-
Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
charter agreed to by King John of England, make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons -
Jamestown settled
the first successful English settlement on the mainland of North America, where the British Empire began, the first colony in the British Empire -
Mayflower Compact written
the first governing document of Plymouth Colony, written by the male passengers of the Mayflower, signed by the Pilgrims -
Petition of Right
a major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing -
English Bill of Rights
deals with constitutional matters and sets out certain basic civil rights, sets out certain rights of individuals, lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament -
Albany Plan of Union
a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin -
Stamp Act
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 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement -
Boston Massacre
the killing of five colonists by British regulars, the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts to enforce the heavy tax burden -
Boston Tea Party
a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston where they threw British tea off of ships and into the water -
Intolerable Acts
the American Patriots term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament, meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor -
First Continental Congress
a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies -
American Revolution begins
the battle of Lexington occurred, closely followed by the battle of Concord, the shot at Lexington marked the first blood spilled in the war of the American independence -
Second Continental Congress
managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence -
Declaration of Independence
announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule, they formed a new nation called the United States of America -
Articles of Confederation
the original constitution of the US, ratified in 1781, which was replaced by the US Constitution in 1789 -
Shay's Rebellion
a series of protests by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt, Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels -
Philadelphia Convention/Constitution Convention
create a new government rather than fix the existing one, the result of the Convention was the creation of the United States Constitution -
Connecticut Compromise
an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention that defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution, each state would have two representatives in the upper house.
