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Jamestown
Was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. -
Virginia House of Burgesses
An assembly of elected representatives from Virginia that met from 1643 to 1776. This democratically elected legislative body was the first of its kind in English North America. -
Plymouth Rock
Where they formed the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. -
Mayflower Compact
The first governing document of Plymouth Colony; the Saints were fleeing from religious persecution by King James of England. -
Fundemental Orders of Connecicut
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were written in January of 1639 to describe the government established by the Connecticut river towns. Considered the Fundamental Orders as the first constitution written in the Western tradition. These orders outline the government established by the Connecticut River towns showing its powers and structure. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. -
John Peter Zenger
A German American printer, publisher, editor and journalist in New York City. Zenger printed The New York Weekly Journal. -
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Glorious Revolution
Was the overthrow of King James II of England -
English Bill of Rights
It lays down limits on the powers of the crown and sets out the rights of Parliament and rules for freedom of speech in Parliament, the requirement for regular elections to Parliament and the right to petition the monarch without fear of retribution. -
Salem Witch Trials
A series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. -
Stamp Act
The first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. 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 Seven Years' War and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. -
Toleration Act
The Act allowed freedom of worship to Nonconformists who had pledged to the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and rejected transubstantiation, Protestants who dissented from the Church of England such as Baptists and Congregationalists but not to Catholics. Nonconformists were allowed their own places of worship and their own teachers, if they accepted certain oaths of allegiance. -
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French Indian War
The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war’s expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American revolution. -
Albany Plan of Union
A proposal to make a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, then a senior leader and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress in July 1754 in Albany, New York. The Plan called for a general government to be administered by a President General, to be appointed and supported by the Crown, and a Grand Council to be chosen by the representatives of the colonial assemblies. -
Proclamation of 1763
In 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British made a proclamation, intended to conciliate the Indians by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands. In the centuries since the proclamation, it has become one of the cornerstones of Native American law in the United States and Canada. -
Quartering Act
Parliament enacted them to order local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations. It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. originally intended as a response to issues that arose during the French and Indian War and soon became a source of tension between the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies and the government in London, England. These tensions fueled the fire that led to the Revolutionalry War. -
Bostan Massacre
An incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five male civilians and injured six others. -
Tea Act
Made to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
Political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, destroying the entire supply of tea sent by the East India Company in defiance of the American boycott of tea carrying a tax the Americans had not authorized. -
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1st Continental Congress
A convention of delegates from twelve colonies without Georgian that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. It was called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament. The Intolerable Acts had punished Boston for the Boston Tea Party. -
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2nd Continental Congress
was a convention of delegates from the 13 colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 -
Declaration of Independence
Announced that the thirteen American colonies, they now regarded themselves as independent states, and are now apart from the Brithish Empire -
Treaty of Paris
Agreement that ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britain on one side and the United States of America and its allies on the other.
