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"hands off approach by Great Britain; British policy of loosely enforcing laws and regulations in the American colonies, allowing them to govern themselves. -
aka 7 Years War between France and England. In the colonies, it was called the French Indian War because the colonists fought with British soldiers against France the Indians who were on side of France. Because of the war, England had a massive war debt began to tax the people in the 13 colonies. -
Beginning in 1763 economic policy England followed when it came to the 13 colonies. England saw the colonies as a market for English goods wanted to get money (taxes) natural resources from the colonies. -
The Stamp Act was the first direct tax used by the British government to collect revenues from the colonies. -
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses and the houses of sellers of wine. -
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power. The British sent troops to America to enforce the unpopular new laws, further heightening tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies in the run-up to the American Revolutionary War. -
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic, bloody slaughter. The conflict energized anti-British sentiment and paved the way for the American Revolution.
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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. The four acts were the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act. -
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, were the first major military actions between the British Army and Patriot militias from British America's Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolutionary War. The opposing forces fought day-long running battles in Middlesex County in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge. -
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5, 1775, to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declared. The Petition emphasized their loyalty to the British crown and emphasized their rights as British citizens. -
The Second Continental Congress was the meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, which established American independence from the British Empire. -
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. -
The Declaration of Independence, in the original printing, is the founding document of the United States. -
When the Constitutional Convention met in 1787, the United States already had a framework of national government—the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention itself was—in many ways—a response to the weaknesses of this form of government. Adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and ratified by the states in 1781, the Articles of Confederation created a weak central government—a “league of friendship”—that largely preserved state power (and independence). -
The Annapolis Convention was a national political convention held September 11–14, 1786 in the old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House -
The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. While the convention was initially intended to revise the league of states and the first system of federal government under the Articles of Confederation. -
Shays's Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades.