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The French and Indian War pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. Each side supported by military units from the parent country and by American Indian allies. The British government was in debt after the war.
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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.
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The Stamp Act Congress, which met in New York City from October 7 to 25, 1765. The first gathering of representatives from several American colonies to devise a unified protest against British taxation.
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After months of protest, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act on March 18, 1766. However, the same day, Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts, asserting that the British government had free and total legislative power over the colonies.
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declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain.
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The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed by the British government on the American colonies in 1767. They placed new taxes and took away some freedoms from the colonists including the following: New taxes on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea
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The Townshend Acts Repealed 1770. The British parliament repealed the Townshend duties on all but tea. Pressure from British merchants was partially responsible for the change.
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The Boston Massacre, known to the British as the Incident on King Street, was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. The event was heavily publicized by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams.
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In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies.
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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor.
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The Coercive Acts describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774, relating to Britain's colonies in North America. Passed in response to the Boston Tea Party, the Coercive Acts sought to punish Massachusetts as a warning to other colonies.
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The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Carpenter's Hall was also the seat of the Pennsylvania Congress. All of the colonies except Georgia sent delegates. These were elected by the people, by the colonial legislatures, or by the committees of correspondence of the respective colonies.
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In April 1775 British soldiers, called lobsterbacks because of their red coats, and minutemen—the colonists' militia—exchanged gunfire at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Described as "the shot heard round the world," it signaled the start of the American Revolution and led to the creation of a new nation.
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The Second Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies in America which united in the American Revolutionary War.It convened on May 10, 1775 with representatives from 12 of the colonies in Philadelphia.
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The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Congress approved the final text of the Declaration. It wasn't signed until August 2, 1776.
