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Sam Adams
Samuel Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the son of a prominent landowner and brewer, and cousin and political mentor of John Adams. He studied at Harvard College and received his degree in 1743. Following college he began the study of law, but soon gave in to family pressures and took a position as a clerk in the counting house of Thomas Cushing, one of the colony's leading merchants. -
Paul Revere
American revolutionary Paul Revere was immortalized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," for bearing news of an impending British invasion to the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, a hotbed of radical activity. -
Thomas Paine
"These are the times that try men's souls." This simple quotation from Founding Father Thomas Paine's The American Crisis not only describes the beginnings of the American Revolution, but also the life of Paine himself. Throughout most of his life, his writings inspired passion, but also brought him great criticism. He communicated the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as easily as to intellectuals, creating prose that stirred the hearts of the fledgling United States. -
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) was an early American hero of the Revolutionary War (1775-83) who later became one of the most infamous traitors in U.S. history after he switched sides and fought for the British. At the outbreak of the war, Arnold participated in the capture of the British garrison of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. In 1776, he hindered a British invasion of New York at the Battle of Lake Champlain. -
Treaty of Paris
The "Treaty of Paris" in 1763 was the end of the French and Indian War, between the British and the French. The "Treaty of Paris" said that the french would give up all their land in mainland North America, therfor, eliminating any forgine military threat to the British. -
Proclamation of 1763
The royal Proclamation was issued on October 7th, 1763, by King George IIIfollowing Great Britin's acquisition of French territory in North America after the French and Indian War/Seven Year's War, in wich it forbade settelers from setteling past a line drawn along the Appalachien Mountains. -
Stamp Act
On Febuary 6th, 1765 George Grenville rose in parliment to offer the fifty-five resolutions of his Stamp Bill. A motion was offerd to first read petitions from the Virginia colonie and others were denied. The bill was passed on Febuary 17th, approved by Lords on March 18th, and two weeks later orderd in effect by the king. Great Britin was faced with a massive national debt following the Seven Years War. That debt had gonw from 72,289,673 pounds in 1755 to 129,586,789 poundes in 1764. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act was aname given to at least 2 Acts of British Parliment in the 18th centery. The Parliment enacted them to order local governments of the American colonies to give British soldiers any thing they might need. -
Boston Massacre
On the cold, snowy night of March 5, 1770, a mob of American colonists gathered and began taunting British soliders who were gaurding the Customs House. The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops, who were sent to Boston in 1768to enforce unpopulare taxation measures passed by a British parliment that lacked American representation. -
Intolerable Acts
The government spent enormuse amounts of money on troops and equipment in attempt to to subjugate Massachusets. British merchants had lost huge sums of money on looted, spoiled, and destroyed goods shipped to the colonies. The revenue generated by the Townshed duties, in 1770, amounted to less than 21,000 pounds. On March 5th, 1770, parliment repleased duties, except fo the one on tea. The same day, the Boston Massacre set a corse that would lead the Royal Governer to evacuate the occupying army -
Townshed Act
On April 20th, 1770, the British government moves to mollfy outraged colonists by reapeling most of the clauses of the hayed Townshed Act. Initally passed on June 29th, 1767, the Townshed act constituted a attempt by the British government to consolidate fiscal and political power over the American colonies by placing import taxes on many of the British products bought by americans including lead, paper, paint, glass, and tea. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, took place when a group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor. -
Lexington and Concord
The battle of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19th, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War. (1775-83) Tensions had been building for years between residents of the 13 colonies and the British authoritys, paticulary in Massachusets. On the night of April 18th, 1775, hundreds of British soliders marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize a arms cache. Paul Rever and others sounded the alarm, and colonieal militanmen began mobilizing to intercept the Readcoat columm. -
Dec. of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is a formal legal statement adoppted by Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776 wich said that the 13 American colonies, then at war with the British Empire, regarded themselfs as independent states, and no longer part of Great Britin. Instead they formed a union that would become a new nation-the United States of America. -
Battle of Saratoga
Fought eighteen days apart in the fall of 1777, the two Battles of Saratoga were a turning point in the American Revolution. On September 19th, British General John Burgoyne achieved a small, but costly victory over American forces led by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. Though his troop strength had been weakened, Burgoyne again attacked the Americans at Bemis Heights on October 7th, but this time was defeated and forced to retreat. He surrendered ten days later, and the American victory conv -
Battle of Yorktown
on this day in 1781, General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British general Lord Charles Cornwallsand and a contigent 9,000 British troops at Yorktown Virgina, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britin and the United States, recognized American independenceand established borders for a new nation. After the British defeat at Yorktown, peace talks in Paris began in April 1782between Richerd Oswarld representing Great Britin and the American Peace Comissioners Benjamin Franklin, Jhon Jay, and Jhon Adams. The American negotiaters were were joined by Henry Laurens two days before the preliminary articles of peace were signed.
