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The Magna Carta is a document that King John of England was forced into signing. King John was forced into signing the charter because it greatly reduced the power he held as the King of England and allowed for the formation of a powerful parliament. The Magna Carta became the basis for English citizen's rights.
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The Petition of Right is a major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing.
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The English Bill of Rights is an English precursor of the Constitution, along with the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right. The English Bill of Rights limited the power of the English sovereign, and was written as an act of Parliament.
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The Albany Plan of Union was a proposal to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies. It was suggested by Benjamin Franklin.
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The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts.
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A group of colonists protest thirteen years of increasing British oppression, by attacking merchant ships in Boston Harbor. In retaliation, the British close the port, and inflict even harsher penalties.
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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. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates.
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The Second Continental Congress was 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.
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Philosophically, the Declaration stressed two themes: individual rights and the right of revolution. These ideas became widely held by Americans and spread internationally as well, influencing in particular the French Revolution.
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The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. It was spurred by war with Britain and declared the states sovereign.
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Proposal by Virginia delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. The plan was drafted by James Madison while he waited for a quorum to assemble at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
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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. Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms.
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The official purpose of the Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia beginning on May 25, 1787 was to amend the Articles of Confederation. It had, by that time, become clear that the Articles of Confederation were not a good enough constitution for the new nation.
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proposal for the structure of the United States Government presented by William Paterson at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787.
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Led by Abraham Lincoln, and amendment is made so that blacks have the right to vote.
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Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, limiting the president to two terms. President Truman speaks in first coast-to-coast live television broadcast.
