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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
A charter signed by King John of England. In June 1215, King John was forced to submit to the demands of his rebel barons by agreeing to the settlement recorded in Magna Carta. This limitation of royal authority through a written grant was the barons' most radical achievement. It established the principle that the king was subject to and not above the law. -
Jamestown settled
Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It is America’s birthplace. -
Mayflower Compact written
The Mayflower Compact, signed by 41 English colonists on the ship Mayflower on November 11, 1620, was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States. -
Petition of Right
As a precondition to granting any future taxes, in Parliament forced the King to assent to the Petition of Right, which asked for a settlement of Parliament's complaints against the King's non-parliamentary taxation and imprisonments without trial, plus the unlawfulness of martial law and forced billets. -
English Bill of Rights
The English Bill of Rights, which was an act of Parliament, guaranteed certain rights of the citizens of England from the power of the crown. -
Albany Plan of Union
It was a proposal to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, then a senior leader (age 48) and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress in July 1754 in Albany, New York. -
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. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British soldiers. They fired into the crowd. The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, advertised the “Boston Massacre” as a battle for American liberty. -
Boston Tea Party
Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard in protest of the tea tax from Great Britain. -
Intolerable Acts
The American Patriots' name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. 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 that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. -
American Revolution begins
The American Revolution began as a transatlantic dispute over parliamentary authority and policy, as American colonists chafed against British measures to reconsolidate their hold over their North American empire. -
Second Continental Congress
A convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is an important part of American democracy because first it contains the ideals or goals of our nation. Second it contains the complaints of the colonists against the British king. Third, it contains the arguments the colonists used to explain why they wanted to be free of British rule. -
Articles of Confederation
The first written constitution of the United States. It was a document signed amongst the thirteen original colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. -
Philadelphia Convention
At the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a constitutional convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional convention took place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion is 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. -
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise was 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. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equa -
Constitution Convention
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. The United States Constitution that emerged from the convention established a federal government with more specific powers, including those related to conducting relations with foreign governments.
