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Proclamation of 1763
The British government did not want American colonists crossing the Appalachian Mountains and creating tension with the French and Native Americans there. -
The Stamp Act
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. -
The Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which nine British soldiers shot several of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. -
The Tea Act
The Tea Act: The Catalyst of the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. -
The Intolerable Acts
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were some of the leading military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge. -
common sense revolutionary war
Written by Paine less than two years after he emigrated to Philadelphia from England, Common Sense outlined the need for American independence. Paine presented his arguments in plain language that made political discussion accessible to colonists of all walks of life. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, headed The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the founding document of the United States. It was adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia.