-
Period: to
1700-1800
-
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was fought between the colonies of British America and New France. Both sides were supported by their parent contries; Great Britan and France. George Washington ambushed a French patrol while he was in command. Later on in the war, the remaining 500 troops, lead by George Washington retreated to Virginia. Washington and Thomas Gage, both future opponents and key roles in organizing retreat in the American Revolutionary War, -
End of the French and Indian War
The war officially ended, with British victories, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. on February 10, 1763. -
Proclamation of 1763
The end of the French and Indian war caused a great celebration in the colonies. The proclamation did much do dampen that. The proclamation, presented by the King and his council, to calm the fears of the Indians, who felt that the colonists would drive them from their lands as they expanded westward. The proclamation provided that all the lands west of the heads of all rivers which flowed into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest were off-limits to the colonists. -
Stamp Act
George Greenville rose in Parliament to offer the fifty-five resolutions of his Stamp Bill. On February 17, the bill was passed and approved by the Lords on March 8th, and two weeks later ordered effect by the King. Parliament would again attempt to force unpopular taxation measures on the American colonies in the late 1760s, leading to steady deterioration in British-American relations that lead to the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. -
Boston Massacre
A sentry who was being pressed by a heckling, snowballing crowd, let loose a volley of shots, was supported by a squad of British soldiers. Three people were killed immediatly and two died later of their wounds. A man of black or Indian parentage, Crispus Attucks, was amoung the victims. Along with other men, Capt. Thomas Preston, was arrested for manslaughter. The Boston Massacre was considered the first battle of the Revolutionary War. -
The Townshend Act
The Townshend Acts imposed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea imported to the colonies. The temporary truce between both sides in the years before the American Revolution was caused because in 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act's main purpose was not to raise revenue fromthe colonies but to bail out the floundering East India company, a key actor in the British colony. A monopoly on the importation and sale of the tea in colonies was granted to the company by the British government. The Tea Act rekindled the colonists oppostion that they never accepted the constitutionality on the duty on tea. Their resistance lead to the Boston Tea Party -
The Boston Tea Party
Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea over board on December 16, 1773. This was caused by the consignees in Charleston, New York, and Philadelpia that rejected tea shipments and merchants in Boston refused concede to Patriot pressure. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. -
Intolerable Acts
Intolerable Acts was named by American patriots to five laws and was adopted by Parliament. This limited the political and geographical freedom of the colonists. Four of the laws were passed to punish the people of Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. The outcome was the first Continental Congress. In September of 1774 they organized the First Continental Congress and as tensions escalated, the Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775. -
Lexington and Concord
The battle of Lexington and Concord set of the Revolutionary War. For many years tensions had been building between the residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities. Hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord to order seize in arms cache on April 18, 1775. Paul Revere and others sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. More battles followed, and in 1783 the colonists formally won their independence. -
Declaration of Independence
With the Revoltionary War going into full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. A five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies' intentions, in mid-june 1776. The The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence- written largely by Jefferson- in Philadelphia on July 4.
