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Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment, or simply the Enlightenment, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. -
French & Indian War
The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. -
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It played a major role in most colonies in battling the Stamp Act in 1765. -
Stamp Act of 1765
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the “Stamp Act” to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
Townshend Act of 1767
The Townshend Acts or Townshend Duties, refers to a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to fund administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the Chancellor of the Exchequer who proposed the program. -
boston massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were abusing them verbally and throwing various missiles. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act, a tax measure enacted by Parliament in May 1773. -
First Continental Congress meets
On September 5, 1774, the first Continental Congress in the United States met in Philadelphia to consider its reaction to the British government's restraints on trade and representative government after the Boston Tea Party. -
Second Continental Congress meets
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress met inside Independence Hall beginning in May 1775. It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. -
Battle of Yorktown
The siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the surrender at Yorktown, or the German battle, beginning on September 28, 1781, and ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, -
Treaty of Paris signed
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, officially ended the American Revolutionary War and overall state of conflict between the two countries. -
Great Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise was an agreement reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation each state would have under the United States Constitution. -
Constitution is ratified
On June 21, 1788, the Constitution became the official framework of the government of the United States of America when New Hampshire became the ninth of 13 states to ratify it. The journey to ratification, however, was a long and arduous process. -
Bill of Rights adopted
On October 2, 1789, President Washington sent copies of the 12 amendments adopted by Congress to the states. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of Rights.”
