American Events Unscramble

Magna Carta

Jun 15, 1215

First form of a rule of law ever established.

Mayflower Compact

Nov 11, 1620

First governing document of Plymouth Colony

Petition of Right

Jan 1, 1628

Sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing.

English Bill of Rights

Dec 16, 1689

An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown.

Stamp Act

Mar 22, 1765

Legislation that requires a tax to be paid on the transfer of certain documents. Those that pay the tax receive an official stamp on their documents, making them legal documents.

Stamp Act Congress

Oct 5, 1765

First gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies to devise a unified protest against new British taxation.

Declerations of Rights and Grievences

Oct 19, 1765

Document that declared that taxes imposed on British colonists without their formal consent were unconstitutional.

Boston Tea Party

Dec 16, 1773

Political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, a city in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the tax policy of the British government and the East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies.

Intolerable Acts

Mar 24, 1774

Series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Massachusetts after the Boston Tea party. The acts stripped Massachusetts of self government and historic rights, triggering outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies. They were key developments in the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.

First Continental Congress

Oct 26, 1774

The Congress met briefly to consider options, including an economic boycott of British trade; rights and grievances; and petitioned King George III for redress of those grievances.

Second Continental Congress

May 10, 1775

Managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. By raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties, the Congress acted as the de facto national government of what became the United States.

Decleration of Independence

Jul 4, 1776

Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the 13 American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a union that would become a new nation—the United States of America.