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The charter granted by King John at Runneymede, recognizing the rights and priviledges of the barons, church and freemen.
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A major English constitutional document that sets out specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing.
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An English precursor of the Constitution, along with the Magna Carta and Petition of Right. It limited the power of the English sovereign and was written as an act of parliment.
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A plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government.
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The killing of five British regulars. It was an effect of 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.
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A meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies. At Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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A convention of delegates from the thirteen colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775 in Philidelphia, Pennsylvania. Soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun.
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The usual name of a statement adopted by the Continental Congress. It announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britian, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
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The first written constitution. This is the date all thirteen states ratified it.
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An armed uprising that took place in Massachusets, which some historians believe "fundementally altered the course of United States' history".
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A proposal by Virginia delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. The plan was drafted by James Madison.
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A meeting held by delegates from the thirteen states that then compromised the United States. At first the purpose was to address the problems the federal government was having ruling the states and fiscally sound under the provisions of the Articles of Confederation. What actually occured was the formation of a new plan of government.
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A proposal for the structure for the United States Government presented by Willaim Paterson at the Constitutional Convention. Primarily a response to the Virginia Plan.
