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The Albany Congress
In June of 1754, representatives from seven colonies met with 150 Iroquois Chiefs in Albany, New York. The purposes of the Albany Congress were twofold; to try to secure the support and cooperation of the Iroquois in fighting the French, and to form a colonial alliance based on a design by Benjamin Franklin. -
French and Indian War
The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, the American phase of a worldwide nine years’ war fought between France and Great Britain. (The European phase was the Seven Years’ War.) France ceded all of its North American possessions east of the Mississippi River to Britain. The costs of the war contributed to the British government’s decision to impose new taxes on its American colonies. -
Stamp Act
Like the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act was imposed to provide increased revenues to meet the costs of defending the enlarged British Empire. It was the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation on a wide variety of colonial transactions, Enraged colonists nullified the Stamp Act through outright refusal to use the stamps as well as by riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors. -
Intolerable Acts
In retaliation for colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773–74, the British Parliament enacted four measures that became known as the Intolerable Acts: the Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government Act, Administration of Justice Act, and Quartering Act. Rather than intimidating Massachusetts and isolating it from the other colonies, the oppressive acts became the justification for convening the First Continental Congress later in 1774. -
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense published
In late 1775 the colonial conflict with the British still looked like a civil war, not a war aiming to separate nations however, the publication of Thomas Paine’s irreverent pamphlet Common Sense abruptly put independence on the agenda. Paine’s 50-page pamphlet, couched in elegant direct language, sold more than 100,000 copies within a few months. More than any other single publication, Common Sense paved the way for the Declaration of Independence. -
Siege of Yorktown
After winning a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781, Lord Cornwallis entered Virginia to join other British forces there, setting up a base at Yorktown. Washington’s army and a force under the French Count de Rochambeau placed Yorktown under siege, and Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on October 19, 1781. -
Treaty of Paris ends the war
After the British defeat at Yorktown, the land battles in America largely died out but the fighting continued at sea. The military verdict in North America was reflected in the preliminary Anglo American peace treaty of 1782, which was included in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. By its terms, Britain recognized the independence of the United States with generous boundaries, including the Mississippi River on the west. Britain retained Canada but ceded East and West Florida to Spain. -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The point of the event was decide how America was going to be governed. Although the Convention had been officially called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation, many delegates had much bigger plans.
