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The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American Revolution.
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The British were required to station a massive army in North America. Therefore, British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which tried to raise money to pay for this army through a tax on all legal and official papers and publications throughout the colonies. -
Parliament passes the Townshend Acts. They have the name of Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is the chief treasurer of the British Empire, he's n charge of economic and financial matters. -
Seven British soldiers fired into a crowd of volatile Bostonians, killing five, wounding another six, and angering an entire colony. -
Tensions between the American colonists and their British colonizers had been brewing for years, much of it about tea, and finally erupted into a political act of defiance against taxation without representation. -
The American patriots lost at the Battle of Bunker Hill, but they proved they could hold their own against the superior British Army. The fierce fight confirmed that any reconciliation between England and her American colonies was no longer possible. -
The letter was approved and signed by John Hancock, He was the President of the Second Congress. It was sent to London in the care of Richard Penn and Arthur Lee where it is now kept in the National Archives. -
The publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense became the first viral mass communications event in America. -
By issuing the Declaration of Independence, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. -
The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress. This document served as the United States' first constitution. It was in effect from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect. -
The Revolutionary War Battle of Camden, South Carolina, pitted American forces under Major General Horatio Gates against a small British field force commanded by Lieutenant General. Charles, Lord Cornwallis. -
The Battle of Yorktown was a joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. The siege virtually ended military operations in the American Revolution.
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The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787. It was made to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.
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Sherman's compromise was adopted when it won by a vote of five states to four, and served not only to save the crumbling convention, but provided stimulus to resolve other issues yet to be decided. -
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. -
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.”