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Treaty of Paris
Ending the seven Year's War, also known as the French and Indian War in North America. France ceded all mainland North American territories, except New Orleans, in order to retain her Caribbean sugar islands. Britain gained all territory east of the Mississippi River, Spain kept territory west of the Mississippi, but exchanged East and West Florida for Cuba. -
Proclamation Line
Wary of the cost of defending the colonies, George III prohibited all settlement west of the Appalachain mountains without guarantees of security from local Native American nations. The intervention in colonial affairs offended the thirteen colonies claim to the exclusive right to govern lands to their west. -
Sugar Act
The first attempt to finance the defence of the colonies by the British Government. In order to deter smuggling and to encourage the production of British rum, taxes on molasses were dropped; a levy was placed on foreign Madeira wine and colonial exports of iron, lumber and other goods lands to their west. -
Stamp Act
Seeking to defray some of the costs of garrisoning the colonies, Parliament required all legal documents, newspapers and required to use watermarked, or stamped paper on which a levy was placed. -
Declaratory Act
Parliament finalises the repeal of the Stamp Act, but declares that it has the right to tax colonies. -
Townshend Revenue Acts
English Parliament shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. They were designed to collect revenue from the colonist in America by putting customs duties on imports of glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. -
Boston Massacre
Angered by the presence of troops and Britain colonial policy, a crowd began harassing a group of soldiers guarding the customs house, a soldier was knocked down by a snowball and discharged his musket, sparking a volley into the crowd which kills five civilians. -
The Tea Act
In an effort to support the ailing East India Company, Parliament exempted its tea from import duties and allowed the Company to sell its tea directly to the colonies. Americans resented what they saw as an indirect tax subsidising a British company. -
Boston Tea Party
Angered by the Tea Acts, American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians dump of East India Company tea into the Boston harbour. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act is a name given to a minmum of two Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations and housing.It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. -
Intolerable Act
Four measures which stripped Massachusetts of self- government and judicial independence following the Boston Tea Party. The colonies responded with a general boycott of British goods. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. -
Give Me Liberty or Give Me death
¨Give me liberty, or give me death¨ is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John´s Church in Richmond, Virginia. -
Battle of Lexington
First engagements of the Revolutionary War between British troops and the Minutemen, who had been warned of the attack by Paul Revere. -
Olive Branch Petition
Congress endorses a proposal asking for recognition of American rights, the ending of Intolerable Acts in exchange for a cease fire. George III rejected the proposal and on 23 August 1775 declared the colonies to be in open rebellion. -
Thomas Paine ¨ Write Common¨
Common Sense challenged and authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain. -
Second Continental Congress
The second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 -
Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the Laws of Nature and of Nature´s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they declare the causes which impel them to the separation. -
George Washington named Commander in Chief
George Washington, a leader of the revolutionary movement in Virginia, a former commander of Virginia´s frontier forces, and a British colonial army officer, was commissioned ¨commander-in-chief of the army of the United Colonies of all the forces raised and to be raised by them ¨
