-
Navigation Act
Passed in the English Parliament to restrict shipping of the Dutch products.
The act made all trade between England and the colonies to be carried in English or colonial vessels only which restricted the Dutch maritime trade in the colonies. -
Molasses Act
A British law that imposed a tax on molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British foreign colonies into the North American colonies.
One of the least effective of the Navigation Acts, it was later amended by the Sugar Act of 1764. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 barred the English colonists from settling West of the Appalachian Mountains. This was to create a buffer zone between the Native Americans and colonists -- the idea was that if there was no contact between them, there would be no conflict. The colonists reacted angrily to this proclamation and many ignored the law and moved west anyway. -
Sugar Act
Also called Plantation Act or Revenue Act, modified version of Sugar and Molasses Act(1733), which was about to expire.
The act reduced the rate of tax on molasses and more foreign goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric and printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron. -
Quartering Act
This act was one of the tolerable acts after the Boston Tea Party, which permitted British commanders to put soldiers in vacant, permanent homes. Colonists assembled the first continental congress. -
Sons of Liberty
Secret organization formed by the American colonists in 1765
Formed as a means to protest the Stamp Act of 1665 as well as to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. -
Stamp Act
The new tax imposed on all the colonists which required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used including ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards.
The money collected by the act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains. -
Repeal of Stamp Act
After months of protest, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. Colonists celebrate for the repeal of the stamp act but opposed declaratory act. -
Townshend Act/Duties
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. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770.
The heavy tax imposed by the Townshend Acts was the major cause of Boston massacre. -
Tea Act
Political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773.
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 overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts was the American Patriots' name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party.
The acts were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. -
1st continental congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia.
Held in response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the colonies. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord was held on April 19, 1775.
The British suffered extensive loss and the colonists considered the contest an encouraging start to the American Revolutionary War. -
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 established the militia as the Continental Army to represent the thirteen states and also elected George Washington as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776.
announced that the thirteen American Colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
