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The Age of Enlightenment was the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries. The main goal of the wide-ranging intellectual movement called the Enlightenment was to understand the natural world and humankind's place in it solely on the basis of reason.
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The French and Indian War was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. Though Britain's victory in the French and Indian War expelled France from North America and secured massive territorial gains for the empire, subsequent Crown policies concerning taxation and westward expansion resulted in widespread colonial discontent.
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The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power.
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The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which nine British soldiers shot several of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. -
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. Despite the large number of participants and witnesses, Francis Akeley was the only colonist arrested and imprisoned for taking part in the protest against British taxation
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The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the first stage of the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which was peripherally involved. -
The First Continental Congress was a key link in the chain of events that led to our nation gaining its independence from England. This brief convention brought together most of the influential leaders from colonial America to determine an answer to Parliament's recently enacted Coercive Acts. -
The violence turned a colonial revolt against British policy into a fight for political independence. Lexington and Concord led many Americans to support the 'revolution'. For John Adams, these battles were the moment 'the Die was cast, the Rubicon crossed. -
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5, 1775, to be sent to the King as a last attempt to prevent formal war from being declared. The Petition emphasized their loyalty to the British crown and emphasized their rights as British citizens. -
By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. -
he Battle of Trenton was a small but pivotal American Revolutionary War battle on the morning of December 26, 1776, in Trenton, New Jersey. The Americans suffered only two deaths during the march and five wounded from battle, including a near-fatal shoulder wound to future president James Monroe.
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The Battle of Camden, also known as the Battle of Camden Court House, was a major victory for the British in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. It was the worst American defeat in the field and left the British in temporary control of the southern colonies. -
The Siege of Yorktown, from September 28 to October 19, 1781, essentially ended the fighting in the American Revolution. The siege was a land-and-sea campaign in which American and French troops together entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia.
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The Great Compromise of 1787 resolved a conflict regarding state representation under the new Constitution. The compromise provided for a bicameral legislature, with representation in the House of Representatives according to population and in the Senate by equal numbers for each state -
On October 2, 1789, President Washington sent copies of the 12 amendments adopted by Congress to the states. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of Rights."