six judicial circuits.
