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French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was a seven-year war between England and the American colonies, against the French and some of the Indians in North America. When the war ended, France was no longer in control of Canada and England and the colonies gained land -
Proclamation of 1763
The Royal 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 past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
sugar act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act. 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. -
Stamp act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. -
Quartering Act
Parliament passed the Quartering Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British soldiers are to find room and board in the American colonies. -
Townshend Act
Townshend Acts, 1767, originated by Charles Townshend and passed by the English Parliament shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. They were designed to collect revenue from the colonists in America by putting customs duties on imports of glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770 when British soldiers in Boston opened fire on a group of American colonists killing five men. Prior to the Boston Massacre the British had instituted a number of new taxes on the American colonies including taxes on tea, glass, paper, paint, and lead. -
Committees of correspondence
The committees of correspondence were 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; by 1773 they had emerged as shadow governments, superseding the colonial legislature and royal officials. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes -
Boston Tea Party
The Sons of Liberty, some disguised as Native Americans, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, which had 342 chests of tea on board. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts was the American Patriots' name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts. -
First Continental Congress
In 1774, the colonies held the First Continental Congress. Representatives from each colony, except Georgia, met in Philadelphia. The royal governor in Georgia succeeded in blocking delegates from being sent to the congress. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battle of Lexington was an armed encounter fought between the Massachusetts militia, led by John Parker, and the British forces, under Lt Col Francis Smith, in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts colony, on April 19, 1775. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Written in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776 -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence severed the political connections between the thirteen original American colonies and Great Britain. By declaring themselves an independent nation, the American colonists were able to forge an official alliance with the government of France and obtain French assistance in the war against Great Britain.