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First Navigation Acts Passed
In October of 1651, the English Parliament passed its Navigation Acts of 1651. These Acts were designed to tighten the government's control over trade between England, its colonies, and the rest of the world. -
Boston News Letter First Published
John Campbell, the postmaster of Boston, published the first issue of the Boston News-Letter. A small single sheet, printed on both sides, the News-Letter made history as the first continuously published newspaper in America. -
British Hire Hessians to fight against Americans
In the midst of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1744, 6,000 Hessians were fighting with the British army in Flanders whilst another 6,000 were in the Bavarian army. By 1762, 24,000 Hessians were serving with Ferdinand of Brunswick's army in Germany -
Molasses Act Passed
Molasses Act, (1733), in American colonial history, a British law that imposed a tax on molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British foreign colonies into the North American colonies. The act specifically aimed at reserving the American sugar market to British West Indies sugarcane growers, who otherwise could not compete successfully with French and other foreign sugar-producers on more fertile neighbouring West Indian islands. -
French and Indian War Begins
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. -
Albany Plan of Union created
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. On July 10, 1754, representatives from seven of the British North American colonies adopted the plan. Although never carried out, the Albany Plan was the first important proposal to conceive of the colonies as a collective whole united under one government. -
King George III crowned
Ascended the throne in 1760 during the Seven Years' War. Concluded the Seven Years' War (Treaty of Paris.) Married Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, September 8, 1761. Prosecuted the American War of Independence, 1776. Prosecuted various war fronts with Revolutionary France, Napoleon. -
Writs of Assistance was passed
Even before the French and Indian War ended, the British decided to heighten their level of control over trade in the colonies. Colonial assemblies had proven unable to stem trade with the French West Indies, and certain ports, such as Boston and Newport, Rhode Island, engaged heavily in trade with the enemy in the West Indies. Colonial smugglers that traded with the West Indies, not only sustained the enemy, but avoided duties imposed by the Molasses Act of 1733 -
Proclamation of 1763 Passed
In 1763, at ethe end of the French and Indian War, the British issued a proclamation,mainly intended to conciliate the Indians by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands. In the centuries since the proclamation, it has become one of the cornerstones of Native American law in the United States and Canada. -
Sugar Act Passed
The Sugar Act of 1764 was a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on April 5, 1764, that was designed to raise revenue from the American colonists in the 13 Colonies. The Act set a tax on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies which impacted the manufacture of rum in New England. -
Currency Act Passed
On September 1, 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act, effectively assuming control of the colonial currency system. The act prohibited the issue of any new bills and the reissue of existing currency. Parliament favored a "hard currency" system based on the pound sterling, but was not inclined to regulate the colonial bills. Rather, they simply abolished them. The colonies protested vehemently against this -
Stamp Act Passed
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. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Quartering Act was passed
The act stated that troops could only be quartered in barracks and if there wasn't enough space in barracks then they were to be quartered in public houses and inns. -
Sons of Liberty Formed
The Sons of Liberty was an organization of patriots that was created in the Thirteen American Colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight the abuses of taxation by the British government. -
Stamp Act Congress meets
The Stamp Act Congress, or First Congress of the American Colonies, was a meeting held between October 7 and 25, 1765 in New York City, consisting of representatives from some of the British colonies in North America; it was the first gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies -
Declaratory Act passed
Declaratory Act, (1766), declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. -
Tarring and Feathering of British Agents Begins
tarring and feathering was a common threat and punishment. Though the tarring was not usually fatal, it was extremely unpleasant. Applying the burning hot tar to bare skin usually caused painful blistering and efforts to remove it often made the condition worse. The adding of feathers which stuck to the tar added to the humiliation and made the victim a comical figure. It was not used extensively until the American colonists revived the punishment in the 1760s. Patriots used it against British -
Townshend Act passed
Townshend Act constituted an attempt by the British government to consolidate fiscal and political power over the American colonies by placing import taxes on many of the British products bought by Americans, including lead, paper, paint, glass and tea. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Committees of Correspondence sends first Circular Letter
On 2 November 1772, a committee is born when the Boston selectmen vote to establish a twenty-one-member Committee of Correspondence. -
Tea Act
Launched 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
On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. -
Intolerable Acts Passed
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. -
Closing of all American Ports
On this day in 1774, British Parliament passes the Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston and demanding that the city's residents pay for the nearly $1 million worth (in today's money) of tea dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. -
First Contenental Congress Meets
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Carpenter's Hall was also the seat of the Pennsylvania Congress. All of the colonies except Georgia sent delegates. -
Quebec Act Passed
Quebec Act, 1774, passed by the British Parliament to institute a permanent administration in Canada replacing the temporary government created at the time of the Proclamation of 1763. It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law. -
Minutemen Formed
Concord was one of the first towns to comply with the order to create Minutemen companies out of the militia. Of approximately 400 militia from Concord's muster rolls, one hundred would also serve as Minutemen. -
Give me liberty speech
Henry presented resolutions to raise a militia, and to put Virginia in a posture of defense. Henry's opponents urged caution and patience until the crown replied to Congress' latest petition for reconciliation. -
Colonists began boycotting British goods
This legislation caused tensions between colonists and imperial officials, who made it clear that the British Parliament would not address American complaints that the new laws were onerous. British unwillingness to respond to American demands for change allowed colonists to argue that they were part of an increasingly corrupt and autocratic empire in which their traditional liberties were threatened. -
British Attack at Concord
Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. -
Second Continental Congress Begins
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -
Olive branch Petition issued
John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5 and submitted to King George on July 8, 1775. It was an attempt to assert the rights of the colonists while maintaining their loyalty to the British crown. -
Common Sense was published
It was an instant success, and copies of the pamphlet were soon available in all the thirteen colonies -
Declaration of Independence signed
On this day in 1776, members of Congress affix their signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six congressional delegates in total signed the document, including some who were not present at the vote approving the declaration. The delegates signed by state from North to South, beginning with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. -
Letters of an American Farmer was published
In 1782, a French immigrant to North America, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur published a series of essays titled Letters from an American Farmer. It was one of the first presentations of the idea that settlers in the newly independent United States would constitute a new nationality based on a shared dream of freedom and equality.
