-
Period: to
American Revolution Build Up
-
French Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War. -
Sugar Act
Under the Molasses Act colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. -
Stamp Act
An act of the British Parliament that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. -
Quartering Act
A name given to a minimum of two Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. -
Declaratory Act
The Stamp Act was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. -
Townshend Act
A series of measures introduced into the English Parliament by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend in 1767, the Townshend Acts imposed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper and tea imported into the colonies. -
Boston Massacre
British Army soldiers killed five male civilians and injured six others. The incident was heavily propagandized by leading Patriots, such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, to fuel animosity toward the British authorities. -
Boston Tea Party
A political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor. -
Intolerable Acts
the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston Harbor. -
Olive Branch Petition
It was an attempt to assert the rights of the colonists while maintaining their loyalty to the British crown. -
1st Continental congress
A meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. -
Common Sense
A pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in attempt to persuade colonists to join the revolution. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
British troops are sent to confiscate colonial weapons, they run into an untrained and angry militia. This ragtag army defeats 700 British soldiers and the surprise victory bolsters their confidence for the war ahead. -
Second Continental Congress
The second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
Early in the Revolutionary War the British defeated the Americans at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. Despite their loss, the inexperienced colonial forces inflicted significant casualties against the enemy, and the battle provided them with an important confidence boost.