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1765 - In March, the Stamp Act is passed by the English Parliament imposing the first direct tax on the American colonies, to offset the high costs of the British military organization in America. ... 1765 - Also in March, the Quartering Act requires colonists to house British troops and supply them with food. -
In 1774, the British Parliament passed a series of laws collectively known as the Intolerable Acts, with the intent to suppress unrest in colonial Boston by closing the port and placing it under martial law. In response, colonial protestors led by a group called the Sons of Liberty issued a call for a boycott. -
The American Revolution—also called the U.S. War of Independence—was the insurrection fought between 1775 and 1783 through which 13 of Great Britain's North American colonies threw off British rule to establish the sovereign United States of America, founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. -
On September 28, 1781, General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary ... -
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the American Revolutionary War. American statesmen Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay negotiated the peace treaty with representatives of King George III of Great Britain. -
The Constitution of the United States established America's national government and fundamental laws, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. -
President George Washington delivers the first "State of the Union Address" on January 8, 1790. Benjamin Franklin dies on April 17, 1790 in Philadelphia, PA. Washington, DC, is established as the capital of the United States, in 1791. The U.S. Post Office Department is established on February 20, 1792. -
Whiskey Rebellion, (1794), in American history, uprising that afforded the new U.S. government its first opportunity to establish federal authority by military means within state boundaries, as officials moved into western Pennsylvania to quell an uprising of settlers rebelling against the liquor tax.