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Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, at the Albany Congress on July 10, 1754 in Albany, New York. -
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French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. The French and Indian War began in 1756 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. -
Pontiac's Rebellion
Pontiac's War was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes, primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country who were not happy with British post war policies in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War. Warriors from many tribes joined the effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of the region. The war is named after the Odawa leader Pontiac. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Currency Act
The Currency Act is one of many several Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain that regulated paper money issued by the colonies of British America. This caused a shortage of currency to trade in the colonies. -
Sugar Act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act (1733), which was about to expire. Under the Molasses Act colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. -
Stamp Act
In 1765, British Parliament stamped any newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the Crown. -
Colonists form Sons of Liberty
Samuel Adams and John Hancock founded a secret society to fight taxation and protect colonist rights, residing in Boston, MA. -
Declaratory Act
A declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. -
Townshend Acts
A series of taxes introduced into the English Parliament by 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, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an riot on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers shot and killed several people while under attack by a mob. -
Tea Act
On May 10, 1773 the Act granted the Company the right to directly ship its tea to North America and the right to the duty-free export of tea from Britain, although the tax imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force. -
Boston Tea Party
On December 17, 1773 the Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts. In defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, the demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. They boarded the ships and threw the tea into Boston Harbor. The British government responded harshly and the event led to the American Revolution. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts was the term used by American Patriots for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Boston Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of Colonial goods. -
Quebec Act
1774 Quebec Act, passed by the British Parliament to institute a permanent administration in Canada replacing the temporary government created at the time of the Proclamation of 1763. It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law. -
1st Continental Congress
On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the 13 colonies except for Georgia met in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to organize colonial resistance to Parliament's Coercive Acts. -
2nd Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the spring of 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It came after the First Continental Congress. -
Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech
A speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. -
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775 in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its 13 colonies in America. -
The Battle of Bunker Hill
The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. It was the original objective of both the colonial and British troops, though the majority of combat took place on the adjacent hill. -
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government. The plain dialect that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.
