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Navigation Acts, in English history, a series of laws designed to restrict England's carrying trade to English ships, effective chiefly in the 17th and 18th centuries. -
The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. -
The Stamp Act of 1765 was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. -
The Quartering Acts were two or more Acts of British Parliament requiring local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with housing and food. Each of the Quartering Acts was an amendment to the Mutiny Act and required annual renewal by Parliament. -
The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonie. Early attempts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765—which taxed colonists for every piece of paper they used—were met with widespread protests in America. -
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers killed three people of a crowd of three or four hundred who were abusing them verbally and throwing various missiles. -
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. -
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. Parliament passed the bill on March 31, 1774, and King George III gave it royal assent on May 20th. -
The Second Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies in America that united in the American Revolutionary War. -
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, and signed on July 8 in a final attempt to avoid war between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in America. -
"The shot heard round the world" is a phrase that refers to the opening shot of the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, which began the American Revolutionary War and led to the creation of the United States of America, and was an early event in the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions. -
By promoting the idea of American exceptionalism and the need to form a new nation to realize its promise, Paine's pamphlet not only attracted public support for the Revolution, but put the rebellion's leaders under pressure to declare independence. -
The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. -
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. -
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. -
The convention took place in the old Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) in Philadelphia. It was contemporarily known as the Federal Convention, the Philadelphia Convention, or the Grand Convention at Philadelphia. Nor did most of the delegates arrive intending to draft a new constitution.