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Proclamation Line
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. They were taxes to help pay for the French and Indian War. -
Quartering Acts
Quartering Act is a name given to a minimum of two Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. -
Declaratory Act
The American Colonies Act 1766, commonly known as the Declaratory Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the changing and lessening of the Sugar Act. This Act also stated Parliament had the right to tax the colonists at anytime. -
Townshend Acts
Passed by Parliament in 1767, placed taxes on imported materials such as glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. The Townshend Acts were originated by Charles Townshend and passed by the English Parliament shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre is the incident where five colonists were killed by the British. . 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. -
Committee of Correspondence
In March 1773, the Virginia House of Burgesses proposed that each colonial legislature appoint a standing committee for intercolonial correspondence. Within a year, nearly all had joined the network, and more committees were formed at the town and county levels. -
Tea Act
Tea Act of 1773 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
Incident where the Sons of Liberty dumped large amounts of British Tea into the Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. -
Intolerable or Coercive Acts
The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. -
Shot Heard Around The World
Hand drawn depiction of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Siege of Boston, by J. DeCosta July 29, 1775. The first shots were fired just after dawn in Lexington, Massachusetts the morning of the 19th, the "Shot Heard Round the World." -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. It had 48 pages and is a non-fiction book. -
Declaration Of Independence
Document that Declarations the independence of the United States from Great Britain. It was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
