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Treaty of Paris
The fighting was over. Now the British and the British Americans could enjoy the fruits of victory. The terms of the Treaty of Paris were harsh to losing France. All French territory on the mainland of North America was lost. The British received Quebec and the Ohio Valley. The port of New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi were ceded to Spain for their efforts as a British ally. -
The Proclamation of 1763
King George III issued a proclamation on October 7, 1763, that created a boundary between Indian lands and white settlements. Running from north to south along the Appalachian Mountain range, the proclamation decreed that whites would henceforth be forbidden to settle in land west of the boundary, which was to be reserved for Indian use. No individuals or groups would be allowed to purchase western lands without the Crown's explicit consent. Whites currently living in the western territory were -
Boston Tea Party
This famed act of American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. Seeking to boost the troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773. While consignees in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia rejected tea shipments, merchants in Boston refused to concede to Patriot pressure. On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea -
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. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. 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 (10,000 troops were to be stationed on the -
Townshend Acts
A series of measures introduced into the English Parliament by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend in 1767, the Townshend Acts imposed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper and tea imported into the colonies. Townshend hoped the acts would defray imperial expenses in the colonies, but many Americans viewed the taxation as an abuse of power, resulting in the passage of agreements to limit imports from Britain. In 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, l -
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. -
Tea Act
Print Cite On this day in 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply i -
Intolerable Act
Parliament was utterly fed up with colonial antics. The British could tolerate strongly worded letters or trade boycotts. They could put up with defiant legislatures and harassed customs officials to an extent. But they saw the destruction of 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company as wanton destruction of property by Boston thugs who did not even have the courage to admit responsibility. -
1st Continental Congress
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Carpenter's Hall was also the seat of the Pennsylvania Congress. All of the colonies except Georgia sent delegates. These were elected by the people, by the colonial legislatures, or by the committees of correspondence of the respective colonies. The colonies presented there were united in a determination to show a combined authority to Great Britain, but their aims were not uniform at -
Midnight Ride: Revere, Cheswell, Dawes
Tension between the British Crown and American colonists existed for many years before the inception of the Revolutionary War in 1775. They reached a boiling point several times, particularly with the Boston Massacre in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and again in April 1775, when Britain discovered that colonists were stockpiling weapons and sent 700 troops to seize and destroy these weapons. Numerous patriots spread the alarm of this impending attack, most notably Paul Revere, William Dawe -
Lexington and Concord
Ready to fight at a moment's notice, minutemen began fighting early in the American Revolution. Their efforts at Lexington and Concord inspired many patriots to take up arms against Britain. -
2nd Continental Congress
War breaks out in Massachusetts on 19 April 1775. Many delegates are already en route to Philadelphia, where Congress convenes on 10 May 1775. Notable additions include Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Lyman Hall, the lone delegate representing a single parish in Georgia. In Massachusetts, the Provincial Congress, formed when military governor Thomas Gage dissolved the legislature in 1774, needs advice. Arguing that "General Gage hath actually levied war" against them, Massachusetts patriots -
Declaratory Acts
Declaratory Act, Stamp Act: “An Emblem of the Effects of the STAMP” [Credit: Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations]
(1766), 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. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765). Parliament mollifie
