American Revolution Timeline

  • Boston Massacre

    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.
  • Boston Tea Party

    Boston Tea Party

    The Boston Tea Party was a political protest. It occured 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.
  • Lexington and Concord

    Lexington and Concord

    The Battles of Lexington and Concord signaled the start of the American Revolutionary war on April 19, 1775. The British Army set out from Boston to capture rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington as well as to destroy the Americans store of weapons and ammunition in Concord.
  • Battle of Bunker Hill

    Battle of Bunker Hill

    The American patriots were defeated at the Battle of Bunker Hill, but they proved they could hold their own against the superior British Army. The fierce fight confirmed that any reconciliation between England and her American colonies was no longer possible.
  • Declaration of Independence

    Declaration of Independence

    It is a document that officially records the proclamation that the United States is an independent country from Great Britain.
  • British capture New York

    British capture New York

    The British defeated the Americans and gained access to the strategically important Port of New York, which they held for the rest of the war. The Americans panicked, resulting in twenty percent losses through casualties and capture, although a stand by 400 Maryland and Delaware troops prevented greater losses.
  • Battle of Trenton

    Battle of Trenton

    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.
  • Saratoga

    Saratoga

    The Battle of Saratoga occurred in September and October, 1777, during the second year of the American Revolution. It included two crucial battles, fought eighteen days apart, and was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War.
  • Period: to

    Valley Forge

    Pennsylvania encampment grounds of the Continental Army under General George Washington from December 19, 1777, to June 19, 1778, a period that marked the triumph of morale and military discipline over severe hardship.
  • Battle of Monmouth

    Battle of Monmouth

    The Battle of Monmouth was a military conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in North America during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
  • British capture of Savannah

    British capture of Savannah

    The Capture of Savannah, or sometimes the First Battle of Savannah (because of the siege of 1779), was an American Revolutionary War battle fought on December 29, 1778 pitting local American Patriot militia and Continental Army units, holding the City, against a British invasion force .
  • British Capture of Charles Town

    British Capture of Charles Town

    The siege of Charleston was a major engagement and major British victory, fought between March 29 to May 12, 1780, during the American Revolutionary War. After approximately six weeks of siege, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, commanding the Charleston garrison, surrendered his forces to the British.
  • Battle of Yorktown

    Battle of Yorktown

    Siege of Yorktown, (September 28–October 19, 1781), joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. The siege virtually ended military operations in the American Revolution.