-
The British Parliament passed the Sugar Act in 1764. It provided for a strongly enforced tax on sugar, molasses, and other products imported into the American colonies from non-British Caribbean sources. The act was also called the Plantation Act or the Revenue Act.
-
It required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. It was a direct tax imposed by the British government without the approval of the colonial legislatures and was payable in hard-to-obtain British sterling, rather than colonial currency.
-
The Townshend acts were used to help pay the expenses involved in governing the American colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which initiated taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Nonimportation. In response to new taxes, the colonies again decided to discourage the purchase of British imports.
-
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry.
-
The British Parliament passed the Tea Act in May 1773. It reinforced a tea tax in the American colonies. The act also allowed the British East India Company to have a monopoly on the tea trade there. This meant that the American colonists were not allowed to buy tea from any other source.
-
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party.
-
On June 17, 1775, New England soldiers faced the British army for the first time in a pitched battle. Popularly known as "The Battle of Bunker Hill," bloody fighting took place throughout a hilly landscape of fenced pastures that were situated across the Charles River from Boston.