-
-
The Magna Carta is an English legal document written in 1215 CE which had a huge influence on the developing legal system of England.
-
(1628) Petition sent by Parliament to King Charles I complaining of a series of breaches of law. The petition sought recognition of four principles: no taxation without the consent of Parliament, no imprisonment without cause, no quartering of soldiers on subjects, and no martial law in peacetime.
-
The English Bill of Rights was a document written by Parliament and agreed on by William and Mary of England in 1689, designed to prevent abuse of power by English monarchs.
-
In the early 1750s, rivalry between England and France over who would control the North American continent led to the French and Indian Wars. This conflict lasted from 1756 to 1763, and left England the dominant power in the area that now comprises the eastern United States and Canada.
-
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.
-
Incident on Dec. 16, 1773, in which American patriots dressed as Indians threw 342 chests of tea from three British ships into Boston Harbour.
-
The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from twelve British North American colonies that met in 1774, early in the American Revolution. Called in response to the passage of the Intolerable Acts by the British Parliament, the Congress was held in Philadelphia, attended by 55 members appointed by the legislatures of the Thirteen Colonies,
-
The Second Continental Congress meeting started with the battle of Lexington and Concord fresh in their memories. The New England militia were still encamped outside of Boston trying to drive the British out of Boston.
-
The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire.
-
Before the Constitution, there was the Articles of Confederation- in effect, the first constitution of the United States. Drafted in 1777 by the same continental congress that passed the Declaration of Independence, the articles established a firm league of friendship between and amoung the 13 states.
-
Shays' Rebellion, the post-Revolutionary clash between New England farmers and merchants. It tested the precarious institutions of the new republic, threatened to plunge the "disunited states" into a civil war.
-
took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain.
-
On May 29, 1787, Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph proposed what became known as "The Virginia Plan." Written primarily by fellow Virginian James Madison, the plan traced the broad outlines of what would become the U.S. Constitution: a national government consisting of three branches with checks and balances to prevent the abuse of power.
-
[This was the so-called "small states plan," presented at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787, in opposition to the "Virginia Plan" presented earlier on May 29, 1787. The New Jersey Plan called for equal representation of the states, whereas the Virginia plan made representation proportionate to population.
