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French-Indian War (1756-1763)
war between France and England.Started because England owed money and passed a series of acts taxing the colonies. -
Navigation Acts 1763
a series of British laws that restricted foreign trade between England and its colonies -
Stamp Act
The United States government began taxing a variety of goods, services, and legal dealings, in an effort to raise revenue for the great costs of the war. To confirm that taxes were paid a "revenue stamp" was purchased and appropriately affixed to the taxable item. -
quartering acts
Required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine -
Townshend acts
a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies -
Intolerable Acts (aka Coercive Acts)
The Coercive Acts included a new Quartering Act that provided arrangements for housing British troops in American dwellings. It revived the anger that colonists had felt regarding the earlier Quartering Act (1765), which had been allowed to expire in 1770 -
boston massacre
a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. -
Boston Tea Party
It was an act of protest in which a group of 60 American colonists threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to agitate against both a tax on tea (which had been an example of taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company -
Battle of Lexington & Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775, the famous ‘shot heard round the world’, marked the start of the American War of Independence (1775-83). Politically disastrous for the British, it persuaded many Americans to take up arms and support the cause of independence -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was the late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and its associated Revolutionary War that established American independence from the British Empire -
Common Sense
Published in January 1776 in Philadelphia, nearly 120,000 copies were in circulation by April. Paine's brilliant arguments were straightforward. He argued for two main points: (1) independence from England and (2) the creation of a democratic republic. Paine avoided flowery prose. -
declaration of independence
The Declaration of Independence, headed The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, is the founding document of the United States. It was adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777. This document served as the United States' first constitution. It was in force from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect -
Daniel Shays’ Rebellion
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 on both individuals and their trades -
Constitutional Convention (aka Philadelphia Convention)
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The point of the event was to decide how America was going to be governed. the Convention was called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation