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The Boston Massacre is considered by many historians to be the first battle of the Revolutionary War.The massacre resulted in the death of five colonists. British troops in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were there to stop demonstrations against the Townshend Acts and keep order, but instead they provoked outrage.
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In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
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Joseph Warren learned from a source inside the British high command that Redcoat troops would march that night on Concord. Warren dispatched two couriers, silversmith Paul Revere and tanner William Dawes, to alert residents of the news. They first traveled by different routes to Lexington, a few miles east of Concord, where revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock had temporarily holed up.
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The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts.
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Paine's "Common Sense" published
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In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of a new United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually involve France’s intervention on behalf of the Americans.
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Washington defeated a formidable garrison of Hessian mercenaries before withdrawing. A week later he returned to Trenton to lure British forces south, then executed a daring night march to capture Princeton on January 3.
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Lafayette was given command of a division from Virginia. Later he was made commander of even more troops. The French Army sent Louis Lebèque de Presle Duportail, an engineer who designed the Valley Forge encampment.
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The treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them.
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The Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate.
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General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.”
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The Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.
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12 of the 13 States Signed and Adopted the Constitution at the Phildelphia Convention.
