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French Indian War
The French and Indian War was part of a worldwide nine years' war that took place between 1754 and 1763. It was fought between France and Great Britain to determine control of the vast colonial territory of North America. -
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament that imposed restrictions on colonial trade. British economic policy was based on mercantilism, which aimed to use the American colonies to bolster British state power and finances. -
Stamp Act
The British needed to station a large army in North America as a consequence and on 22 March 1765 the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which sought to raise money to pay for this army through a tax on all legal and official papers and publications circulating in the colonies. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act, (1765), in American colonial history, the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) requiring colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns or villages. -
Townshend Act
To help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre (known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street, ] was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which nine British soldiers shot several of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. The event was heavily publicized as "a massacre" by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Intolerable Act
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. Below, see how these events transpired—and how they helped inspire a revolution. -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
In this first battle of the American Revolution, Massachusetts colonists defied British authority, outnumbered and outfought the Redcoats, and embarked on a lengthy war to earn their independence. -
Second Continental Congress
They established a Continental army and elected George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, but the delegates also drafted the Olive Branch Petition and sent it to King George III in hopes of reaching a peaceful resolution. -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. -
Olive Branch Petition
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. -
Declaration Of Independence
The Declaration of Independence states the principles on which our government, and our identity as Americans, are based. Unlike the other founding documents, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, but it is powerful. Abraham Lincoln called it “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression.” -
Articles of confederation
The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. -
Daniel Shays Rebellion
In particular, Continental Army and state militia veterans struggled, as many received little in the way of pay or reimbursement for their military service. Among these disgruntled former soldiers was the Continental Army Captain Daniel Shays, who led a violent uprising against debt collection in Massachusetts. -
Constitutional Convention (aka Philadelphia Convention)
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.