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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
Signed by King John, this was one of the most important documents in history. The Magna Carta established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the king, was subject to the law. -
Jamestown Settled
America's first permanent Enlish colony. After the failure of the Roanoke colonies, investors in the Virginia Company of London were anxious to find profit farther to the north, and in April 1607 three ships of settlers arrived at the Chesapeake Bay. -
Mayflower Compact Written
The first written framework of government established in what is now the United States. The compact was drafted to prevent dissent amongst Puritans and non-separatist Pilgrims who had landed at Plymouth a few days earlier. -
Petition Of Right
a major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. -
English Bill Of Rights
a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1689 that declared the rights and liberties of the people and settling the succession in William and Mary following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. 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. -
American Revolution Begins
a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America. -
Stamp Act
a law that required all colonial residents to pay a stamp tax on virtually every printed paper including legal documents, bills of sale, contracts, wills, advertising, pamphlets, almanacs, and even playing cards and dice. -
Boston Massacre
This was a 'street fight' taht occured with a mob, throwing snowballs, sticks and stones, and a squad British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of citzenry. -
Boston Tea Party
Organized by the Sons of liberty, this was the destruction of the tea in Boston.the Boston Tea Party happened as a result of “taxation without representation”, yet the cause is more complex than that.The American colonists believed Britain was unfairly taxing them to pay for expenses incurred during the French and Indian War -
Intolerable Acts
the American Patriots' name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament. 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. In reaction to the Coercive Acts, this was a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. -
Second Continental Congress
A convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies.The second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. -
Declaration Of Indpendence
the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies,[2] 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
The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. -
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
In September 1786, at the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a constitutional convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation, which took place in May of 1787. -
Consitution Convention
Addressed problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. The intention from the outset of many of its proponents was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. -
Connecticut Compromise
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.
