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French and Indian War
Funding this war led to an immense national debt for Great Britain, which they felt the Americans should help pay.
Parliament decided to service the debt by passing the Stamp Act, a terrible failure which angered citizens on both sides of the Atlantic and began the rift between Britain and its colonists. -
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American Revolution
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Stamp Act
The significance of the Stamp act was due to the fact that for the first time the tax was installed not to regulate commerce and trade, but to directly squeeze money out of colonists. Moreover the tax was introduced by a direct order from England without approval of the colonial legislature. -
Stamp Act Congress
In the end, the widespread boycotts enacted by individual colonists surely did more to secure the repeal of the Stamp Act than did the Congress itself. But the gesture was significant -
Townshend Duties
In April 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, which it retained in order to assert its right to tax the colonies. This led to a sort of truce, which lasted until the burning of the British patrol boat Gaspee in 1772. In the years before the Revolution, resistance to the tea tax became a symbol of American patriotism. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre is considered by many historians to be the first battle of the Revolutionary War. The fatal incident happened on March 5 of 1770. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party is an important part of America’s history. The establishment of independence from Britain did not happen overnight. A series of events led to the American Revolution. A turning point in history occurred that December morning in 1773 when the colonists decided it was time to stand up against the injustices that the mother country of Great Britain had burdened them with. They began to fight back. -
Intolerable Acts
They were an important factor contributing to the American Revolution. Colonists felt that this legislation violated their rights as Englishmen and their Natural Rights as human beings -
1st Continental Congress
The representatives gathered to discuss their response to the British "Intolerable Acts." They met to discuss their relationship with Britain, and how to assert their rights with the British government. They wanted to appear as united colonies in their reply to Britain. The purpose of the First Continental Congress was not to seek independence from Britain. -
Quebec Act
It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law. The Thirteen Colonies considered this law one of the Intolerable Acts, for it nullified many of the Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west.
