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Sons of Liberty was a politician organization that was founded to help the colonies and fight taxation by the British Parliament. One of the most known things they fought against was the Stamp act. Before they were known as the Sons of Liberty, they had a different alias. Their alias was the ‘The Loyal Nine’ and their members were John Avery Jr, Henry Bass, Thomas Chase, Thomas Crafts, Stephen Cleverly, Benjamin Edes, Joseph Field, John Smith, and George Trott.
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The Stamp Act of 1765 was when the British Parliament put the first internal tax on American colonists. The reason why the Stamp Act was passed was for the British Parliament to get their finances back from the Seven Years’ War with France. -
The British Parliament thought it was their historic right to have authority over the colonies, so they put a series of acts in place. The Revenue act of 1767 and the Commissioners of Customs act of 1767 which were both passed on June 29th, the Indemnity act of 1767 and the New York Restraining act, which was passed on July 2nd, and the Vice Admiralty Court act of 1768 that was passed in March 8th.
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During 1770, many acts and taxes were put in place by the British Parliament which angered American Colonists (Sugar Act, Stamp Act, etc,) and the American Colonists took it as a violation of their rights and decided to rebel. They started doing things such as boycotting and protesting in the streets. One of the protests (known as the Boston Massacre,) led to violence, and the British Soldiers shot and killed 5 Colonists. This was a big contribution to the Revolutionary war. -
On December 16th, 1773, American Colonists disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians and boarded British ships. Their goal was to protest about the tax on tea without representation in the British Parliament and how they're against the control of the East India Company. So, they threw off 340 chests of tea owned by the East India Company. In response, the British Parliament passed many acts that are now known as the Coercive Acts. To Colonists however, they were known as the Intolerable Acts. -
There were 4 acts in the Coercive/Intolerable Acts, and those are the Boston Port act, the Massachusetts Government act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering act. The Boston Port act was the first passed and put in place. It was passed on March 31st, 1774. By July 2nd, all of the Intolerable acts were passed by King George. -
The Battles of Lexington Concord were the first battles that started the Revolutionary War. Right before these battles, Paul Revere was made famous by writing his horse around, warning colonists that the British were coming. His midnight ride allowed the colonial militia to get ready before the battles of Lexington and Concord. This helped keep the casualties for the colonists smaller (95 total casualties) compared to the British (273 casualties.) -
Towards the beginning of the Revolutionary War, was the battle of Bunker Hill. This battle was actually fought at Breeds Hill during the siege of Boston in Massachusetts, not at Bunker Hill. The Americans caused half of the British’s soldiers casualties (which was over 1000.) Peter Salem, a black soldier, killed the British commanding officer, which made the Americans able to get away. George Washington took control of the colonial troops a couple of weeks later secured Boston and Bunker Hill. -
When Thomas Payne‘s pamphlet “Common Sense” was published on January 10, 1776. It was the first mass distributed pamphlet that went across all colonies in America. Common sense was printed in Philadelphia and sold over 100,000 copies in a few months. Actually, about 1/5 of colonist owned a copy of the pamphlet. Common sense was an argument for America becoming independent from Britain. The arguments Thomas Payne gave in the pamphlet persuaded a lot of colonists to support the Revolution. -
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The colonies cut all government ties to Great Britain and the king. In this document it tells the foundation of what the colonist valued and the ideals and ideas our government stood for. It was written mostly by Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia with the help of others like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. -
December 26th, George Washington launched a surprise attack on a British fortification at Trent, New Jersey. Upsettingly, there was a spy from the British army who is still not identified. Even so, they brushed it off, not thinking they would be able to do any actual damage. Sadly for them, in just one hour, the Continental army captured about 900 Hessian officers and soldiers, while also getting artillery. This was a small turn of events for the colonial army, and it boosted the men's morale. -
The Articles of Confederation was technically the first constitution of the US, created by the second continental Congress on November 15, 1777, but it was not approved by all states until March 1781. It made a weak central or national government and gave too much power to the states. It also didn’t last long because the states couldn’t get along. It was harder for them to get along as well because the states had no national government to help them compromise. -
American and British troops finally fought their last major battle in fall of 1781, known as the Battle of Yorktown. After their last major battle, John Adam’s, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated with King George the Third and his men, they had both decided that it was time to sign a peace treaty on 9/3/1783, (now known as the Treaty of Paris) and the Continental Congress approved it on January 14, 1784. which was the treaty that officially ended the revolutionary war. -
Since 4 years had passed since the United States had finally gotten independence from Great Britain, 55 state delegates decided in Philadelphia that they should make a new U.S. constitution. On September 17, 1787, the constitution was signed by 38 of the 41 delegates at the convention. However, 9 of the 13 states needed to agree with the constitution for it to become an official document. Finally, on June 21, 1788, the ninth state finally agreed to make the document official on March 4, 1789. -
The three-fifths compromise was an agreement between northern and southern state delegates about how to count slaves. Specifically, about how to count them towards total population. Southern states wanted to count slaves as one person so they'd get more representatives in congress. Smaller states however, didn't think they shouldn't count as a person since they weren't technically citizens. Regarding all of this, the compromise they had was that every slave counted as 3/5ths of a person.