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Magna Carta was a document that gave certain rights to English people. By that happening power was taken away from the government. -
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. -
The bill outlined specific constitutional and civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy. -
The French and Indian War ended after the British defeated the French in Quebec. The British took over Fort Pontchartrain, in Detroit, and renamed it Fort Detroit. That effectively ending the war. -
It was the first gathering of representatives from several American colonies to devise a unified protest against British taxation. -
The British Parliament passed the "Stamp Act" to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. -
In Boston, a group of colonists board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor in protest of the Tea Act. -
Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression. -
The Coercive Acts, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. -
Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression for the second time. -
The first shots were fired just after dawn in Lexington, Massachusetts the morning of the 19th, the "Shot Heard Round the World." The colonial militia, a band of 500 men, were outnumbered and initially forced to retreat. -
It was written to convince Congress to demand independence from Britain. Other town and colonial groups were writing similar pleas. They insisted that the colonies should be free from ties to the Crown. -
The Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification. Bickering over land claims between Virginia and Maryland delayed final ratification for almost four more years. -
A convention of delegates from all the states except Rhode Island met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Known as the Constitutional Convention, at this meeting it was decided that the best solution to the young country's problems was to set aside the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution. -
The requirement that any proposed amendment be ratified by three-fourths of the states was adopted unanimously, but was, like so much of the Constitution, the result of a compromise.