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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
a document constituting a fundamental guarantee of rights and privileges -
Jamestown Settled
he Virginia Company of England made a daring proposition: sail to the new, mysterious land, which they called Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, and begin a settlement. They established Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British settlement in North America. -
Mayflower Compact Written
The Mayflower Compact was a set of rules for self-governance established by the English settlers who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower. -
Petition of Right
one of England's most famous Constitutional documents. It was written by Parliament as an objection to an overreach of authority by King Charles I. During his reign, English citizens saw this overreach of authority as a major infringement on their civil rights. -
English Bill of Rights
The bill outlined specific constitutional and civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy. Many experts regard the English Bill of Rights as the primary law that set the stage for a constitutional monarchy in England. -
Albany Plan of Union
A plan to place the British North American colonies under a more centralized government. -
Stamp Act
The first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies -
Boston Massacre
A deadly riot between American Colonists and British soldiers -
Boston Tea Party
A political protest. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
First Continental Congress
Served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to their resistance to new taxes. -
Intolerable Acts
a series of British measures passed designed to punish the Massachusetts colonists for the Boston Tea Party. For example, one of the laws closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the tea that they had destroyed. -
Second Continental Congress
Convened after the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) had already begun. In 1776, it took the momentous step of declaring America’s independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, under which the country would be governed until 1789, when it was replaced by the current U.S. Constitution. -
American Revolutionary Begins
At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is defined as the formal statement written by Thomas Jefferson declaring the freedom of the thirteen American colonies from Great Britain -
Shay's Rebellion
a series of violent attacks on courthouses and other government properties in Massachusetts. The rebels were mostly ex-Revolutionary War soldiers turned farmers who opposed state economic policies causing poverty and property foreclosures. -
Philadelphia Convention
The convention where they chose George Washington to become the first president of the United States.The result of this convention was the creation of the Constitution of the United States -
Connecticut Compromise
an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention, that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation of the states in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally among the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house. -
Articles of Confederation
The original constitution of the US, ratified in 1781, which was replaced by the US Constitution in 1789.
