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The Albany Plan of Union was an idea introduced by Benjamin Franklin during the Albany Congress in 1754. Franklin's plan called for the formation of a permanent federation of colonies, as a means to amend colonial-imperial relations and to more effectively address common colonial interests. -
The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war allowed Great Britain great territorial gains in North America, but disputes over later frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial dissatisfaction, and to the American Revolution.
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The Proclamation of 1763 was a British-produced boundary marked in the Appalachian Mountains at the Eastern Continental Divide. Implemented on October 7, 1763, the Proclamation Line prohibited colonists from settling on lands acquired from the French following the French and Indian War. -
British legislation aimed at ending the smuggling of sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies, and providing increased revenues to fund the larger British Empire responsibilities following the French and Indian War. -
British Parliament passed the "Stamp Act" to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years' War. The act made the colonists pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards. -
The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rile up the colonists against the British. -
The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest in which a group of 60 American colonists threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to agitate against both the tax on tea and the perceived ownership of the East India Company. -
The primary accomplishment of the First Continental Congress was a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods beginning on December 1, 1774, unless parliament should evoke the Intolerable Acts. -
The Intolerable Acts were disciplinary laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government.
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The Battles of Lexington and Concord signaled the start of the American Revolutionary war on April 19, 1775. The British Army left from Boston to capture rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, and destroy the Americans store of weapons and ammunition in Concord.
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As the first rebel victory of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga served as a morale booster and provided key weaponry for the Continental Army in that first year of war. Cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga would be used during the Siege of Boston the following spring.
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The colonists retreated over Bunker Hill, leaving the British in control of the Peninsula. The battle was a tactical, though somewhat futile, victory for the British, as the British had many more casualties than the Americans had sustained, including many officers.
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The Second Continental Congress assumed the normal functions of a government, appointing ambassadors, making paper currency, raising the Continental Army through enrollment, and appointing generals to lead the army.
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On March 17, 1776, British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following General George Washington's successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south.
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The 47-page pamphlet took colonial America by storm in 1776 and made critical arguments for declaring independence from England.
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The Declaration of Independence was the formal proclamation that the colonies would now be an independent country separate from Great Britain.
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The Battle of Brandywine, fought just outside of Philadelphia on September 11, 1777, resulted in an overarching British victory and the conquest of the rebel seat of government.
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Siege of Yorktown, (September 28–October 19, 1781), joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that trapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender.
