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Navigation acts
The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660) were acts of Parliament intended to promote the self-sufficiency of the British Empire by restricting colonial trade to England and decreasing dependence on foreign imported goods. -
French and Indian war ends
The Seven Years’ War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain and Spain. -
Stamp act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the French and Indian war, and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic, bloody slaughter. The conflict energized anti-British sentiment and paved the way for the American Revolution. -
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. -
Boston Tea Party
At Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn’t take taxation and tyranny sitting down, and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence. -
Coercive/Intolerable acts
Intolerable Acts, also called Coercive Acts, in U.S. colonial history, together with the Quebec Act establishing a new administration for the territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War. -
First Continental Congress
The Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies, and later the United States, from 1774 to 1789. The First Continental Congress, comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Intolerable Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government after the colonies resisted new taxes. -
Lexington and Concord
On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire. -
Second continental congress
It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. They established a Continental army and elected George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, but the delegates also drafted the Olive Branch Petition and sent it to King George III in hopes of reaching a peaceful resolution. The king refused to hear the petition and declared the American colonies in revolt. -
Declaration of Independence aspoted
The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation’s people asserting their right to choose their own government. -
Winter at Valley Forge
The six-month encampment of General George Washington’s Continental Army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778 was a major turning point in the American Revolutionary War, George Washington proved his mettle and, with the help of former Prussian military officer Friedrich Wilhelm Baron von Steuben, transformed a battered Continental Army into a unified, world-class fighting force capable of beating the British. -
Battle of Saratoga
The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. The American defeat of the superior British army lifted patriot morale, furthered the hope for independence, and helped to secure the foreign support needed to win the war. Sep 19 - Oct 7, 1777 -
Battle of Yorktown
When British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army surrendered to General George Washington’s American force and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781, it was more than just military win. The outcome in Yorktown, Virginia marked the conclusion of the last major battle of the American Revolution and the start of a new nation's independence. -
U.S. Constitution written
The Constitution of the United States established America’s national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. -
U.S. Constitution adopted
On September 17, 1787, 39 of the 55 delegates signed the new document, with many of those who refused to sign objecting to the lack of a bill of rights. At least one delegate refused to sign because the Constitution codified and protected slavery and the slave trade.