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1215
Magna Carta
The Magna Carta was a document that was agreed upon by England's King John. The document made the king and all other English men to be placed under law. This document had become a source of celebration for freedom from oppression. -
Jamestown Settled
Jamestown was settled by 104 men and boys who had arrived by ship. The settlement had been named after their King, James I. -
Mayflower Compact Written
The mayflower compact was a set of rules for self-governance established by the English settlers who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower. When the pilgrims and other settlers set out, they had intended to lay anchor in Northern Virginia, but had ended up in Massachusetts. -
Petition of Right
A petition sent by the English Parliament to King Charles I complaining of a series of breaches of law. The petition sought recognition of four principles: no taxation without the consent of Parliament, no imprisonment without cause, no quartering of soldiers on subjects, and no martial law in peacetime. -
English Bill of Rights
The 1689 English Bill of Rights was a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1689, that declared the rights and liberties of the people. It also ended up settling the succession in William III and Mary II following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when James II was deposed. -
Albany Plan of Union
In June, 1754, delegates from most of the northern colonies and representatives from the Six Iroquois Nations met in Albany, New York. There, they adopted a "plan of union" drafted by Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. Under this plan, each colonial legislature would elect delegates to an American continental assembly presided over by a royal governor. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was a law passed by Parliament taxing all paper used for printed materials in the colonies. The purpose of the Stamp Act was to generate revenue to pay down Great Britain’s war debt from the French and Indian War. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic, bloody slaughter. -
Boston Tea Party
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. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. -
Intolerable Acts
Intolerable Acts, also called Coercive Acts, in U.S. colonial history, was four punitive measures enacted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance. Together with the Quebec Act, establishing a new administration for the territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War -
First Continental Congress
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. The colonies presented there were united in a determination to show a combined authority to Great Britain, but their aims were not uniform at all. -
American Revolution Begins
The American Revolution arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. -
Second Continental Congress
After violence broke out between Britain and its American colonies in 1775, delegates from the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia to plot the course of war. There, the Congress appointed George Washington as commander of the Continental army. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by the nation’s people asserting their right to choose their own government. Because of Thomas Jefferson's reputation as an eloquent voice for the patriotic cause, he was given a task to write a rough draft, which became the Declaration of Independence. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays’ Rebellion was a series of violent attacks on courthouses and other government properties in Massachusetts that began in 1786 and led to a full-blown military confrontation. The rebels who were a part of this were mostly ex-Revolutionary War soldiers-turned farmers who opposed state economic policies causing poverty and property foreclosures. -
Philadelphia Convention (Constitutional Convention)
Four years after the United States won its independence from England, 55 state delegates, including George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, convened in Philadelphia to compose a new U.S. constitution. There, they had decided to keep the Articles of Confederation, which was ratified several moths before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. -
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise was created to give every state what they wanted, since the larger states wanted the Virginia Plan while smaller states wanted the New Jersey Plan. In the first body—members of the House of Representatives would be allocated according to each state’s population and elected by the people. In the second body—the Senate—each state would have two representatives regardless of the state’s size, and state legislatures would choose Senators.
