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Period: Jan 1, 1215 to
Events Leading to The Declaration of Independence
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Jan 1, 1225
Magna Carta
The Magna Carta is a bill King Johm was forced to sign protecting all of the English citizens natural rights. These rights are what helped us start the Bill of Rights which protect all of our rights. -
Mayflower Compact
This Bill signed by the Pilgrims is a basic bill that explains what they think are their boundaries of this new land and one law and that is freedom of religion. -
Petition of Rights
This law was passed by England to set out the liberties of the king. By this bill being passed, this helped us come up with our style of government limiting each branch's rights. -
Navigation Act
The Naviagtion Acta were acts that England told that limited our trade only with them and all the goods we made were only to be shipped to British ports. This pushed the Colonies away from wanting to trade with Britan because their prices were so high which later was one of our reasons we wanted to seperate from England. -
English Bill of Rights
This bill, just like ours, explains the rights of the citizens, limits of power royalty and parliment have, and how they all check each other. -
Proclamation of 1763
At the end of the French-Indian War, land to the west of the Mississippi River was open to exploration of the colonists. In the Proclimation, England passed a law saying that we could not expand so we do not frighten more indians. The Americans thought that they were doing this so it would be easier to control them in a smaller land area thereby making them very angry and wanting to retaliate. -
Sugar Act
This Act, enforced by the English Navy, reduced the price of molasses but increased the priced of sugar, coffe and other goods from the carribean which led to less trade thus, them loosing the lumber that comes from their. This would help lead to the Stamp Act. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was when Britan put a tax on all paper that was used. This included news papers, playing cards, everything. The tax was to raise money to help british troops protect the colonies. We did not like this because we had no legislature to vote for us so if the law passed(which it did) we would have no chance to defend ourselves. This fueled the fire for some later retaliation acts we posed on Britan, -
Boston Tea Party
England has now put a high tax on tea. the price is low but the tax is high. On this night Sam Adams and a group of Patriots dressed up as Native Americans and stormed a cargo ship full of English tea and dumped all the tea into the harbor thus making the English very mad. This was one of the main acts the led us to our independence. -
Coercive Act
This act was a series of bills that were passed by Britan in direct response to the Boston Tea Party. Another bill was extending the territory of Qubec, Canada to the French. These bills not onl enraged the citizenz but also was one of the reasons we made the First Continental Congress. -
First Continental Congress
A gruop of delegates met to discuss the problems between the colonies and England and decided war was the bad choice and that we needed to "right the wrongs" that were made between them -
First Shots Fired at Lexington and Concord
These battles were very small but started the Revoultionary War between the Thirteen Colonies and England which later came to our independence. -
Second Continental Congress
This group of Delegates from the colonies met in Philadelphia to talk about what was happening as a result of the First Continental Congress. Here they made the choice to make the Declaration of Independence and possibly war -
Declaration of Independence
This bill was made to tell England that we were seperating from their power and by any means necissary. This would be the bill that sent us to war with the English to fight for our freedom.
