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Road to Revolution
Following their victory over France in the French and Indian Wars the British were faced with clearing a massive War Debt. Great Britain set about clearing the debt by taking various actions in the British Colonies following the Peace Treaty of Paris. Additional taxes were put on the American colonists. -
Proclamation Line
Done by King George III following Great Britain's acquiring of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Stamp Act
The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Quartering Act
Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed housing. It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. -
Declaratory Act
It stated that the British Parliament’s taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain.The act particularly illustrated British insensitivity to the political maturity that had developed in the American provinces during the 18th century. -
Townshend Act
Tax put on imported goods such as paper, paint, glass, lead, and tea. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program. -
Boston Massacre
Known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident in which British Army soldiers killed five colonist and injured six others. The incident was heavily propagandized by leading Patriots, such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, to fuel hatred toward the British authorities. -
Committee of Correspondance
Shadow governments organized by the Patriot leaders of the Thirteen Colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. They coordinated responses to England and shared their plans. -
Tea Act
An act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of British tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. -
Intolerable or coercive Acts
Punishment for the colonists for the Boston Tea Party. There were three major acts involved that angered the colonists. -
"Shot Heard Around the World"
The first shot of the American Revolutionary War. This pivotal shot occurred at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, where the first British soldiers killed in the battles of Lexington and Concord fell. -
Common Sense
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in January 1776, but it wasn't published as a pamphlet until February 14, 1776. He wanted people to think about what was happening. -
Declaration of Independence
The thirteen colonies were now independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, written largely by Jefferson, in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.
