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French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was between the British American colonies and the French colonies over the ownership of American territories. The war ends with the Treaty of Paris. The war doubled the British debt which in turn started a chain of tax acts on the colonists. -
Sugar Act
The first of many taxes placed on the colonists of British America. This act was passed to end smuggling practices and help Britain with war debts. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, printed with a revenue stamp. The act was eventually repealed in 1766 due to colonial opposition. -
Townshend Act
The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed by the British government on the American colonies in 1767. They placed new taxes and took away some freedoms from the colonists including the following: New taxes on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was a confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers shot and killed several people while under harassment by a mob. -
Tea Act
The principal objective of the British was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the financially struggling company survive. The Tea Act was the final straw in a series of unpopular policies and taxes imposed by Britain on her American colonies. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred at Griffin’s Wharf 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. -
Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)
The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial goods. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, kicked off the American Revolutionary War. -
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American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War, also known as the American War of Independence, was an 18th-century war between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies which declared independence as the United States of America. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
Breed’s Hill in Charlestown was the primary locus of combat in the misleadingly named Battle of Bunker Hill, which was part of the American siege of British-held Boston. Some 2,300 British troops eventually cleared the hill of the entrenched Americans, but at the cost of more than 40 percent of the assault force. The battle was a moral victory for the Americans. -
Washington Crosses the Delware
Having been forced to abandon New York City and driven across New Jersey by the British, George Washington and the Continental Army struck back on Christmas night by stealthily crossing the ice-strewn Delaware River, surprising the Hessian garrison at Trenton at dawn, and taking some 900 prisoners. The American triumph at Trenton and in the Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) roused the new country and kept the struggle for independence alive. -
Declaration of Independence adopted
After the Congress recommended that colonies form their own governments, the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and revised in committee. On July 2 the Congress voted for independence; on July 4 it adopted the Declaration of Independence. -
Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga
Moving south from Canada in summer 1777, a British force under Gen. John Burgoyne captured Fort Ticonderoga (July 5) before losing decisively at Bennington, Vermont (August 16), and Bemis Heights, New York (October 7). His forces depleted, Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. -
Washington winters at Valley Forge
Following failures at the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, Washington and 11,000 regulars took up winter quarters at Valley Forge, 22 miles (35 km) northwest of British-occupied Philadelphia. Although its ranks were decimated by rampant disease, semi-starvation, and bitter cold, the reorganized Continental Army emerged the following June as a well-disciplined and efficient fighting force. -
France and the British colonies form an alliance
The French had secretly furnished financial and material aid to the Americans since 1776, but with the signing in Paris of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance, the Franco-American alliance was formalized. France began preparing fleets and armies to enter the fight but did not formally declare war on Britain until June 1778. -
John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight!”
The U.S. battleship the Bonhomme Richard was getting the worst of its battle with the British vessel HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head, England, when the American commander, John Paul Jones, refused to surrender, proclaiming, “I have not yet begun to fight!” Jones ultimately triumphed, but he lost his ship in the process. -
Siege of Yorktown
After winning a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781, Lord Cornwallis entered Virginia to join other British forces there, setting up a base at Yorktown. Washington’s army and a force under the French Count de Rochambeau placed Yorktown under siege, and Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on October 19, 1781. -
Articles of Confedration ratified
The Articles of Confederation, a plan of the government organization that served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continental Congress and the federal government provided under the U.S. Constitution of 1787, were written in 1776–77 and adopted by the Congress on November 15, 1777. However, the articles were not fully ratified by the states until March 1, 1781. -
Treaty of Paris ends the war
After the British defeat at Yorktown, the land battles in America largely died out—but the fighting continued at sea. The military verdict in North America was reflected in the preliminary Anglo-American peace treaty of 1782, which was included in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. By its terms, Britain recognized the independence of the United States with generous boundaries, including the Mississippi River on the west. Britain retained Canada but ceded East and West Florida to Spain.
