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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
The Magna Carta is a charter of liberty and political rights obtained from King John of England by his rebellious barons at Runnymede. It was one of the most important documents of Medieval England. The document is a series of written promises between the king & his subjects that he would govern England according to feudal law. The Magna Carta consists of 63 clauses. -
Jameestown settled
In 1607, a group of 104 English men and boys began a settlement on the banks of Virginia's James River in hope to expand English trade and make a profit. The area offered a good defensive position and the Virginia climate and fertile soil was well suited to building large plantations. They started concentrating on industries. They used numerous methods to gain hundreds of settlers to the colony. -
Mayflowers Compact written
The Mayflower Compact was signed on November 11, 1620 on board the Mayflower. It was the first agreement for self-government to be created and enforced in America. On the ship were 102 passengers or PIlgrims, sailing from Plymouth to Cape Cod. The Pilgrims were persuaded to sign an agreement which would set up a government in Plymouth Colony, which was the Mayflower Compact. -
Petition of Right
The Petition of Right is a major English document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. It was passed by Parliament in May 1628. -
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 established a constitutional monarchy in Great Britain. It clearly established that the monarchy could not rule without consent of Parliament. It put in place a constitutional form of government in which the rights and liberties of the individual were protected under English law and it had a great influence on the Constitution of the US. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan written by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 for all 13 colonies to unite and fight as one power to win the French and Indian War. It did not pass because colonial legislators did not want to give up control of their own affairs. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. The money collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men and injured six others. British troops had been stationed in Boston since 1768 in order to protect and support colonial officials attempting to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. A mob formed around a British sentry, who was subjected to verbal abuse and harassment. He was eventually supported by eight additiional soldiers. They fired at the crowd killing 5 people. -
Boston Tea Party
On December 16 1773, a gathering of Boston citizens led by patriot Samuel Adams disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians and boarded three British ships docked in the Boston Harbor in search of imported tea. They chopped open the tea trunks they found onboard and dumped almost 10,000 pounds of tea into the harbor. The Boston Tea Party is an important event in United States history as it marked the first show of violence by the colonists and cast the first cries for independence in the Boston area -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was when the colonists sent delegates from each colony to Philadelphia to discuss the future relations with Britain. Two accompishments came out of this. The first was a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods and the second was to provide for a Second Continental Congress. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were laws that were really punishments that King George III put on the colonies. He did this to the Colonists because he wanted to punish them for dumping tea into the harbor at the Boston Tea Party. The Quakers petitioned King George to repeal or end the acts, but he said that the colonies must submit to the English laws. -
Second Continental Congress
On May 10, 1775, the members of the Second Continental Congress met at the State House in Philadelphia. The Second Continental Congress meeting started with the battle of Lexington and Concord. The New England militia were still encamped outside of Boston trying to drive the British out of Boston. The Second Continental Congress established the militia as the Continental Army to represent the thirteen states. -
American Revolution
The American Revolution arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain's 13 North American colonies and the colonial government. 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. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence states the reasons the British colonies of North America sought independence in July of 1776. All men are created equal and there are certain unalienable rights that governments should never violate. These rights include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When a government fails to protect those rights, it is not only the right, but also the duty of the people to overthrow that government. A new nation, the USA came out of this. -
Articles of Cenfederation
Our first constitution was the Articles of Confederation. It established a national legislature with one house; states could send 7 delegates or as few as 2, but each state had only 1 vote. The Articles was adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777 but didn't go into effect until 1781. One benefit of the Articles was when the nation's leaders began to write a new Constitution, they could look at the provisions of the Articles of Confederation and know some things they should try to avoid. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in 1786 and 1787. The rebellion was named after Daniel Shays. It was a series of protests by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. Shays' Rebellion greatly alarmed politicians throughout the nation. It figured prominently in the debates over the framing and ratification of the Constitution. -
Philadelphia Convention
The Philadelphia Convention, was a meeting held in 1787 by delegates from the 13 states that then comprised the United States. What actually occurred at the Philadelphia Convention was the formation of a new plan of government which defines US law today. -
Constitution Convection
The convention was called because the federal government established by the Articles of Confederation was considered to be too weak to effectively deal with the states' issues. The result of the convention was the U.S. Constitution, which was signed by 38 delegates on the final day of the convention, and ratified by most of the states during the following year. -
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise is an agreement during the Constitutional Convention that Congress should be composed of a Senate, in which States would be represented equally, and a House, in which representation would be based on a State's population. The decision was based on the compromise of New Jersey vs. Virginia; representaion by population and equal represenation.
