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Jamestown
A group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought Jamestown to the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610. -
Virginia House of Burgesses
The first legislature anywhere in the English colonies in America was in Virginia. This was the House of Burgesses, and it first met on July 30, 1619, at a church in Jamestown. Its first order of business was to set a minimum price for the sale of tobacco. -
Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact, signed by 41 English colonists on the Mayflower, on November 11, 1620, was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States. The compact was drafted to prevent dissent amongst Puritans and non-separatist Pilgrims who had landed at Plymouth a few days earlier. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was a popular revolt in colonial Virginia in 1676, led by Nathaniel Bacon. That consisted of high taxes, low prices for tobacco, and resentment against special privileges given those close to the governor, Sir William Berkeley. -
Salem Witch Trials
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in the Salem Village, of Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. -
The trial of John Peter Zenger
The New York Supreme Court met in the second floor courtroom of New York City Hall. After attorneys James Alexander and William Smith, who were also Popular Party members, had attempted to represent John Peter Zenger at his trial, the Court decided to disbar both of them. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles led to the official British declaration of war in 1756. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, in which it forbade all settlers from settling past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act is a name given to a minimum of two Acts of British Parliament in the 18th century. Parliament enacted them to order local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. The money collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains -
Declatory Act
It stated that the British Parliament’s taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar and Stamp Act. Parliament mollified the recalcitrant colonists by repealing the distasteful Stamp Act, but it actually hardened its principle in the Declaratory Act by asserting its complete authority to make binding laws on the American colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a group of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the anger of the citizenry. -
The Tea Act
The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the duty on tea, and the Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. -
Boston Tea Party
An event where colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance to British rule; two years later the war began. -
1st Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. -
2nd Continental Congress
This event occured after the American Revolutionary War had already begun. It took the step of declaring America’s independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a document, written by Thomas Jefferson and was adopted by the second continental congress, that tells the reasons that the British Colonies of North America wanted independence.
