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George lll becomes king of Great Britain
King George III ruled the British kingdom through some turbulent times including the American Revolutionary War after which the colonies gained independence. Until Queen Victoria, he was Great Britain’s longest reigning monarch. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. On July 10, 1754, representatives from seven of the British North American colonies adopted the plan. Although never carried out, the Albany Plan was the first important proposal to conceive of the colonies as a collective whole united under one government. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the 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. Boosted by the financing of Prime Minister William Pitt, the British turned the tide with victories at Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac and more. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. 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. -
Stamp Act Congress
The Stamp Act Congress or First Congress of the American Colonies was a meeting held between October 7 and 25, 1765 in New York City, consisting of representatives from some of the British colonies in North America; it was the first gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies to devise a unified protest against new British taxation. -
Committees of Correspondence
The Committees of Correspondence rallied colonial opposition against British policy and established a political union among the Thirteen Colonies. The Committees of Correspondence were the American colonies’ means for maintaining communication lines in the years before the Revolutionary War. -
Coercive Acts
Upset by the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament enacts the Coercive Acts, to the outrage of American Patriots, on this day in 1774. The Coercive Acts were a series of four acts established by the British government. The aim of the legislation was to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Bostonian for their Tea Party. -
Boston Tea Party
A group of colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians, dumped 342 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor. The midnight raid, popularly known as the Boston Tea Party was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. -
First Continental Congress
In response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. -
Second Continental Congress
It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia between September 5, 1774 and October 26, 1774. The Second Congress managed the Colonial war effort and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord kicked of the american revolutionary war. Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. -
Resolution of Independence
The Lee Resolution, also known as the resolution of independence, was an act of the Second Continental Congress declaring the Thirteen Colonies to be independent of the British Empire. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia first proposed it on June 7, 1776. -
Declaration of Independence
In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.
