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French & Indian War
The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. -
Stamp Act of 1765
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the “Stamp Act” to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. -
Boston Tea
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. -
Sons of Liberty
On December 17th 1773, a new group calling itself the Sons of Liberty issued and distributed a declaration in New York City called the Association of the Sons of Liberty in New York, which formally stated that they were opposed to the Tea Act and that anyone who assisted in the execution of the act was "an enemy to the liberties of America" -
Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts)
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
First Continental Congress meet
On September 5, 1774, the first Continental Congress in the United States met in Philadelphia to consider its reaction to the British government's restraints on trade and representative government after the Boston Tea Party. -
Battles of Lexington & Concord
The British marched into Lexington and Concord intending to suppress the possibility of rebellion by seizing weapons from the colonists. Instead, their actions sparked the first battle of the Revolutionary War. -
Olive Branch Petition sent to England
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5th, 1775 to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declared. The Petition emphasized their loyalty to the British crown and emphasized their rights as British citizens. -
Battle of Yorktown
he siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the surrender at Yorktown, or the German battle, beginning on September 28, 1781, and ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, -
Treaty of Paris signed
This treaty, signed on September 3, 1783, between the American colonies and Great Britain, ended the American Revolution and formally recognized the United States as an independent nation. -
3/5 compromise
Three-fifths compromise, compromise agreement between delegates from the Northern and the Southern states at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for determining direct taxation and representation in the House of Representatives. -
Great Compromise
Their so-called Great Compromise (or Connecticut Compromise in honor of its architects, Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth) provided a dual system of congressional representation. In the House of Representatives each state would be assigned a number of seats in proportion to its population. -
Bill of Rights adopted
On October 2, 1789, President Washington sent copies of the 12 amendments adopted by Congress to the states. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of Rights.”
