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Sugar Act
First law passed by Parliament that raised tax revenues in the colonies for the crown. It increased duty on foreign sugar imported from the West Indies. -
Stamp Act
Required the payment of a tax in order to use certain paper products such as: comercial and legal documents, playing cards, pamphlets, newspapers, diplomas, bills of lading, and marriage licenses. -
Quartering Act
The Act forced the colonists to house the British. Tensions started to build between the colonists and the British. -
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Stamp Act Congress
A meeting of delegations from many of the colonies, the congress was formed to protest the newly passed Stamp Act in 1765. It adopted a declaration of rights as well as sent letters of complaints to the king and parliament; the first sign of colonial unity and organized resistance. -
Declaratory Act
Parliaments response to repeal of the Stamp Act
Parliament affirms it has the right to make laws for the colonies including taxing them.
Colonial Impact: fuels their anger
Parliament responds with the Townshend Acts -
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Townshend Acts
External/ indirect levies on glass, white lead, paper, and tea, the proceeds of which were used to pay colonial governors who had previously been paid directly by colonial assemblies. Sparked another wave of protests. -
Boston Massacre
A crowd of colonists protested against British customs agents and the presence of British troops in Boston. Violence flared and five colonists were killed. -
Boston Tea Party
Around a hundred Bostonians disguised as Indians, boarded the docked ships, smashed open 342 chests of tea, and dumped their contents into the Atlantic -
Massachusetts Government Act
The act effectively abrogated the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and gave its royally-appointed governor wide-ranging powers. The colonists said it altered by parliamentary fiat the basic structure of colonial government. They vehemently opposed it and would not let it operate. It was a major step on the way to the start of the American Revolution in 1775. -
Boston Port Act
the first of the acts passed in response to the Boston Tea Party, closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense. -
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Intolerable Acts
British Parliament's response to the Boston Tea Party. They restricted colonists' rights. The laws made restrictions on town meetings, and stated that enforcing officials who killed colonists in the line of duty would be sent to Britain for trial (where it was assumed they would be acquitted of their charges). -
Administration of Justice Act
To assure trials more conducive to the Crown than the prejudices of local juries, the Act granted a change of venue to another British colony or Great Britain in trials of officials charged with a crime growing out of their enforcement of the law or suppression of riots. Witnesses for both sides were also required to attend the trial and were to be compensated for their expenses. -
Quartering Act of 1774
Was an ammenment to the original, enforced more, part of intolerable acts. Response to the Boston Tea Party -
Quebec Act
The Quebec Act was also passed in 1774, but was not apart of the Intolerable Acts. It gave Catholic French Canadians religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law; this law nullified many of the Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west. -
First Continental Congress
Met in Philadelphia in order to redress colonial grievances over the Intolerable Acts.
The 13 colonies, excluding Georgia, sent 55 men to the convention. The 1st Continental Congress was not a legislative body, but a consultative body, and convention rather than a congress.
After 7 weeks of deliberation, the first Continental Congress drew up several papers. The papers included a Declaration of Rights and solemn appeals to other British-American colonies, to the king, and to the British people. -
The Association
Made by the first continental congress that called for a complete boycott of all british goods -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. 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. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen of its colonies on the mainland of British America. -
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Valley Forge
Site in Pennsylvania where George Washington and his Continental Army spent the winter.
It allowed for Washington to regroup and retrain his rag-tag army.
