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Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British at the end of the French and Indian War to appease Native Americans by checking the encroachment of European settlers on their lands. It created a boundary, known as the proclamation line, separating the British colonies on the Atlantic coast from American Indian lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. -
Sugar Act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act (1733), which was about to expire. Under the Molasses Act colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was an act of the British Parliament in 1765 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the Crown. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act, in American colonial history, was the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) requiring colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns or villages. -
Declaratory Act
The Declaratory Act was a declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. -
The Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. -
Non-Importation Agreements
The Non-Importation Agreements were a series of commercial restrictions adopted by American colonists to protest British revenue policies prior to the American Revolution. -
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 Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
Intolerable Acts/Coercive Acts
The Intolerable Acts, also called Coercive Acts, were four punitive measures enacted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress had delegates from each of the 13 colonies, except for Georgia, meet in Philadelphia to organize colonial resistance to Parliament's Coercive Acts. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord kicked off the American Revolutionary War. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire. -
The Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress had all thirteen colonies elect delegates to represent them. This body had a very different purpose from the first. Rather than just trying to demonstrate unity, this Congress was actually designed as a form of government to organize and direct the colonies. -
The Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was a final attempt by the colonists to avoid going to war with Britain during the American Revolution. It was a document in which the colonists pledged their loyalty to the crown and asserted their rights as British citizens. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by the colonies asserting their right to choose their own government.
