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Jun 15, 1215
Magna Carta
The Magna Carta was a charter of liberties where the English barons forced King John to give his assent. This document constituted a fundamental guarantee of rights and privileges. -
Jamestown Settlement
The founding of Jamestown was important because it was America's first permanent English colony. The government, language, customs, beliefs, and aspirations of the early Virginians are still part of the U.S. heritage today. -
Mayflower Compact was Written
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the male passengers of the Mayflower, and is significant because it was the first agreement for self-government to be created and enforced in America. -
Petition of Right
The Petition of Right is a major English constitutional document setting out the specific liberties of the subject that the king is prohibited from infringing. It is important because it declares the rights of the people. -
English Bill of Rights
The English Bill of Rights is an act that the Parliament of England passed to create separation of powers, limit the powers of the king and queen, and enhance the democratic election. This was significant because it limited the powers of English leaders and declared the rights of the people. -
Albany Plan of Union
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies. This plan is significant because it was the first important proposal from the colonies as a collective whole united under the government. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. This act was significant in that it imposed tax on all paper documents in the colonies at a time when the British Empire was in debt from the Seven Years' War and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was an incident in march of 1770 in which the British Army soldiers shot and killed people while under intense attack by a mob. It is remembered as a key event in helping to solidify the colonial public to the Patriot cause. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party describes Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarding three ships in the Boston harbor and throwing 342 chests of tea overboard. The colonists who advocated independence from the British and their unfair taxes wanted to send a message to the Parliament that they could not ignore. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. This meeting was significant because it organized colonial resistance to Parliament's Coercive Acts. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament after the Boston Tea Party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance of throwing a large tea shipment into the Boston Harbor in reaction to being taxed by the British. -
American Revolution Begins
The battle of Lexington, closely followed by the battle of Concord, marked the first blood spilled in the war of the American independence. These battles were significant because they represented the American patriotism all over the colonies. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress succeeded the First Continental Congress, also in Philadelphia. The Second Congress managed the colonial war effort and moved toward independence. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress; announced that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule. Instead they formed a new nation, the United States of America. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation was an agreement among all thirteen original states in the United States of American that served as its first constitution. The Articles provided a system for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe, and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shay's Rebellion is a name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgement for debt. The rebellion was justification for a revisions or replacement of the Articles of Confederation. -
Philadelphia Convention
The Philadelphia Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation. By that time, it had become clear that the Articles of Confederation were not a good enough constitution for the new nation. -
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. Through this compromise, small states got equal representation in the Senate.
