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Jan 26, 1215
Magna Carta
A group of determined barons force King John to sign the Great Charter at Runnymede. The Maga Carda would create protection against King John's heavy taxes and military. -
Period: Jan 26, 1215 to
Origins of American Government
Events in American history -
Petition of Right
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. -
English Bill of Rights
Prevented abuse of power from Mary and William Orange, as well as future monarchs. Parlament drew up a list of provisions that prohibited a standing army during a time of peace, except in the consent of Parlament, and required that all parliamry elcetions be free. -
Albany Plan of Union
The british Board of Trade called a meeting of seven of the northern colonies at Albany inorder to discuss the probelms of tradea and enemy attacks. Benjamin Franklin offered the idea to create an annual congree of repesentives from each of the 13 colonies. They would decide military tactics, trade regulation, and taxes. -
Boston Massacre
The killing of five colonists by Bristish troops. 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. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party. In 1771, 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. -
First Contintental Congress
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. -
Second Continental Congress
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. -
Declaration of Indpendence
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument -
Articles of COnfederation
The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, on November 15, 1777. However, ratification of the Articles of Confederation by all thirteen states did not occur until March 1, 1781. The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. -
Philadelphia COnvention
Congress re-did the Articles of Confederation -
Virginia Plan
It was drafted by James Madison, and presented by Edmund Randolph to the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787. The Virginia Plan proposed a strong central government composed of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. -
New Jersey Plan
The New Jersey Plan (also widely known as the Small State Plan or the Paterson Plan) was a proposal for the structure of the United States Government presented by William Paterson at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 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.
