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Proclamation Line
Issued on October 7, 1763 by King George III. The Proclamation Line of 1763 was one of many attempts to define a boundary that would separate colonists from Native Americans. -
Stamp Act
An act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. The act, imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War. -
Quartering Act
On March 24, 1765, the British Parliament passed the Quartering Act. The Quartering Act did not provoke the immediate and sometimes violent protests that opposed the Stamp Act, it did prove to be a source of contention between some colonies and Great Britain during the years leading up to the Revolution. -
Declaratory Act
The Declaratory Act of 1766 was a British Law, passed in mid March by the Parliament of Great Britain, that was passed at the same time that the Stamp Act was repealed. The declaration stated that Parliament's authority was the same in America as in Britain and asserted Parliament's authority to pass laws that were binding on the American colonies. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768. -
Committees of Correspondence
The Committees of Correspondence were the American colonies means for communication in the years before the Revolutionary War. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act was one of the several measures imposed on the American colonists. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the duty on tea, and the Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. -
Boston Tea Party
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 were passed in 1774 to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party. Great Britain had hoped that the harsh actions taken in the Intolerable Acts would isolate the New England radicals in Massachusetts and scare the other colonies into conceding the authority of Parliament over their elected assemblies. -
Shot Heard Around the World
Shot Heard Around the World is where nobody knows who fired the first shot. This took place in Lexington. -
Common Sense
Common Sense was written by Thomas Paine. He wrote this because he wanted people to think about what was happening at that time. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people.
