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May 10, 1215
Magna Carta
King Johnwas facing downa possible rebellion by the country's powerful barons. He agreed to a charter of liberties known as the Magna Carta or the Great Charter. -
Jamestown settled
America’s first permanent English colony, in Virginia.The colony was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture. -
Petition of Right
A major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the is prohibited from infringing. This document contains restrictions on non- Parliamentary taxation. -
English Bill of Rights
An act that the Parliament of England passed on December 16, 1689. The Bill creates separation of powers, limits the powers of the king and queen, enhances the democratic election and bolsters freedom of speech. -
Albany Plan of Union
A plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies. A plan suggested by Benjamin Franklin who was a senior delegate. -
Stamp Act
An act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. -
Boston Massacre
The killing of five colonists by British soldiers. This caused mobs of civilians to take action against the soldiers. -
Boston Tea Party
Political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston. This famed act of American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. -
Intolerable Acts
The American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. -
First Continental Congress
A meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies. This meeting was in response to the British Parliament blaming Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. -
American Revolution begins
Tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. -
Second Continental Congress
A convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that, soon after warfare, declared the American Revolutionary War had begun. -
Declaration of Independence
s the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, Then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire -
Articles of Confederation
Served as the written document that established the functionsof the national government of the United States after declaring its independence from Great Britain. -
Shay's Rebellion
The name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. -
Philadelphia Convention
The delegates at the Philadelphia Convention decided to throw out the Articles of Confederation. The floor was opened to suggestions for the basic structure of the new government. -
Constitution Convection
Also known as the Philadelphia Convention. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. -
Connecticut Compromise
Was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. -
Mayflower Compact written
The "Mayflower Compact" was signed on 11 November 1620 onboard the Mayflower shortly after she came to anchor off Provincetown Harbor.
